Eight religious sects are in town each of them with one or two missionaries, known by almost all, as well as the whole people know each other. Inírida like every Colombian urban center, is diverse in its religion. There is even a Gnostic temple that only opens up on Sundays.
The Catholic temple, the biggest in town, is an unusual sample of graphic art. In their interior, in the wall from behind the altar, it has colored a typical guainieño landscape. Behind crucified Christ's main image come geometric forms, all incrusted in a sunset, with clouds in form of flakes, with the river in front and the forest in the horizon. In a lateral wall there is an indigenous family, the man on foot, the woman seated and with a small boy among her arms. They complete the square a cabin and a basket full with fish. The painter of such murals should have a deep Dalí's influence.
A young priest, a recently arrived paisa, painted on the podium a candle in thick lines, irradiating colors; its style is to the hippie like professor's, the painter of the others that there was in town. In his masses it was discovered their yearning to modify the rites of the Church and his inclination for liberation theology. Those intents put nervous some parishioners, but the youths didn't receive it bad.
Almost all the Catholic church followers are in big population centers, but she is not the main one in the rural area for a lot of time. Sofía Müller, a foreigner (literally a gringa I don't know if German or Unitedstadian), she arrived to the region more than 30 years ago and she translated the Bible to more than 5 local languages. She was devoted to evangelize every community she could and their success is reflected in the customs those are seen in all the rivers in Guainía, with almost all groups evangelical. The serious errors made by the Catholic church in their evangelización process, if it can be called this way, it facilitated her the things a lot.
The indigenous groups are characterized by a very deep religiosity, reflected in almost every aspects of their life. Before 1492 they were common the fasts, the long religious
ceremonies and the deep respect to the sacerdotal hierarchy(12). With the arrival of the
Spaniards, the church established the boarding schools that looked more like jails or
concentration fields than educational centers. The Catholic priests arrived continent to
condemn all the sacred-but-no-Christian thing as a trick of Satan. They impelled slavery
and they founded towns that they died from tediusness(13). Thanks to 
, since the council
Vatican II, the Church has revised her postures and today she wants to correct yesterday's
mistakes. The new evangelization looks for the indigenous version of the Christendom and the new priests want to learn indigenous languages to give the mass. The Pope made a call to
the bishops to make the Church's mea culpa for the year 2000 jubilee,
and to make that next millennium the one of tolerance.
On the other hand, the evangelical groups banned the natives any alcoholic drink and the traditional holydays. They helped them a lot with the rampante alcoholism that there was before, but they attacked their legendary relationship with chicha(e30). They taught them to clean the community and to paint almost all the buildings with white. Many of those customs were practiced before they arrived, but the evangelical ones spread them everywhere, with their mixture of happiness and strict discipline. Nowadays some communities refuse to receive help from the state, they say that it comes from evil. As consequence, many things, like musical instruments, traditional dresses (the wayuco) and many other ceremonies were left in forgetfulness.
A puinave friend told me that in a community, near to the Mavicure rocks, it was thrown out in a pipe, replete of earth, a giant yuruparí. This musical instrument is made of a special wood, it has bell form and it sounds like a horn. In some houses in Inírida you find one or another yuruparí in the hall, like decoration. The giant instrument sounded every time calling to the holyday celebrations and it was listened in round 10 km. And it is there, thrown out, as evil's instrument.
Will sound again the giant yuruparí? A Catholic priest assured that many of the sects were practically created by the gringo government; that it was a strategy to weaken the the Catholic church political power, in places where the natural and mineral wealth was abundant. Greenpeace has denounced the big companies tactics at present time: The image laundering. Ecopetrol and Oxy make it every day in national tv: They show natural beauties, they speak about their achievements supporting community initiatives, about their very responsible attitude with nature, but the cost of what they contaminate and of the environmental damage caused by who they use their products is mayor. These companies take charge of putting on makeup by the only side that they are seen, while for the other one the communities are deceived, the officials are bribed and the environment is plundered. Perhaps they have inspection, but the "como voy yo" (CVY)[e31] it is tradition and the cake is very big...
The Europeans have been sophisticated: Now they wash before beginning to explore. The same Amazon Fund comes carrying out projects of social development and its same officials know that the progress of the area is not the main interest. The satellites that are had at the present time can reveal the earth kind even more than a meter deep. They know better than us where the wealth are, where the coca is, where the burnings are. Their political interest for the region is clearly bound to their economic interest. Has it been different anytime?
At least there is an understanding climate in the churches. Each one has their missionaries and they come to an agreement when to participate in some state question or any other thing that it involves all of them. Their differences in liturgy questions, dogma or similar things, it is restricted to people that they are evangelizing. The Catholic is the only one that it has distributed tracts to warn her parishioners about "people that don't believe in the Virgin neither in images", because she is the one that more faithfuler can lose. Its situation in Inírida is the same as in other cities of the country, but present day communities behave otherwise, their religious rites are not the same and it seems that their evangelical faithful they trend more to increase than to diminish.
On indigenous religion or cosmology I didn't knew anything. An anthropologist that had been working in Vaupés during five years, told me about the tukuyas symbolic universe; but Vaupés is another thing. There is not a big interest on this, only the anthropologists feel something, and not all of them.
NOTES
| 12 | See Susana Henao, Los hijos del agua, ed. Planeta 1995 Ý |
| 13 | See Mariano Useche Losada, El proceso colonial en Alto Orinoco-Río Negro durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII, Universidad Nacional, 1984. Ý |
| e30 | Fermented and cooked corn drink, American Indian cultures typical. Ý |
| e31 | "How I go there?" and its initials, a typical exclamation calling for bribing in Colombian state officials. Ý |