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Andrew Orta, Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymaras, and the "New Evangelization." New York: Columbia University Press, October 2004.
Andrew Orta's book deals (ostensibly, at least) with the implementation of Catholic missionary practices inspired by a "theology of inculturation" among Aymara-speaking peasants in the Bolivian altiplano.1
These practices constitute the latest phase in a "New Evangelization" embarked upon by the Church in Latin America after World War II (particularly after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65) and imagined as a rectification of the flawed and violent conversion that followed the conquest. During the 1960s and 70s the New Evangelization in the altiplano, as elsewhere in Latin America, was oriented primarily by liberation theology, with its emphasis on class differences and its "preferential option for the poor" requiring the empowerment of lay pastoral agents and grass-roots organizations. By the time Orta began his fieldwork in the late 1980s, re-evangelization efforts had been recast in inculturationist terms, a move which involved a valorization of the Aymara peasantry's "Aymaraness" as opposed to a generic class condition.
Inculturationism posits Christianity as a force that must become "incarnated" in local cultural forms if conversion is to be effective, and views "culture" in general-any given culture-as being already Christian in essence or potentiality. Inculturationism as a missionary strategy can take a variety of forms-particularly liturgical adaptations involving native performances and symbols, and "dynamic" translation practices incorporating native religious categories (things which have, of course, been going on since long before the development of a theology of inculturation). As stated in the book's opening paragraph, the application of inculturation theology results in a surprising twist to previous...