Miguel Angel Cadenas, Bishop of Iquitos, from Leon Augustinus, is a first-hand expert on the reality of the Peruvian Amazon.“I have been here for 30 years, the first 20 of which I spent with the indigenous people of Cocama, in Bajo Marañón, where I have been in the city for the past decade, receiving the episcopal appointment three years ago.”
Long before that, he had trained with the Augustinians at their small seminary in Valencia de don Juan. And there his fate began to take shape: “Many missionaries came and told us stories that sounded like heavenly music to a child’s ears.”. When he was 18, he entered the Augustinian novitiate in Valladolid, and after completing it, he was appointed parish priest of a community in Mostoles.
After defeating Shining Path
Until his life took a Copernican turn when he was sent to a mission in Peru: “I arrived in Bajo Marañon in 1994, in the context of the defeat of the Shining Path.. Terrorism had no effect in our region, but the state structure was largely weak. Since then, little by little, economic growth has reached the national level, although it has been quite uneven.
At the pastoral level, he found “the parish of Santa Rita de Castilla, very well organized, administered by Augustinians and the nuns of the Missionary Company of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose influence was very noticeable throughout the Peruvian Amazon.” Although now their occupations are few and they had to close their homes. Christian animators were also essential, and they are essential in my life.Because they head the Christian community and celebrate the Word of God on Sundays in many places, we must bear in mind that we are talking about about 100 communities (today there are 60) and there are a small number of priests.
Midwifery team
The other answer was, “Health care, With a team of midwives and ‘mobilisers’, a UNICEF-supported program to promote maternal and child health.Over time, “as the state regained its strength and implemented its own medical programs, we were able to rethink our presence and commit to defending the rights of indigenous people, accompanying their associations and training their leaders.”
Therefore, he is happy with the progress: “When I arrived, because of the discrimination they experienced, very few communities presented themselves as indigenous.. Now, little by little, thanks to the accompaniment and careful attention to everything that Christian animators transmit to us, we can provide better support to those who suffer from the main impact of oil extraction.
Our own worldview
By working hard to learn the language and soaking up the local culture, one soon realizes “that there is a spiritual presence here, that there are spirits everywhere… This explains something very important: the Kokama did not scream over the oil spills because they had accepted that God would punish this.” Attacking nature by turning everything upside down, bringing those who lived under the river’s waters back to life, and descending into it all, in a kind of ‘reboot’. It’s shocking to Europeans, who have a natural ontology, but it helped us a lot in knowing who we were accompanying.“.
Thank you to the Christian painters, “who were very patient with us and showed us the way so that we could know how to accompany them. And so, for example, thanks to the knowledge of this belief, in which they understand that whoever falls into the river does not drown, but rather lives in it and has his own family there, connected to the one on the surface, we were able to appreciate this importance of water and help the indigenous community. File a lawsuit so that the Peruvian state can consult the population before implementing the waterway In the region.”
Miguel Ángel Cadenas, Spanish missionary, Bishop of Iquitos, in the Amazon region of Peru
The river is the owner of the rights
After they were able to paralyze this project, they achieved another achievement, “With The judge ruled that Marañon was the owner of the rightsIt must now be authenticated by a court in Iquitos.
Spiritually, the Augustinian bishop also feels challenged: “Now I am overwhelmed by reading the Gospel and seeing how Jesus deals with the wind and the sea in the same way as he deals with the devil. From what I have learned with the kukama, I now also appreciate this nuance and see them as subjects. In fact, this possible interpretation is found in the Psalms and many other passages. Now I read the Bible through the eyes of Christian animators“.
Good and bad spirits
Another aspect is that he appreciates how “people, realizing that they live surrounded by good and bad spirits, have great respect for us religious people, because they feel that we protect them from demons. This shows in how much they appreciate our prayers and celebrations… They do not feel sorry that it may be prolonged, but rather they are grateful for it, because they appreciate that they are protected spiritually, while they stay.“.
Something they were “learning, from the beginning, in meetings with Christian painters and evangelical leaders, priests, because of this Western heritage, hardly refer to God and abbreviate our celebrations. Quite the opposite of Pentecostalism, which helped us think. finally, We were able to see clearly that they loved us, not only as advisors in their struggle, but as men of faith who protected them and gave them strength.“.
Bet on Amazon rituals
The big result of this will have to be the Amazon Ritual, for which he believes “a lot of progress has been made and a good document has been prepared. We are now at a stage where this agreement is being announced in various jurisdictions, and we are waiting for its final approval in December.” The first in Rome, and then three years of “advertising experience” will follow. For this, there is something very important May we priests do like the shamans, who in their rituals use the right and precise words, in the right order and with the right movements.. “This is the way we live in Indigenous culture, and this is the way we have to do it.”
Another circumstance is “the acceptance that when receiving Communion, many of them extend their hands and take the consecrated host with their thumb and forefinger. This, far from being disrespectful, is a sign of their identity, that when they get something, they make it their own.“.
Be careful with the use of Latin
The last example is very important: “When a shaman wants to harm someone, his incantation is in Latin, a language inherited from ancient missionaries that no one knows. They believe that for this spell to lose its effect, another consecrated person must phrase it in the same language.. Knowing this, we, the heirs of those who spoke Latin, should take great care of the words we say, and we would do well to use their natural language.
Hence his conclusion: “Inculturation does not depend so much on missionaries, but more importantly on studying, contemplating and discerning what people do with the Christianity we transmit. A path in which Christian activists are the ones who lead us by the hand of God“.
