Abstract

APARICIO-ERAZO, Jorge-Luis. Augustinian Mission and Ethnography of Otherness. Indigenous and Blacks from the South Pacific of Colombia in the Work of the Augustinian Priest Bernardo Merizalde, 1921. Historelo.rev.hist.reg.local [online]. 2022, vol.14, n.29, pp.51-86.  Epub Nov 24, 2021. ISSN 2145-132X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/historelo.v14n29.93938.

This paper provides an approach to the relations between the missionary project and ethnographic research of indigenous and black communities in the Colombian Southern Pacific region in the first decades of the 20th century. To this end, it takes the book titled Estudio de la costa colombiana del Pacífico (Study of the Colombian Pacific coast) (1921) by Agustin Recollect missionary Bernardo Merizalde del Carmen as an object of analysis. It describes and reviews five different life dimensions of the groups studied by the priest, namely: social organization, housing and work; bodies and clothing; language; religious and spiritual beliefs; and celebrations. An approach to the study carried out by Merizalde contributes to the knowledge of the history of the relationship between the State and the Church and its role in the institutionalization of power in remote regions during the conservative hegemonic period. It also provides some insights into the cultural history and everyday life of the social groups studied by the missionary, as well as information regarding the prehistory of anthropological thinking and ethnographic practices that played a key role in the representation of alterities in the early 20th century.

Keywords : augustinian mission; religion; ethnography; blacks; indigenous; Colombia; twentieth century.

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