was Vidal.
“What year was that?”
“’57. They started in Huamanga but they couldn’t find a place. There was no water, and they wanted a garden, fruit trees. So they came here to Huanta. Besides, they almost killed them in Huamanga.”
“What? They were almost killed?”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, they were giving out pamphlets in the street, and people tried to kill them. The police grabbed them and put them in jail—not to punish them but to save their lives. People wanted to kill them! It was against the law to preach in the open air. The government thought it was a threat to Catholicism and they wanted to stop it. The police saved their lives. They were very lucky. Back then, the missionaries were all North Americans. There were no Peruvians. The missionaries educated us.”
The history Pastor Vidal told reminded me of the Catholic priests I interviewed in the late 1990s. They remained concerned about the “invasion of the sects,” referring to the massive growth of Evangelical Christianity in Ayacucho. Numerous priests cautioned that the Evangelicals were a “threat to Andean culture” because Evangelical doctrine rejected the use of religious images and banned chewing coca leaves and alcohol consumption (both key elements in celebrating many religious fiestas). They were joined in their concerns by social scientists trained in the Weberian tradition; they feared the Protestant ethic would fuel the spirit of capitalism and erode communal forms of labor and reciprocity in the name of individual gain and salvation.
“How many people were studying with you at the institute?”
“There were six of us.” Vidal paused. “I learned about the Bible so I could see it, so I could touch it,” his voice lingering over the words. “Well, some people asked, ‘How is this drunk going to be an evangelical?’ I played the guitar, I sang, I danced.”9
“Wow—you did it all!”
He threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Hermana, nothing escaped me. But after that, I never was out tracking down young women.” Vidal’s tone turned serious. “I didn’t drink. I worked hard. I wasn’t fornicating—not at all. No fornication! I thought I’d just work and never touch a woman again. But I worked making firecrackers, and this young woman started talking to me. I wasn’t talking, but she fell in love with me. We got married, but not because I’d been talking to her,” he insisted.
“So you had el don de predicar, but didn’t use it with her?” I teased.
“That’s right, hermana.”
“Or maybe it was the fireworks?”
He laughed, rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Ok—I’m switching topics! How did you begin evangelizing in the selva?” I asked.
“I studied one full year and then went out preaching.” As he explained, he went out with the North American missionaries, translating into Quechua for them.
“And when you headed out to the communities to start churches, did you bring movies, pamphlets—how did you do it?”
“At first we didn’t have movies. We only took pamphlets—that’s how we worked. Then don Nicholas Cochran started the radio—Radio Amauta [in 1960]. It took him two or three years because the government didn’t want to give him permission,” he explained. “Later don Nicholas brought a thousand radios and we gave them out everywhere. They were just two band radios, Radio Amauta and Voz Cristiana, from Ecuador.”
“Evangelical programs?”
“Aha. We gave them away everywhere,” gesturing expansively with his outstretched arms. “I traveled all over, forming churches. Enrique [Harry] Marshall was here and I worked with him in the selva. There was no road then, no cars. People walked on foot and so did we.”
“You walked all the way to the selva on foot?”
Pastor Vidal nodded. “I had a mule and I’d travel to the jungle, taking the path that runs by Rasuhuillca,” referring to the highest peak in northern Ayacucho.
“And the North Americans went with you?”
He nodded. Pastor Vidal began tracing the route they followed, naming off a long list of communities in which they had founded churches from the 1950s through the 1970s. “We were always visiting. I’d work teaching them choruses, hymns, prayers. I just used a house. We would start visiting their neighbors and calling them, no? I always stayed for two or three weeks in each place. Then little by little, as they formed a group, I’d move on to the next stop. I always traveled with Enrique [Henry] Marshall.”
“And the films were later?”
“Yes. First we had Radio Amauta, and then the projector. With the films, the church grew everywhere. The first time, children came during the day and we tried it. We showed one film and they all watched. So we told them that night we’d show a free film, so they should tell their friends, their parents, everyone. Tell them there’ll be a free movie tonight—we won’t charge a cent.”
“So everyone came?”
“Uf,” he threw up his hands. “The kids ran around everywhere—‘Movie! Movie tonight!’ Hermana, the temple couldn’t hold everyone. So the next day we invited the missionaries to talk after the movies and there was no more room anywhere. Everyone came to watch the movie.”
“And what did people say after they saw the film? How did they react?”
“They just wanted more. For the grace of God, the churches grew. And people listened to Radio Amauta everywhere too.”
“I bet they’d never seen movies before?”
“Never. Such admiration. Ad-mi-ra-tion!”
“What films were they, hermano Vidal?”
“The birth of Señor Jesucristo, the flight from Egypt. Then the crucifixion, the universal flood.” He thought for a moment. “That’s why people came, to see Señor Jesucristo with their own eyes. Then they knew Jesucristo was God.”
“When you arrived how did people react? Were there ever problems with the Catholics?”
Vidal sat straight up in his chair. “They wanted to kill us but they couldn’t. Once in Rosario they wanted to kill me. They beat me up and left me bloody. Well, there were police stations then, so the hermanos got an order and they made the Catholics go to the police station. How those police looked at me! They threw them in jail—it was the comuneros themselves who’d beaten me. I spent three days in the hospital. I was all swollen up, blood, fever, everything.”
“So it was the Catholic comuneros who did this?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
“And why did they say they’d done this?”
“Because I was Evangelical, because I was preaching. They told me I had no right to preach because they were Catholic.”
“Did this happen more than once?”
“Oh, they almost killed me several times.”
“And the priests? The catechists?”
“They were against me too. They said, ‘Those Evangelicals are enemies. Don’t allow them in.’ They said we were condemned. Because we denied the images, they said we were diabolic men.” Vidal shook his head as he recalled those early years. “It wasn’t easy at first. That’s how it was, hermana. Later we won in spite of it all. We won against the Catholics because they became fewer and fewer in number.”
“Hermano Vidal, did they have catechists in these communities?”
“No, nobody. They just had chapels and the priests visited once a year.”
“Were there Catholic churches in the communities then?”
“Yes,