Floating Charisma: Leaderships, Denominations, and Materialities in Argentine Chaco Indigenous Churches

Abstract

The chapter analyzes denominational diversity in the Argentine Chaco Indigenous religious field from a symbolic economy of charism. In doing so, I deepen a line of inquiry about charism as a cultural phenomenon, observing the historical and contemporary configurations of leadership in the Indigenous churches, the state institutional regulations, and the materialities that cross the sense of belonging like the mobilities between different Christian denominations. Three axes structure the argument. The first inquires at the foundational split of Evangelio versus Catholics, a key opposition in the historical formation of Chaco Indigenous Evangelical churches during the fifties and sixties, in a social environment with strong Protestant missionary presence and of new national political ideology. The second addresses the Indigenous Evangelical field, focusing on the production of denominational diversity from emerging leaderships, missionary mediations, and state regulations. The final axis focuses on the ways in which leaderships and materialities merge in the charismatic effect of “having a church,” where social, family, and political plots intersect. Along with this, the discussion leads us to consider the limits of religious and denominational identifications among the Toba/Qom and Wichí, observing sinking dynamics of institutional charism of the churches and their leaders.