Bolivia Again

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 2, 14 January 1909, Page 49

Bolivia Again

In our last issue we dealt wibh 'a fairy-tale of a far-off land ' — to wit, Bolivia. This time the fairy-tale belonged to the sub-variety known to smiling travellers in East and West as the ' missionary tale.' It was told by a good missionary who was touring New Zealand to ' scare up ' funds for the purpose of enabling him to overlay witli doctrinal vagueness their doctrinal clearness, and to substitute for their religious unity and peace the beginnings of the jarring dissensions and strife which have made Christianity a laughing-stock to the heathen. The particular tale dealt with by us in our last issue was this: that Popery had never so much as lifted its finger for the education of the Indian native race in Bolivia. The Franciscans of the South were, in this connection, selected for specially dishonorable mention. 'They had not (we were told) opened a solitary school for Indians, and their sole work among the tribesfolk'-was"to turn the Noble Red Man of Bolivia into a, first-class horse and cattle thief ! Oniy that and nothing morel We quoted at the time from several statistical and other publications, from the testi- ) .mony > of Protestant ranchers, and even from a statement 'in Missionary Pioneering in Bolivia (written by two confreres of Mr. Allan, the missionary referred to in this paragraph) that the Indian school is a long established

method of the Franciscan Indian missions in Argentina ancl Bolivia. We quoted the Prensa, of Buenos Aires, which testified that the Franciscan friar, and not the soldier, isthe true civiliser of the wild and dangerous tribes of the Gran Chacd. Further information, showing the constant use made of schools by those zealous and successful Catholic missionaries may be found in .Father Jose Cardus's work, Las Misiones Franciscanas en Bolivia. We might mention the Franciscan colleges at Tarija, Potosi, and Tarata — all in the southern missionary region. And, finally, we might, quote the following extract from an '-article on 'Los Guayaros de Bolivia ' in vol. iii., numbers 5-6, 1908, of the international anthropological journal Anthropos (published- in Vienna)/ The Guayaros were civilised and christianised by the Franciscans, and ,the school was one of the means used by the for this purpose. Here -is a purely incidental mention (p. 887), of the Indian v school from the article in question, which, *by the way, was written by one of the Franciscans on the Indian mission among the Guayaros : ' Mace pocos meses, me diver tia en ensefiar d los nifws de la escuela,el<melancolico canto que se titula "la paraguaya" . . .' And so on. Which, being interpreted, meaneth : ' Some months ago I was amusing myself by teaching the children of tlu school the doleful song entitled "La Paraguaya " ' (Hhe Paraguayan'). The writer then proceeds: 'The neophytes, attracted by the novelty of' the rhythm and of the melody, asked me the name of the song. "La Paraguaya," said I. "Yes," they replied, "the Paraguayans are. our ancestors." '