“God’s peace, brother!”: in the heart of the Amazon, on the borders of the three borders between Peru, Brazil and Colombia, we come across very curious devotees, followers of a strange religion born in the 1970s, who have become over the years of essential players in the local trade in this region of all kinds of traffic, reputed to be dangerous.
The “Israélitas of the New Universal Pact”, peasants of Andean origin who have arrived here in their thousands since the 1990s, are convinced that they will find the new “Promised Land” there.
No relation to Judaism, contrary to what their name suggests, but an improbable syncretism between Adventist Protestantism and Inca traditions: the Israelites are “an evangelical and millenarian religious movement founded in 1968 by Ezequiel Ataucusi Gamonal, self-proclaimed prophet, who died in 2000 and whose son Jonas took over,” Lionel Rossini, filmmaker and specialist in this region of the three borders, told AFP.
Immediately recognizable by their cassocks, beards and long hair, in ponytails for men, veils over their heads for women, they are visible almost everywhere in this vast area of ??wild rivers and impenetrable jungles, at the crossroads of the Amazon and the Javari, in the markets, aboard their canoes, or in their small communities scattered over the water, noted AFP.
As on the Peruvian island of Islandia, a town on stilts somewhat pompously called the Venice of the Amazon, where the Israelites also settled there
Martin and Gustavo, two members of the group, long beards and white hair tied in a bun that give them the appearance of Sikh warriors, sell vegetables and sweets on a cardboard box.
“God commands us to let us grow beards and hair”, explains Gustavo and “all those who unite with God must conform to his principles”, such as not drinking alcohol, underlines the sixty-year-old, all smiles and bible in hand.
“God appeared to us with a sign. This sign is our prophet. It’s a bit like the Eiffel Tower, you see…”, he tries kindly, quoting the Epistle to the Corinthians, “The True Law” enacted by Ezequiel and references to the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco (south-eastern Peru).
Referring to their own bible and to the commandments – “The True Law” – dictated by their late prophet Ezequiel, both new messiah and new Inca responsible for guiding his faithful in the land of the “Promised Land”, the Israelites consider the Peruvian Amazon as the “navel of the world”, the only part of the globe that will escape the next end of time because water will remain there.
Their capital is Alto Monte de Israel, on the Amazon River, between the Peruvian cities of Iquitos and Colombian Leticia.
“The texts of the Old and New Testament are summoned, and adapted to the Peruvian context”, details Mr. Rossini, author of one of the rare documentaries on the subject, entitled “Happy as God in the Amazon”.
The movement, recognized as a congregation by the State, but a sect according to some, had in the year 2000 nearly 200,000 members, some of whom deserted the ranks after finding that the announced resurrection of Ezequiel, three days after his death, had ultimately not taken place.
The Church mainly recruited landless peasants, but also former guerrillas from the Shining Path and from the poor outskirts of the big cities.
The Israelites practice their worship every Saturday, burning the meat of cows, sheep and chickens on a pyre, as a burnt offering as food for God, and often wear a kind of colorful cassock, the “holy tunic” allegedly similar to that ” carried by Christ and his apostles”.
Most farmers, producing in particular rice and vegetables on cleared jungle land, they “are reputed to be frenzied workers, because for them, their work participates in the work of God”, deciphers Mr. Rossini.
The community was used by the Peruvian authorities in the 90s to colonize the Amazon regions, as part of a project called “Living Borders” initiated by President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). For the government of the time, “it was a question of populating immense uninhabited areas and thus increasing sovereignty at the borders”.
“The Israelites are now part of the local landscape,” notes the filmmaker. “This colonization is a success, an undeniable economic success, coupled with an effective political weight”.
Because the Israelites have also created their legally recognized political party, the Popular Agricultural Front of Peru (FREPAP), which won more than 8% in the 2020 legislative elections.
This party, whose symbol is a blue fish on a white background, notably advocates the adoption of divine law and agriculture as a means of combating poverty.
“Strong with the unanimous vote of the faithful, they conquered seats of municipal councilors and even town halls. They knew how to impose their presence, in the absence of having been accepted without reluctance”, underlines Mr. Rossini.
“Even if they are withdrawn into themselves, the Israelites have been able to establish themselves as decisive players in this Peruvian Far East (…) a pioneering front which is advancing inexorably”, with faithful who continue to migrate towards this Amazon region.
To connect their multiple communities, they built paths in the jungle, new routes that would also be used for drug trafficking, omnipresent in this crossroads of the three borders.
Faced with these accusations, the community speaks of “bad apples inside the herd”.
06/02/2023 09:34:34 – Islandia (Pérou) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP