Civilizaciones en Disputa: Educación Y Evangelización en el Territorio Shuar

The work analyzes how the Shuar people exercised their capacity for action in the three dimensions of the Salesian mission: civilization, evangelization and education, through movements that fluctuated between dispute, resistance and appropriation as a function of their differentiated collective existence. "Knowing in order to prevail" expresses the historical expectation that explained the acceptance of literacy because it offered strategic tools that strengthened their capacities to confront colonization. Late evangelization, in turn, was assumed as a condition of possibility to articulate the territory and the Shuar leadership networks. Finally, the research puts in scene the civilizational disputes that arise from the relationship between missionaries and Salesians and that offer, today, the possibility of removing the civilizational patterns of modern coloniality implanted in the Amazonian territory. These disputes confront the de-spiritualization of nature with the experience of the territory as a sacred sphere of life; the split between soul and body with the spirituality that articulates both instances and emotions; and the break between existence and knowledge with the contextual and existential knowledge of the Shuar people.