Cross-border Religious Practices: Evangelical Churches as Networks of Mobility on the Chilean-Bolivian Frontier

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the cross-border religious practices of the Aymara and Quechua people, Peruvian and Bolivian evangelicals who inhabit the Tarapacá region in Chile. For this purpose, the cross-border nature of evangelical communities is illustrated, evangelicals are defined as communities of communities, and three aspects are analyzed that allow evangelical churches to be understood as networks of mobility on the Chilean-Bolivian frontier: 1. The role of the family as a mediator of affiliations; 2. The importance of unattached identifications and 3. The heterogeneity of forms of participation in evangelical churches. For indigenous communities, geographical mobility is a community need and an ancestral heritage. Religious mobility implies interconnections between different religious groups, such as border and cross-border network strategies.