Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Panorama of the Tribes of Colombia and Panama

Lomalinda

Southern Meta, Colombia

Instituto Linguistico Verano

In the mid 1960's the Wycliffe Bible Translators, also known as the Summer Linguistic Institute (Instituto Linguistico de Verano) built the little town seen above, on the outskirts of Puerto Lleras in the Ariari River Basin, as the base for an operation to establish a written language for native Colombian Indian tribes in the Llanos and Selva of the Orinoco River Basin of Colombia. Once each language could be written, it was the institute's objective to translate the Bible into each tribe's native tongue. The effort was highly respected by the Colombian government, which had no program to preserve the Indian native dialects at the time. However it caused a great deal of resentment among various profession disciplines, who felt the effort should be Colombian, and the town left the local inhabitants of Puerto Lleras very suspicious of the real intent of the gringo operation in their midst. I had the opportunity to visit the community on a number of occasions to visit Herb Russo, an animal husbandry major from Cal Poly Pomona University, in Southern California, whose job it was to assist the the Indians with food production. To my knowledge, Panorama of the Tribes of Colombia and Panama, was the only book published by the linguists of Lomalinda, describing the breath of their program, most likely for the faithful, who were the financiers of their program so far from home. I purchased the book on the international used book market and on the title page of my copy was stamped the name of the previous owner in green letters. It read, "Alliance Church, P.O. Box 61, Lilburn, Georgia, 30247". The book is a richly illustrated soft cover depicting the desert, mountain, plains and jungle Indians of Colombia that were the foundation of the Mestizo culture that evolve after the arrival of the Spaniards. Lomalinda disbanded in the early 1990's due to leftist guerilla activity in the southern Llanos and Selva of the Orinoco.

Panorama of the Tribes of Colombia and Panama
Edition 1: 186 pages

Panorama
Townsend Press
Lomalinda, Meta, Colombia
MMMDCC 1973
Field Adresss
Instituto Linguistico de Verano
Apartado Nacional 5787
Bogota, COlombia, South America
International Adress
Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc.
P.O. Box 1960
Santa Ana, California, 92702 U.S.A.