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In what appears to be the latest consequence of broadcaster Pat Robertson's August call for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's assassination, Chavez announced plans to expel from the country New Tribes Mission, a church-planting and Bible-translating mission agency.

Describing New Tribes Mission (NTM) as a "true imperialist infiltration that makes me ashamed," Chavez declared he was fed up with "colonialism" and accused the mission group of links to the CIA, spying on Venezuela, and exploiting indigenous people. "We don't want New Tribes here," he said.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel repeated the accusations on Thursday. "We have intelligence reports that some of them are CIA," he told reporters. "The president's decision was based on reports that their actions create situations that compromise the country's sovereignty."

Rangel also said that Chavez's action is supported by the local Roman Catholic church. "Even Cardinal [Rosalio] Castillo Lara supported President Chavez's measure to remove New Tribes from the country," he said. "We have the cardinal's blessing in this decision." Castillo, who has called the president "a paranoid dictator" in need of an exorcism and whom Chavez has called an "outlaw, bandit, immoral Pharisee, and a pantomime," has not issued a statement of his own on the New Tribes expulsion.

Chavez said his decision was "irreversible." He did not set an expulsion date but will allow the missionaries time to "gather their stuff."

Chavez made the statements at a nationally televised gathering in Venezuela's southern Apure state, where he granted indigenous groups land titles and farm equipment. The comments came on Indigenous Resistance Day—Chavez's rechristening of Columbus Day.

Additionally, Chavez said that New Tribes missionaries have built luxurious compounds, electric plants, and airfields amid poor indigenous villages. He accused NTM of violating national sovereignty by flying private aircraft in and out of the country without passing through customs. The president offered no proof to support any of his statements.

Success and sadness
Since 1946, New Tribes has served Venezuela's indigenous communities through translation, church planting, literacy, humanitarian aid, and community development projects, almost entirely in the country's western-central Amazonas state, which borders Colombia. NTM works with twelve ethnic groups in Venezuela, nine with established churches, and has completed five Bible translations. Four other translations are in progress. Thirty of the 160 NTM missionaries in the country are Venezuelan nationals. Worldwide, 3,200 NTM missionaries minister to indigenous peoples in more than 18 countries in Latin America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia.

In recent years, kidnapped NTM missionaries have made international headlines. Martin and Gracia Burnham were held for more than a year in the Philippines where Martin piloted NTM aircraft, ferrying supplies to remote missionaries. Martin died in a botched Philippine army rescue attempt June 7, 2002, in which Gracia was freed. In 1993, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas snatched Dave Mankins, Rick Tenenoff, and Mark Rich near the Panama-Colombia border. After years of negotiation and later investigation, NTM concluded in 2001 that the missionaries had been killed in captivity in 1996.

Pointing fingers
Robertson, a 1988 presidential candidate, said on his August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club television program that the U.S. government should assassinate Chavez to protect American oil interests and because Chavez "has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." He later apologized, but Chavez's government stopped issuing foreign missionary visas and reportedly tightened regulations on preachers in the country. Venezuela's religious affairs chief, Carlos Gonzalez, told Reuters that the government had already been working on the move "but these declarations have made us speed things up."

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October (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49