The historiography of “conversions” in Portugal’s African colonies and the trajectory of Jesse Chiula Chipenda

Abstract

The text below relates the trajectory of Jesse Chiula Chipenda (1903-1969) to the colonial context in the Central Highlands of Angola. Born in Bailundo in the last year of the region’s ‘pacification’ war (1902-1903) and the chief of Lomanda’s son, Jesse Chipenda was introduced to the missions of the Congregationalist American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and converted into Protestantism. He became a catechist and a prominent pastor. In analyzing Jesse Chipenda’s trajectory, one seeks to understand the constitution of a Christian habitus in the Central Highlands based on the indexing of elements from the local social structure. It is also shown how, due to his schooling and insertion into the missionary context, Jesse acquired dispositions that allowed him to leave the status of ‘indígena’ (native) for that of a ‘citizen’ upon his ‘assimilation,’ that is, his display of the behavior standards and skills expected from a ‘civilized’ person