‘Before They Sent Us to Civilise Them, Now They Send Us to Defend Them from Civilisation’: Missionary Theopolitics at the Margins of the State

This article examines the involvement of Catholic missionaries in mediating the socioenvironmental conflicts arising from oil extraction in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon.Drawing on a 13-month ethnographic study and archival research, it investigates how missionaries navigate marginality areas where state practices are both constructed and deconstructed through informal and illegal practices. The analysis foregrounds the mediatory role of missionaries between local communities, the state, and oil corporations, dwelling on the theological drivers of their interventions in political arenas. Using the conceptual lens of theopolitics, my analysis of practices of missionisation argues for a de secularisation of politics, highlighting the co-constitution of missionisation and state governance in marginal and contested regions.