Item Detail
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25418
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3
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0
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English
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"Gringo Jeringo" : Anglo Mormon Missionary Culture in Bolivia
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Latter-day Lore : Mormon Folklore Studies
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Salt Lake City
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University of Utah Press
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434-447
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From 1964 to 1989, amidst the ever-present dust and harsh sun of Bolivian working-class neighborhoods, Anglo Mormon missionaries zig-zagged in white shirted pairs from heavy wooden to sheet metal doors.2 Everyone watched them and wondered, from time to time, where they came from, what they were doing so far from home— do they have ulterior motives, why they are not like other strangers who pass through town— and where they were going. People gossiped about them. They told folk tales of getting them drunk, of seducing them. As the missionaries would walk, children would gather, sometimes to play, sometimes to taunt, and often to flee after yelling the common rhyme: “Gringo jeringo mata la guagua” (gringo ---hole/ syringe kills the little child). [From the text]