El Legado de Una Nueva Profecía:
Historia de la Fe Bahá'í en Chile

by Rocio Macarena Montoya Jorquera

About: This dissertation covers the history of the Faith in Chile from Martha Root's 1920 arrival in Chile, and her establishment of an incipient community via correspondence with theosophists and Freemasons, via Marcia Stewart as the first Bahá'í pioneer in 1939, the introduction of the Faith to the Mapuche in 1976, through the Pinochet dictatorship, where Bahá'ís, although surveilled, visited by the secret police who attended several meetings, had their phones tapped and reported their activities at the Bahá'í centre each week, were judged inoffensive and left unmolested, Bahá'í administration included; through the period of the Islamic Revolution, to the establishment of the Bahá'í Temple in 2016.

It's format is mostly anecdotal storytelling and oral history, rather than critical analysis, but it remains fascinating. A particularly important segment is the discussion of the first openly trans Bahá'í of Chile, and an extraordinary letter of the House of Justice affirming her right to be a Bahá'í, considered as a woman in every way according to the Faith, able to marry a man as a Bahá'í, and to be welcomed by the community. [- Ismael Velasco, 2020]