weak rural presence, the vast majority of Indians followed their own brand of folk-Catholicism far removed from orthodoxy. Indians saw no inconsistency in mixing professed Roman Catholicism with folk curers or indigenous ritual. Indigenous rituals and fragments of Roman Catholic worship were interwoven in the elaborate fiestas that were the focus of social life. Protestantism and other Christians In the 1980s, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and members of a variety of Pentecostal denominations gained increasing numbers of adherents among the rural and urban squatter populations. Because these denominations tended to emphasize individual salvation and to deemphasize social and political issues, many leftists charged that they were agents of the United States government. In May 1989, left-wing terrorists murdered two Mormon missionaries from the United States who had been working in a squatter community near La Paz. Bolivia has an active Protestant minority of various groups, especially Evangelical Methodists. Other denominations represented in Bolivia include Mennonites and Anglicanism. Since the early 1950s there are Mennonites in Bolivia, mainly in Santa Cruz Department. Religious syncretism among indigenous groups The Quechua and Aymara pantheon was a mix of Christian and pre-conquest spirits and beings. A deity like the virginal daughter of the Inca sun god was transmuted into the Virgin Mary. Many of the supernaturals were linked to a specific place, such as lake and mountain spirits. The earth mother, Pachamama, and fertility rituals played a prominent role. Other religions Buddhism and Hinduism Bolivia has a small Buddhist community. In 1988 the government stated that numerous religious groups were operating in Bolivia illegally, but its attempt to expel some foreign members of the Hare Krishna movement in 1986 was overturned by the Supreme Court of Justice. Now Hare Krishna is legally established in Bolivia as an educational institution. Baháʼí Faith The Baháʼí Faith in Bolivia begins with references to the country in Baháʼí literature as early as 1916. The first Baháʼí to arrive in Bolivia was in 1940 through the arrival of coordinated pioneers, people who chose to move for the growth of the religion, from the United States. That same year the first Bolivian joined the religion. The first Baháʼí Local Spiritual Assembly, the local administrative unit of the religion, was elected in La Paz in 1945. Since 1956 indigenous people have joined the religion, and it has spread widely among them. The community elected an independent National Spiritual Assembly in