Link, Latin

The Evangelical Union of South America (EUSA) was inaugurated at the Keswick Convention in Liverpool in 1911. The society formed after missionaries working in South America were informed that the continent was not to be discussed in the 1910 World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, since Anglicans objected to Roman Catholic lands being considered a legitimate field for mission. EUSA was formed from three existing missions operating in South America: the sections of Regions Beyond Missionary Union working in Argentina and Peru; the South American Evangelical Mission working in Argentina and Brazil; and the Help for Brazil mission (which joined EUSA two years later in 1913). The Help for Brazil Mission had links with Dr and Mrs Robert Reid Kalley, who pioneered Protestant missionary work in Brazil from 1855.

The first Chair of the Evangelical Union of South America was Charles Hay Walker, a head of an engineering firm with interests in South America. The main fields of operation for EUSA were Peru, Brazil and Argentina. EUSA ran evangelical bookshops, evangelical bible schools and seminaries, medical services, and forged alliances with local evangelical church organisations in order to cement a native-led interdenominational evangelical movement in South America. The British contingent of the Andes Evangelical Mission (AEM, previously known as the Bolivian Indian Mission) merged with EUSA in 1981, which expanded the organisation's activities in Bolivia where the bulk of the work of AEM was based. In the late 1980s, talks began with Regions Beyond Missionary Union to effect a merger of the two organisations to form a new mission agency in South America. These talks resulted in the inauguration of Latin Link in June 1990, which works throughout South America to foster native evangelism, carry out community and social enterprise work, and to promote education and literacy.

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