Tia Neiva
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Tia Neiva (Neiva Chavez Zelaya) was a Brazilian medium and founder of the mystical community called Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of Dawn) located near Brasília, Brazil.
She was born in Propiá, in the state of Sergipe in 1926 and died in Brasília in 1985. Until 1959, when she was 33, Neiva Chavez Zelaya was a common woman and had not manifested any public mediunic tendencies. The only trait that set her apart was the fact the she had become a truck driver after her husband died and left her four children to raise.
Neiva went to Brasília, where she rented one of her two trucks to Novacap, the company that built the new capital. According to her memoirs the first mediunic manifestations bothered her a lot, since she was Catholic and did not feel comfortable with the paranormal powers. She sought out explanations in Spiritualism but could not adapt. Immersed in what the spirits told her she gave up her professional life and worked to implant the system that today is known as the Vale do Amanhecer.
According to her own writings, as soon as she was able to dominate the technique of projecting her body, she began to vistit other spiritual plains, where she received instructions that she applied among her community of mediums. Among the teachers of Tia Neiva was a Tibetan monk called Umahã, who she allegedly visited daily between 1959 and 1964 and who supposedly died in 1981.
In 1963 she caught a respiratory disease and was interned in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Belo Horizonte. She got better but began to breathe with only a small area of her lungs until her death in 1985.
The first community founded by Tia Neiva was near the city of Alexânia, Goiás, and was called "União Espiritualista Seta Branca". Seta Branca was the alleged spirit of an Incan who appeared to her and was her mentor. Today he is the center of the cult, which includes elements from Christianity, Candomblé, Spiritism, Extraterrestrials, and Egyptology. From there she moved to Taguatinga, near Brasília, and in 1969 to the place known today as Vale do Amanhecer, in the rural zone of Planalatina, a satellite city of Brasília.
In her last years Tia Neiva was always accompanied by her companion Mário Sassi who was known as Trino Tumuchy. Her children continued her work and are part of the hierarchy of the sect. The most important, Gilberto Zelaya, or Trino Ajarâ in the spirit world, is the First Doctrinator of the Dawn and Coordinator of the Temples of the Dawn.
A large sect has been built around this woman, who had incredible powers of organization and ability to convince the authorities to get land and funds for her schemes. According to the official website today there are 589 temples in Brazil and in foreign countries like Germany, United States, Japan, and Portugal. The number of followers is estimated as 120,000 according to the Correio Brasiliense
