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Home Security: Drug Rehabilitation Centres, the Devil and Domesticity in Guatemala City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2020

Kevin Lewis O'Neill
Kevin Lewis O'Neill*
Affiliation:
Director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres in Guatemala City are informal responses to drug use, with these all-male institutions attempting to save drug users from what some Christians call ‘the devil’. Of ethnographic interest is that the mothers, sisters and wives not only pay for the capture and captivity of their loved ones but also volunteer their labour to support these centres. This article, in response, assesses not only the Christian impulse to domesticate sinners but also the extent to which a cult of domesticity organises Guatemala's war on drugs.

Spanish abstract

Spanish abstract

Los centros pentecostales de rehabilitación a las drogas en la Ciudad de Guatemala son respuestas informales masculinas tratando de salvar a drogadictos de lo que algunos cristianos llaman ‘el diablo’. Es de interés etnográfico el que las madres, hermanas y esposas de estos no solo pagan por la captura e internación de sus seres queridos allí sino también realizan trabajos voluntarios para apoyar a dichos centros. Este artículo, como respuesta, evalúa no solo el impulso cristiano por domesticar a pecadores sino también valora cómo un culto al hogar organiza la lucha contra las drogas en Guatemala.

Portuguese abstract

Portuguese abstract

Os centros pentecostais de reabilitação de drogas na Cidade da Guatemala constituem uma resposta informal ao uso de drogas. Essas instituições, onde todos os internos são homens, buscam salvar os usuários de drogas do que alguns cristãos chamam de ‘demônio’. De interesse etnográfico, observa-se que as mães, irmãs e esposas não só pagam pela captura e encarceramento de seus entes queridos, como também ajudam estas instituições com trabalhos voluntários. Este artigo avalia tanto o impulso cristão de domesticação de pecadores como também avalia como este culto à domesticidade organiza a guerra anti-drogas da Guatemala.

Keywords

GuatemalaPentecostalismdrugssecuritydomesticityGuatemalapentecostalismodrogasseguridadhogareñoGuatemalapentecostalismodrogassegurançadomesticidade
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 785 - 804
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 All interviews for this article come from fieldwork conducted in Guatemala City between 2011 and 2018 in and around Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres. Those interviewed remain anonymous or are cited by pseudonym. In some cases, certain details (insignificant to the analysis) have been changed to protect the identities of certain people. Quotations are from recorded interviews or from detailed notes. All translations are my own. All scripture comes from The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011)Google Scholar.

2 O'Neill, Kevin Lewis, Hunted: Predation and Pentecostalism in Guatemala (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The qualifier ‘superficially’ stresses that the domesticity of interest here is maternal in tone and practice but encompasses a range of social actors, including wives, sisters and daughters.

4 Pew Forum, ‘Spirit and Power: A 10-Nation Survey of Pentecostals by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’, Pew Research Center, Oct. 2006, available at www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/spirit-and-power/, last access 1 June 2020; Virginia Garrard-Burnett, ‘A Discussion with Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Professor, University of Texas’, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, 29 Sept. 2015, available at https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/interviews/a-discussion-with-virginia-garrard-burnett-professor-university-of-texas, last access 1 June 2020.

5 The literature on this impulse is vast and long-standing – see, for example, Romero, Lora, Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Tompkins, Jane, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Wexler, Laura, ‘What a Woman Can Do with a Camera’, in Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 15–51Google Scholar; McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar; and most recently Ellison, Susan Helen, Domesticating Democracy: The Politics of Conflict Resolution in Bolivia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Some important work in this broad field includes Luciana Boiteux, ‘The Incarceration of Women for Drug Offenses’, Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho (CEDD), Nov. 2015, available at www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/luciana_i.pdf, last access 1 June 2020; and Giacomello, Corina, Género, drogas y prisión (Mexico City: Tirant lo Blanch, 2013)Google Scholar; as well as Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), ‘Women, Drug Policies, and Incarceration: A Guide for Policy Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean’ (Washington, DC: WOLA, 2015). For early and important work on femicide in Guatemala, see also Sanford, Victoria, Guatemala: Del genocidio al feminicidio (Guatemala City: F and G Editores, 2008)Google Scholar.

7 An important point of reference is Muehlmann's, Shaylih ‘The Gender of the War on Drugs’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 47 (Oct. 2018), pp. 315–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Muehlmann rightly cites Anderson, Tammy L., ‘Dimensions of Women's Power in the Illicit Drug Economy’, Theoretical Criminology, 9: 4 (2005), pp. 371–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyd, Jade and Boyd, Susan, ‘Women's Activism in a Drug User Union in the Downtown Eastside’, Contemporary Justice Review, 17: 3 (2014), pp. 313–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muehlmann, Shaylih, ‘“Hasta la Madre!”: Mexican Mothers Against “the War on Drugs”’, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 31: 1 (2017), pp. 85–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tate, Winifred, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; and Carey, Elaine, Women Drug Traffickers: Mules, Bosses, and Organized Crime (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

8 A recent burst of scholarship, for example, focuses on maternal drug use, especially crack cocaine, in ways that depict women as not only victims but also failed parents. A critical engagement with this research includes the work of Campbell, Nancy D., ‘The Construction of Pregnant Drug-Using Women as Criminal Perpetrators’, Fordham Urban Law Journal, 33: 2 (2006), pp. 463–85Google Scholar; Maher, Lisa, Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market (New York: Clarendon, 1997)Google Scholar; Moloney, Molly, Hunt, Geoffrey and Joe-Laidler, Karen, ‘Drug Sales, Gender, and Risk: Notions of Risk from the Perspective of Gang-Involved Young Adults’, Substance Use and Misuse, 50: 6 (2015), pp. 721–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For work on drugs in Latin America, see Organization of American States (OAS), ‘El problema de las drogas en las Américas’ (Washington, DC: OAS, 2013). See also United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ‘Delincuencia organizada transnacional en Centroamérica y en el Caribe. Una evaluación de amenazas (Vienna: UNODC, 2011); Gootenberg, Paul, Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Amanda Feilding and Corina Giacomello, ‘Illicit Drugs Markets and Dimensions of Violence in Guatemala’, Beckley Foundation, May 2013, available at www.beckleyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Illicit-Drugs-Markets-Report-20-December-2013.pdf, last access 1 June 2020. See also Gutiérrez, Edgar, ‘Guatemala: Hábitat del narcotráfico’, Revista Análisis de la Realidad Nacional, 2: 5 (2013), pp. 184–205Google Scholar.

9 Taking the literature on the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo as one point of reference, a sample of these studies would include Orgambide, Pedro, Cantares de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mexico City: Editorial Tierra del Fuego, 1983)Google Scholar; Bouvard, Marguerite Guzmán, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Lanham, MD: SR, 1994)Google Scholar; Arditti, Rita, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Gundermann, Christian, Actos melancólicos: Formas de resistencia en la posdictadura Argentina (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007)Google Scholar; Bonner, Michelle, Sustaining Human Rights: Women and Argentine Human Rights Organisations (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, Linda B., Mary, Mother and Warrior: The Virgin in Spain and the Americas (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Brysk, Alison, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democratization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Calderón, Fernando, Movimientos sociales y política: La década ochenta en Latinoamérica (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1995)Google Scholar.

10 There is an expanding social-scientific literature on compulsory drug rehabilitation centres in Latin America. See Hansen, Helena, ‘The “New Masculinity”: Addiction Treatment as a Reconstruction of Gender in Puerto Rican Evangelist Street Ministries’, Social Science and Medicine, 74: 11 (2012), pp. 1721–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wilkinson, Annie Kathryn, ‘Sin sanidad, no hay santidad’: Las prácticas reparativas en Ecuador (Quito: FLACSO, 2013)Google Scholar; García, Angela, ‘Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 29: 4 (2015), pp. 455–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; O'Neill, Kevin Lewis, ‘On Hunting’, Critical Inquiry, 43: 3 (2017), pp. 697–718CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenfeld, Ana Isabel Jácome, Spontaneous Demand: Addiction Treatment amidst the Citizen Revolution (Quito: FLACSO, 2018)Google Scholar; as well as Brian Goldstone, ‘A Prayer's Chance: The Scandal of Mental Health in West Africa’, Harper's Magazine, 4 Oct. 2017, available at https://harpers.org/archive/2017/05/a-prayers-chance, last access 1 June 2020; Elovich, Richard and Drucker, Ernest, ‘On Drug Treatment and Social Control: Russian Narcology's Great Leap Backwards’, Harm Reduction Journal, 5: 23 (2008)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, online only, available at https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7517-5-23, last access 1 June 2020; Wolfe, Daniel and Saucier, Roxanne, ‘In Rehabilitation's Name? Ending Institutionalized Cruelty and Degrading Treatment of People who Use Drugs’, International Journal of Drug Policy, 21: 3 (2010), pp. 145–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘“They Treat Us Like Animals”: Mistreatment of Drug Users and “Undesirables” in Cambodia's Drug Detention Centers’, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Dec. 2013, available at www.hrw.org/report/2013/12/08/they-treat-us-animals/mistreatment-drug-users-and-undesirables-cambodias-drug, last access 1 June 2020.

11 David Grann, ‘A Murder Foretold’, New Yorker, 4 April 2011, p. 42.

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13 See Radford, Jill and Russell, Diane E. H. (eds.), Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (New York: Twayne, 1992)Google Scholar; Sanford, Victoria, ‘From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Guatemala’, Journal of Human Rights, 7: 2 (2008), pp. 104–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Guatemala: No Protection, No Justice: Killings of Women (an Update)’, Amnesty International, July 2006, available at www.amnestyusa.org/reports/guatemala-no-protection-no-justice-killings-of-women-an-update, last access 1 June 2020; Carey, David Jr. and Torres, M. Gabriela, ‘Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence’, Latin American Research Review, 45: 3 (2010), pp. 142–64Google Scholar; Godoy-Paiz, Paula, ‘Women in Guatemala's Metropolitan Area: Violence, Law, and Social Justice’, Studies in Social Justice, 2: 1 (2008), pp. 27–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hastings, Julie A., ‘Silencing State-Sponsored Rape: In and Beyond a Transnational Guatemalan Community’, Violence Against Women, 8: 10 (2002), pp. 1153–81Google Scholar.

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15 Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine.

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17 Feilding and Giacomello, ‘Illicit Drugs Markets’.

18 In Guatemala, drug use is considered a matter of mental health. See Anthony Fontes, Kevin Lewis O'Neill and Corina Giacomello, ‘El Impacto de las políticas de drogas en las cárceles de Guatemala’, Open Society Foundations and the Social Science Research Council, in cooperation with the Guatemalan Presidential Drug Policy Commission (June 2015).

19 Important points of reference for the emergence of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America and beyond include Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995)Google Scholar; Miller, Donald E., Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the Millennium (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Kevin Lewis O'Neill, ‘Compulsory Rehabilitation Centers in Guatemala’, Committee Against Torture, Organization of American States, Special Rapporteur on Torture (New York: OAS, 2013). Guatemala's prison population is roughly 18,000 inmates (see Roy Walmsley, ‘World Prison Population List (Tenth Edition)’, International Centre for Prison Studies, 2013, available at www.apcca.org/uploads/10th_Edition_2013.pdf, last access 2 June 2020). This number includes pretrial detainees and remand prisoners; see Centro de Investigaciones Económicas Nacionales (CIEN), ‘El sistema penitenciario guatemalteco: Un diagnóstico’ (Guatemala City: CIEN, 2011). The Guatemalan prison system holds 1,500 of these prisoners in maximum-security facilities while 200 Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres in and around Guatemala City hold approximately 6,000 people.

21 The literature on masculinity in Latin America is insightful. See, for example, Gutmann, Matthew C., The Meaning of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Lancaster, Roger N., Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

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36 It is important to stress that while Amy Kaplan talks about how domesticity functions to create boundaries between the domestic and the foreign that serve to bolster expansionist nationalism, this ethnography engages the ways in which domesticity functions to create boundaries between the domestic and the foreign that serve to justify the Pentecostal idea of the drug user as a wild and sinful figure who must be strictly controlled and held captive. Domesticity serves not the manifest-destiny ideology but a Pentecostal vision of captivity as the path to salvation. See Kaplan, ‘Manifest Domesticity’, pp. 581–606.

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