Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T08:14:07.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wrestling the Devil: Conversion and Exit from Central American Gangs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Robert Brenneman
Robert Brenneman*
Affiliation:
Saint Michael's College
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

A crisis of urban violence has emerged in northern Central America during the past two decades. Although youth gangs are responsible for only a portion of this violence, punitive approaches to dealing with gang violence have sharpened public hostility toward gang members and created a context conducive to the practice of “social cleansing” aimed at reducing gang violence by eliminating gang-affiliated youth through extrajudicial executions. Against this backdrop of public anger and resentment aimed at gang youth, a sizeable number of Evangelical-Pentecostal pastors and lay workers have developed ministries aimed at rescuing gang members and restoring them to society, often making considerable sacrifices and taking personal risks in the process. After describing the difficulties and risks associated with leaving the gang, this article takes a sociological approach to gang member conversions to discover the resources that Evangelical-Pentecostal congregations and gang ministries offer to former gang members facing the crisis of spoiled identity. I draw on semistructured interviews conducted in 2007 and 2008 with former gang members and gang ministry coordinators in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and a handful of follow-up interviews conducted in 2013.

Resumen

Resumen

Una crisis de violencia urbana emergió en Centroamérica durante las pasadas dos décadas. Sólo una parte de esta violencia es producto de las pandillas juveniles (a veces llamadas maras), pero las pandillas ahora representan el blanco de mucha ira pública, y este enojo ha creado un contexto ideal para la práctica de la “limpieza social” de jóvenes sospechados de ser pandilleros. En este contexto de furor popular, algunas congregaciones evangélico-pentecostales han creado ministerios con el fin de “rescatar” a los pandilleros a través de la conversión religiosa y la transformación personal. Después de describir las dificultades y riesgos que acompañan salida de la pandilla, este artículo investiga el fenómeno de las conversiones religiosas entre los pandilleros de Centroamérica. Este análisis sociológico se basa en entrevistas semiestructuradas con ex pandilleros en El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras realizadas en los años 2007 y 2008 además de algunas entrevistas de continuación realizadas en 2013.

Type
Part 3: Zones of Crisis
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 49 , Issue S1: Special Issue: Lived Religion and Lived Citizenship in Latin America's Zones of Crisis , 2014 , pp. 112 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the University of Texas Press

References

Aguilar, Jeannette 2013 “La coyuntura actual de las pandillas.” Paper presented at the Cátedra de Realidad Nacional, sobre Militarización, Crimen Organizado y Pandillas, January 13, 2013, Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas.” http://www.contrapunto.com.sv/violencia/la-coyuntura-actual-de-las-pandillas.Google Scholar
Aguilar, Rita Maria 2007 “Ven debilidad del Estado.” Siglo XXI, June 28.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elijah 1999 Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Arnson, Cynthia J., and Olson, Eric L. 2011 Introduction to Organized Crime in Central America: The Northern Triangle, edited by Arnson, Cynthia J. and Olson, Eric L., 1–17. Woodrow Wilson Center Reports on the Americas, no. 29. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center.Google Scholar
Bosworth, James 2010 “Honduras: Organized Crime Gaining amid Political Crisis.” Working Paper Series on Organized Crime in Central America, December 2010. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Bosworth.FIN.pdf.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Nice, Richard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brenneman, Robert 2012 Homies and Hermanos: God and the Gang in Central America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bruneau, Thomas C. 2005 “The Maras and National Security in Central America.” Strategic Insights 4 (5): n.p.Google Scholar
Casa Alianza 2009 Análisis de las ejecuciones arbitrarias y/o muertes violentas de niños/as y jóvenes en Honduras. Informe Anual. Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Casa Alianza Honduras.Google Scholar
Chesnut, R. Andrew 2003 Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall 2004 Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, Edward 2008 “‘I Am Somebody’: Victory Outreach, Masculinity and Upward Mobility in Low-Income Latino Neighborhoods.” Paper presented at the Spotlight on Immigration, March 3, 2008, Berkeley, CA. http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/912489j9.Google Scholar
Flores, Edward 2013 God's Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Garrard-Burnett, Virginia 2000 Introduction to On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Religion in Modern Latin America, edited by Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, xiii–xxiii. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving 1963 Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Holland, Alisha C. 2013 “Right on Crime? Conservative Party Politics and Mano Dura Policies in El Salvador.” Latin American Research Review 48 (1): 44–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraul, Chris, Lopez, Robert J., and Connell, Rich 2005 “Gang Uses Deportation to Its Advantage to Flourish in U.S.” Los Angeles Times, October 30.Google Scholar
Lalive D'Epinay, Christian 1968 El refugio de las masas. Santiago, Chile: Editorial del Pacifico.Google Scholar
Levenson, Deborah T. 2013 Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Levine, Daniel 1997 “Protestants and Catholics in Latin America: A Family Portrait.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 50 (4): 10–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Meredith B. 1990 “Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the Human Body in the Social Sciences of Religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (3): 283–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Míguez Bonino, José 1995 Faces of Latin American Protestantism: 1993 Carnahan Lectures. Translated by Stockwell, Eugene L. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Kevin 2011 “Delinquent Realities: Christianity, Formality, and Security in the Americas.” American Quarterly 63 (2): 333–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, Douglas 1999 El Salvador: Reemergence of “Social Cleansing” Death Squads. Washington, DC: INS Information Resource Center.Google Scholar
PDH (Procurador de los Derechos Humanos) 2006 Las características de las muertes violentas en el país. Slide presentation, February 2006. Guatemala Citiy: Procurador de los Derechos Humanos, http://www.pdh.org.gt/archivos/descargas/Documentos/Informes%20Especiales/caracteristicas_de_las_muertes_violentas_pdh.pdf.Google Scholar
Pine, Adrienne 2008 Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranum, Elin Cecilie 2007 Pandillas juveniles transnacionales en Centroamerica, Mexico y Estados Unidos: Diagnóstico Nacional Guatemala. San Salvador: Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP).Google Scholar
Restrepo, Jorge A., and García, Alonso Tobón, eds. 2011 Guatemala en la encrucijada: Panorama de una violencia transformada. Ginebra: Secretariado de la Declaración de Ginebra.Google Scholar
Santacruz Giralt, María L., and Concha-Eastman, Alberto 2001 Barrio adentro: La solidaridad violenta de las pandillas. San Salvador: Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP), Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS), Homies Unidos de El Salvador, http://www.uca.edu.sv/publica/iudop/libros/barrioadentro.pdf.Google Scholar
Smilde, David 2007 Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Theidon, Kimberly 2013 “From Guns to God: The Growth of Evangelical Christianity in Urabá, Colombia.” Paper presented at the Religion and Violence in Latin America conference, January 10-12, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Torres-Rivas, Edelberto 2010 “La lógica empresarial al servicio del crimen.” El Periódico, January 31.Google Scholar
UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) 2013 “Intentional Homicide, Number and Rate Per 100,000 Population (1995-2011).” Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.Google Scholar
Vaisey, Stephen 2008 “Socrates, Skinner, and Aristotle: Thinking about Culture in Action.” Sociological Forum 23 (3): 603–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Stephen 2007 “Presidential Plenary.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, November 3, Tampa, FL.Google Scholar
Williams, Philip J. 1997 “The Sound of Tambourines: The Politics of Pentecostal Growth in El Salvador.” In Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America, edited by Cleary, Edward L. and Stewart-Gambino, Hannah W., 179–200. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Winchester, Daniel 2008 “Embodying the Faith: Religious Practice and the Making of a Muslim Moral Habitus.” Social Forces 86 (4): 1753–1780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar