162
book reviews
Kevin Lewis O’Neill,Hunted: Predation and Pentecostalism in Guatemala(Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019). xxi + 217 pp. $25.00 paperback.
The theme of Kevin Lewis O’Neill’s fascinating book,Hunted—i.e., drug addicts kidnapped and held in involuntary confinement in treatment centers run by Guatemalan Pentecostals—may strike readers as so outré or outrageous as to provoke a reaction. Surely Pentecostals don’t do this? Don’t they stress free choice? Aren’t there better ways of dealing with addiction? Isn’t this a marginal phenomenon, done in secret, in defiance of the authorities? The answers are eye-opening: Pentecostals are indeed doing this, they regard this approach to drug addiction as preferable to the available alternatives, and there are around 6000 beds (xv) for addicts in such centers in Guatemala City, while the politi- cal authorities (apart from certain human rights advocates) largely endorse this approach to treatment.The Catholic Church operates a detoxification center in Guatemala City with a grand total of six beds (xv). Meanwhile, there are more men in the treatment centers than there are in Guatemala’s maximum-security prison system. Since there now exists a “shadow carceral system infused with Pentecostal imperatives,” and a “near consensus” on the need to “hunt” addicts (xvi), the courts sometimes sentence addicts to time in the centers (19), and so one might regard them as an improvised adjunct to the legal and prison system rather than an alternative to it. One center director, “Pedro,” commented that “I do not kidnap men. I rescue them” (xvi). O’Neill denotes the complex system of human interactions associated with the centers with the oxymoronic label “predatory pastoralism” (xiii, 69).
O’Neill is the author of an earlier monograph on Guatemalan Pentecostal- ism—City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala (University of California, 2010)—and he brings to this topic two decades of on-site observa- tion. Whereas the earlier work was more of a standard anthropological study, Huntedconsists in brilliant participant-observer reportage. As readers progress through this book, their experience may mirror that of the anthropologist, for whom the initial, open-and-shut case against the addiction treatment centers gradually became less clear-cut. At a pivotal point in the narrative, O’Neill had to decide whether or not he wanted to initiate a formal complaint that would lead to police raid on a center and found himself uncertain as to whether it would be better to leave things as they were (68–69). Those observed in this book, as well as the one observing them, are all marked by ambiguity and ambivalence(72–76, 108, 123).
Near the beginning of Hunted, O’Neil offers a startling depiction of the com- mon procedure for apprehending and placing men into the treatment cen- ters:
Pneuma
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700747-04301019
1
book reviews
163
At the outer edges of today’s war on drugs … Christian vigilante groups scour the streets of Guatemala City with singular intent: to pull drug users out of sin by dragging them into rehab. Often in the middle of the night, when the capital city is an absolute ghost town, three or four recovering users drive with their pastor to the house of an active user. At the request of a wife, a mother, or a sister, each at wits’ end, this hunting party (grupo de cacería) hovers over the man while he sleeps. They say a short prayer, and then it gets physical. One man takes the legs. Another two grab the arms. A fourth (if there is a fourth) controls the neck. Sometimes they choke him out. All the while the user, suddenly and unexpectedly cruci- fied to his bed, struggles in vain.
p. xii
Once apprehended, the addict is held against his will in a treatment center with barred windows and bolted doors. Though men sometimes escape from these centers, the surprising thing in O’Neil’s account is how frequently and easily those who escape—and generally return to using drugs—are appre- hended again on the streets or in family homes and re-institutionalized. Also surprising is how those who are “hunted” are speedily (and perhaps prema- turely) deployed as “hunters” while they are still recovering from their own addictions. Sometimes a recovering-addict-turned-hunter breaks away from a hunting party and seeks toescape, only tobe huntedhimself and capturedonce again. “Alejandro”—who in 2016 handed O’Neill a handwritten note saying, “get me the f— out of here” (xi)—had himself passed through such a cycle, of being “hunted,” becoming a “hunter,” escaping, and then being “hunted” once again.
The treatment centers’ strong-arm approach to addiction treatment may reflect the militarized culture that emerged during Guatemala’s protracted civil war (1960–1996). It is unsurprising to learn that the practice of hunting for addicts began with a former Guatemalan military man, Jorge Ruiz (9–12). The substances of choice for the addicts in Hunted include crack cocaine espe- cially, but also alcohol and heroin. As suggested above, O’Neill’s story is highly gendered and it focuses on male addicts. There seem to be no references in the book to female drug addicts, and only one passing reference to any male involvement in the admission of addicts into the centers (46). Male addicts seem always to be hunted at the instigation of females connected to them— e.g., wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, or daughters (3–5, 7–9, 13–14, 21). Prior to the hunt, many of these females had long borne the brunt of an addict’s misbehavior—e.g., stealing from the family, and exposing them to the violence and criminality associated with drug use. Family members indicate that they can sleep peacefully once they are no longer forced to endure the daily chaos
Pneuma 43 (2021) 135–166
2
164
book reviews
brought on by living with an addict (41). Yet those arranging for the hunt are motivated not only by self-interest but by a desire to keep addicts off the street, where the risk of a violent death may be even greater than the risk of an drug- overdose death (9).
Guatemalan Pentecostals generally regard recovery from substance addic- tion as a “miracle” that comes inexplicably to some yet not others, and whose likelihood will increase the longer that the addict is confined. “Waiting [in the center] keeps these guys off the streets,” as Pedro said (45; cf. 63–64). At these centers there is no addiction treatment in any recognized medical or psychiatric sense, yet the men receive constant biblical exhortation, emphasiz- ing individual agency and the power of choice that allows each person, under God, to determine his own future (51–54, 84–89). There is admittedly a para- dox in telling men held against their own will that their lives must be shaped by their own choices! Yet Hunted shows that the men are not all held against their will, and there is a written contract that each man is expected to sign after arriving at the center (43). Moreover, the teaching has an effect over time, and some men do break free from addiction. O’Neill offers no statistics as to how many men overcome their addiction, and most likely there are no reliable statistics. Given that this book is an examination of Pentecostal ministries, I was surprised that the center O’Neill studied deemphasized prayer as a way of overcoming addiction (63). Treatment comes almost entirely in the form of biblically based preaching and teaching.
The theme of money emerged midway through the book (21–26) and proved to be a sensitive topic in O’Neill’s conversations with Pedro, the center director. At first Pedro was defensive and stated that he did not charge “payments” for services, but only received “offerings” (24). O’Neill in time learned that Pedro used a sliding scale to charge for a “hunt” and for each month that someone remained in the center. Some skeptical observers regard the centers as a finan- cial racket, driven by a desire for money (21–22, 104–106). While the men are being held, those with marketable skills are put to work, and their conscripted labor benefits the center rather than themselves (90). Regarding financial moti- vations, O’Neill comes down in the middle, acknowledging that such incentives play a role, but also suggesting that the centers perform a social function that would likely go unmet if they did not exist. At the book’s close we learn that the recovering addict whom O’Neill befriended, Alejandro, was transferred from the first to a second treatment center, fled the second center, and then died instantly when he “stumbled into a four-lane highway” (145).
Hunted raises questions about the best way of addressing social problems in situations where, in O’Neill’s words, “the state is weak and the churches are strong” (xii), and Pentecostalism “stand[s] in for a criminally negligent state”
Pneuma 43 (2021) 135–166
3
book reviews
165
(143). The involuntary confinement of persons, who have not been convicted of any crime, is not unknown outside of Guatemala. In the USA and other nations, mentally ill persons judged to be a danger to themselves or to others may be involuntarily institutionalized. If one were to regard someone under the influ- ence of hard drugs as being not in his right mind (Lat., non compos mentis), then a case could be made for some sort of temporary confinement against that person’s will, until the person in question detoxes from the drugs in his system, and is given a choice as to whether to continue in treatment. The State of Rhode Island currently runs a well-reputed treatment program for prisoners that has proven to be effective for many who have repeatedly failed to deal with their addiction outside of prison. Some in that program say that it was arrest and incarceration that saved them from themselves and that led them to lasting recovery. It should be obvious nonetheless that someone who does not wish to discontinue drug use, and who has opportunity to obtain and use drugs, will only be kept sober so long as physically confined.
USA-based addiction programs generally start with a voluntary thirty-day or ninety-day period in isolation from the world outside, and yet the Guatemalan centers often require addicts to remain seven months or even longer. Release from the centers depends on a subjective judgment from the director of the center as to when a man’s “sincerity” (17–18, 64) shows that he is ready to leave. Because the center directors are paid to keep someone inside, they could be financially motivated to keep someone longer than necessary. Those who pay for the confinement may likewise see the center as a place to warehouse a trou- blesome relative rather than as a place for them to get the help they need. So, one has to wonder whether these centers are always serving the best interest of the individuals being held. Could there be “hunted” persons who are not addicts at all, but have simply been labeled as such? A passing reference in the book to the treatment of “delinquency” and “homosexuality” (42) in one center’s written agreement raises the question as to whether some men in the centers are actually drug abusers at all and if they are being held there for wholly different reasons. In a Pentecostal context, the battle against drug addic- tion may shade off by imperceptible degrees into an enforced obedience to Christian moral principles or orthodox belief. In face of Donatist heretics in the fifth century, Augustine famously invoked the Latin phrase compelle intrahere (“compel [them] to come in”). The later Inquisition sought to enforce obedi- ence to church teachings, and a cynical observer might see today’s Guatemalan Pentecostals as engaged in a comparable endeavor to use coercion for uphold- ing Christian behavioral standards.
On the other hand, readers of Hunted may unwittingly be interpreting O’Neill’s story through the lens of an individualistic worldview. Guatemalans
Pneuma 43 (2021) 135–166
4
166
book reviews
seem to see the centers as offering family-based solutions for family-based prob- lems(8–9, 77). In impoverished societies where there is no “safety net” of public services for troubled or self-destructive individuals, each family bears responsi- bility for its own. If all the members of an extended family determine that Justo is a danger to himself and to others, then should Justo’s desire to be footloose on the streets of Guatemala City override the wishes of the family responsi- ble for Justo? When I began reading O’Neill’s book, I felt sure of the answers to questions like these, but less so when I finished. In his earlier book, O’Neill com- mented that “the enduring power of ethnographic analysis [lies in] the ability to upset common assumptions through an extended engagement” (City of God, xv). Hunted is unquestionably a book that “upset[s] common assumptions”— about Pentecostalism, about Christian ministry, about church-state relations, about substance-abuse recovery, and about fundamental notions of individ- ual, familial, and political decision-making—and for this reason it fully merits a wide readership and extensive discussion.
Michael McClymond
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA [email protected]
Pneuma 43 (2021) 135–166
5
Leave a Reply