Churches and violence in north-eastern Guatemala: Between safe space and lions’ pit

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic research led in north-eastern Guatemala between 2011 and 2013, this article problematizes the idea usually advanced in sociology of religions that churches represent safe spaces allowing the reconstruction of social fabric in violent contexts. Analyzing collective mechanisms of ‘living together’ in this region, the author shows the specific role of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches as spaces where struggles have taken place, but where they nevertheless represent safe spaces for expression.

Introduction

In 1996, Accords for a Firm and Lasting Peace put an end to thirty years of civil war in Guatemala and initiated a process democratizing the country, providing hope for an end to violence. Yet more than twenty years later, the population is far from feeling any safer. Classified in 2013 as the fifth most violent country of Latin America (UNODC, 2013), Guatemala’s level of violence continues to afflict its population on a daily basis. Parallel to this phenomenon, with only 6% of its population declaring itself ‘without religion’ in 2014, the country presents an extremely dynamic, increasingly diversified, religious landscape. In the last few decades, the percentage of Protestants has increased considerably to represent 41% of the population today (Pew Research Centre, 2014: 7). Such an observation questions the relationship between religions and forms of violence and, more specifically, how the various Churches respond to that violent context. Yet this field is so far relatively unexplored not only in Latin America (Rubin et al., 2014) but especially in post-Peace Agreement Guatemala (Dary, 2016) and remains virtually untouched for the rural regions of the country for that period. Existing research generally presents Churches as forming networks of trust and meaning recovery, facilitating individual and collective reconstruction in contexts shaken by violence. Protestant Churches, particularly, are described as founding new communities of meaning and belonging (Garrard-Burnett, 2010; Theidon, 2016) whose emotional regime is used to support self-transformation and recuperation (Brenneman, 2012). Despite some rare challenges to this (O’Neill, 2014), Churches have thus generally been seen as refuges for the masses, ‘safe spaces’ (Brenneman, 2014) for populations most vulnerable to the destructive effects of violence.

My research on the impact of violence in a region structured by organized crime, coupled with North-American banana companies’ (United Fruit Company and subsequently Del Monte) governing methods, shows a more nuanced situation. Based on an ethnographic investigation carried out between 2011 and 2013 in north-eastern Guatemala, I would like to problematize this idea in vogue since Durkheim (1912). If the Churches offer spaces for emotional expression, highly valorised given the generalized censure reigning in the region, they are nonetheless saturated with the same dynamic of distrust and violence which animate the region. The proximity developed in the Churches exacerbates this dynamic instead of breaking it. Elucidating this paradox will allow us, first, to step into the heart of the region’s collective mechanisms and, second, to understand the central place occupied by the Churches. These Churches share the inhabitants out in roughly equal parts between Catholic and Protestants of various denominations.

Covering several dozens of villages, the Catholic parish has been run by the Franciscan Order since 2008, after nearly thirty years of absence due to the order’s persecution during the civil war. The pastoral work is done by the monks (generally three) with the support of Sacred Heart nuns, in charge of the dispensary and whose convent was constructed in the 1980s on land belonging to the bishopric. As for the evangelical Churches, they offer several denominations (Iglesia de Dios, Iglesia Amigos, Iglesia Salem, Iglesia Principe de Paz, etc), sometimes present in the same village in a climate of competition which does not prevent mutual invitations. Forced to choose a ‘camp’ by the dynamic of closure reigning in the region, a subject I will come back to in the article, I became involved in the Catholic parish. I nevertheless kept up friendships with several followers of the evangelical Príncipe de Paz Church, thanks to whom I collected the data used here. In the rest of this article and following Claudia Dary (2016), I will use the term ‘Evangelicals’ (evangelicos) to designate persons affiliated with a Christian, non-Catholic – or protestant – Church, in order to follow the use of people in the field. I am however quite conscious that this term embraces a great heterogeneity and that these Churches have each their theological specificities.

This article relies on data collected by means of participant observation carried out at various times of the year, and on some thirty interviews with inhabitants of various profiles (teachers, workers of the archaeological park, practicing Catholics and Evangelicals, etc.). Having arrived via the nearby archaeological park to study the region’s inhabitants’ relationship to the past and to their archaeological inheritance, that entry and thematic increasingly served me as a ‘cover’ as my interest gradually evolved toward collective dynamics (nearly absent) and the impact of the regularly occurring murders on subjectivities and living together, themes highly banned. Beside the archaeological park I kept visiting, the private school F. where I briefly taught in 2011 and the Catholic Church were my integration points, allowing me to meet the region’s inhabitants and to take part in their daily lives.

A contrasted reality

Yesica invited me to accompany her to the campaña ¹ (an inter-Church service), hosted by the Príncipe de Paz evangelical Church she attended. The celebration is organized by and in honour of the Women’s group. We got there late and the church was already packed; there must have been over 300 people, with people invited from other churches. There was singing until 8 p.m., and then the invited pastor gave a sermon while assistants moved through the aisles inviting people to go up and receive the pastor’s blessing on stage. The women’s group was not that present during the worship, only intervening for a song and at the end of the prayer dedicated to the core group. The pastor encouraged them to work in unison. People came in and out of the church all through the service, with many remaining on the church patio, where food and drinks were sold. Children ran around everywhere outside and I recognized quite a few. I left with Yesica before the service ended (Fieldnotes, 26 February 2011).

The Sisters open their caseta every Sunday, selling sweets, food and drinks. A team of women, also pastoral carers and official parish cooks, come every Sunday to help them prepare tortillas, churrascos and other tacos to sell. During mass, the slapping of tortillas in the cooks’ hands accompanies their quiet laughter and conversation. After each of the two masses, a good many faithful get together at the caseta to eat and drink before going home. Tables and chairs are set up in the garden next to the church but many remain standing, leaning on the caseta. The whole team of cooks and nuns are at their stations to greet the multitude. The atmosphere is joyful and buzzing with conversations of people meeting there every week. Many meet and greet on the church steps, all dressed in their Sunday best. (Fieldnotes).

From the first few days, I was struck by the contrast between the exuberant turnout characterizing religious activities and the desertion reigning in most other institutional collective spaces. Indeed that exuberant multitude disappears as soon as one leaves the religious circle: few collective activities are organized outside the Churches and the rare existing committees (Community Development Council/Consejo Comunitario de Desarrollo, ² the Fair Committee/Comite de la feria, etc.) not only struggle to get more than five or six members but even more to get the inhabitants to go to the activities and meetings they organize. Which kind of group dynamic could explain this contrast? Many authors have explained the success of religious congregations in contexts of violence by the space of trust and emotional expression they amount to, allowing individual and collective reconstruction (Dary, 2016; Brenneman, 2014; Garrard-Burnett, 2010). However, conflicts and jealousies are far from absent in the Churches, as the following extracts will show. The first was told to me by Isabela, a Catholic about sixty years old and actively involved in the community and particularly in the Catholic Church. The final day of my last stay, I stopped by to say goodbye. In the course of the conversation, she ended up telling me why she had taken no part in Church activities during Holy Week this year.

At the beginning of the week, I asked Paola about the Holy Week programme and she told me that they (the council and Padre Shanti) had arranged the programme. So I said I would take part in it. But when I spoke to Paola about it again, she told me that it was a big business now because Karen had established another programme with Padre Rolando. Without saying a thing, I decided I wouldn’t go to anything. Because now the Church is as if there were two groups and I don’t want to give the impression that I support one group or the other. They divide the group: Karen-Rolando-the Sisters on one side and Paola-Berta-Shanti on the other. Paola told me Karen had tried to get Padre Rolando on her side but I told her that she’d done the same thing with Shanti. I wasn’t there when the argument started, I had to be operated on in Antigua and I don’t know exactly what happened. But with my problem with Padre Rolando added to the atmosphere at the Church for the moment, I prefer not to take part in anything (Fieldnotes, 4 January 2013).

Changes in the pastoral team during the last few months are the occasion for conflicts, always latent, to increase. They end up splintering the group in two, according to loyalties to one or the other of the parties in competition. A good number of people before very present in Church activities prefer thenceforth to attend celebrations without getting further involved – when they don’t leave the Church outright – in order to avoid getting caught up in conflicts and having to take sides. Particularly visible in this moment of transition, this dynamic is far from being exceptional both within the Catholic Church and other religious communities. Indeed, tensions and jealousies animate Evangelical Churches in the same way and the pastor does not seem more able to control them than the priests. Quite the contrary, his person seems to be the centre of many rumours. During an interview, Miranda, a young Evangelical woman of twenty or so, told me that the pastors often find themselves at the heart of rumours and conflicts:

More than anything, sometimes the worst caught up in the middle of all this are pastors themselves. For example, in this Church, it just so happens that the hermanas (sisters) themselves spread rumours (chismean), saying that a certain pastor is seeing a hermana. Since that hermana gets along better with the pastor they think the pastor is with her. And thus, many things… Sometimes, the pastor’s wife too. If I were the pastor’s wife, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t believe those things, huh, cause I’d trust my husband and all, but if even the pastor’s wife goes around insulting certain Christian women, saying they don’t go to church to worship God but to see the pastor (laughter) (Interview, 21 November 2011).

Far from being confined to the person of the pastor, the rumour mill within the Churches affects all the faithful to the point where some feel themselves pushed out the door, as some confided to me. Some of them even change Churches, choosing a Church farther away, one their next-door neighbours don’t go to, in the hope of escaping the rumours - and the conflicts and jealousies they express. The number and diversity of Evangelical Churches in the region are thus often the result of the conflicts and schisms produced within the Churches (Pédron-Colombani, 2008). To understand both the dynamic of conflicts and rumours running through religious spaces and the heavy turnout that nevertheless characterizes them, a brief detour through the history of the region’s power configurations is called for.

Violence and power configurations in north-eastern Guatemala

Mainly unoccupied until the 1904 arrival of Minor Keith at the head of the Guatemalan Railway Society (IRCA) and United Fruit Company (UFCo), the region of Q. began being repopulated early on in the 20th century. Driven out by drought and seizures of their land by the powerful landowners, many peasants in the eastern departments moved into villages constructed by the UFCo for its workers (Dosal, 1993). Today they compose the major part of the region’s population, predominantly ladina, ³ the other being composed of elites, they too coming from neighbouring departments. Benefiting from important local margins of sovereignty, from the colonial period on, these elites prospered due to two principal elements: their participation in militias to whom the central government abandoned the territory’s protection, and the development of an illegal trade whose sizeable revenues were ensured by the region’s strategic position, bordering on several countries, coupled with easy access to the sea (González-Izás, 2014).

The counter-revolutionary period of Castillo Armas (1954), ⁴ followed by thirty years of civil war initiated with a guerrilla uprising born in 1960 in the north-eastern region, witnessed the flourishing of those two elements. Supporting the overthrow of the Arbenz government, which threatened their interests, the Eastern elites combined their efforts with the Army of Liberation (Handy, 1984). During the armed conflict, the latter functioned as a private militia in the service of the national army, extreme right-wing parties and local north-eastern potentates, providing its members economic and political advantages. The prolonged military domination of the region during the 1960s and 1970s (years when the guerrilla was active in the region), coupled with the formation of many paramilitary groups and mechanisms of forced recruitment, forged a strong military identity whose roots went back to the Colony’s militias. Moreover, some of the men taking part in the ‘anti-communist’ armed actions subsequently exploited that experience in political and economic terms. Establishing their own terror companies, they transformed themselves into providers of protection, security and assassinations on order, becoming the easiest way to resolve conflicts (González-Izás, 2014).

Furthermore, using their customs stations and thanks to their ties to military bases in the region, members of military groups and of the Army of Liberation developed intense illegal activities during the armed conflict. This tradition of organized crime, which went back to smuggling during the colonial period, underwent a major transformation when the Colombian, and then Mexican, drug cartels established contact with the local, organized crime bosses (caciques) and united themselves with them to pass their drugs through their territories (Lopez, 2010). In this new trade, those caciques went on to use the personal relationships, interaction models and authority structures they had developed in the Cold War context. After the Peace Accords’ signing, the criminal networks maintained their contacts within the State – both military and civil – and organized crime gradually became a normal part of the post-war period (Sieder, 2011). Filling the vacuum left by the State both in terms of local authorities and service providers, the traditional clans made control of their territories their safety net, not only in avoiding legal prosecutions, but also against incursions and threats from rival clans (Lopez, 2010). Controlling all economic and political resources via local politicians, by their very presence and proximity these families amount to a new form of local dictatorship which may be much more asphyxiating and oppressive than a presidential one (González-Izás, 2014: 295).

Strategic political involvement and tactical political involvement

Throughout this history of power configurations in the region, the dominant actors (the banana company and the elites of organized crime) constructed and maintained their control over the territory and population by a close surveillance and repression of any attempt at popular organisation. Fearing for their own lives and their families’, the region’s inhabitants consequently endeavour to flee all spaces and projects that might appear as a threat to the elites. This explains the lack of success of committees and other community development projects: those spaces are strategic spaces in de Certeau’s sense (1990). They have a deliberate political aim pursued within a more or less long-term calculation. They constitute a ‘propre’ (a proper), ⁵ which defines the type of actions undertaken there and which aims in one way or another at power relations. If all the institutional structures are potentially strategic spaces, whose actions are determined by their place and object – known to all –, that object may be more or less explicitly political or in any case considered as such by the inhabitants and – above all – by the dominant actors.

Thus Churches represent somewhat ambiguous spaces. Just as many researches on social and citizenship movements ignore or minimize the political dimension of the religious (Rubin et al., 2014), Churches in the region do not seem to be considered as spaces primarily and necessarily political. Religion is considered to be a private dimension deprived of significant impact on power struggles and political games. With regard to both the Catholic Church and Evangelical Churches, reality is of course much more complex.

Research on the Catholic Church’s positioning and political involvement over the course of its history shows that it cannot be approached as a monolithic institution–its positioning depending as much on the decisions of the religious hierarchy as on the practices of religious actors, like the laity, in the field, which does not go on without tension. In addition, the positions of each of the actors constituting it evolves depending on time and place (Levine, 2016; Garrard-Burnett, 2016). The region of Q. is no exception as we can see in the commentaries Catholics have made about the various priests who have followed one another there: whereas Padre Tulio, an Italian Franciscan assassinated in the early 1980s, supported the poor and made rather categorical statements on how things were going in the region, the priests sent by the diocese thereafter were quite content to just come and say mass and go home again without getting involved in parish life. This difference makes sense in the context of the time. In 1968, the Latin-American bishops gathered in Medellín voted for a ‘preferential option for the poor’, initiating what would come to be called the theology of liberation. The latter inspired the work of a significant number of priests and monks in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s. However their political involvement with the poor in the context of the Cold War and the armed conflict triggered a brutal repression on the part of the army and local potentates, causing the withdrawal of many missionary orders from the country (Garrard-Burnett, 2010). In addition, even within the same order and the same context, differences in personality between priests can radically change the parish’s position. Thus, between 2008 and 2012, the Franciscans Jaime and Luis, very present and active, endeavoured to stimulate participation and launch projects developing parochial infrastructures, while remaining prudent in the political positions they adopted. Padre Rolando, who replaced them in 2012, was more often in the capital than in his parish and seemed unworried about the reality of his parishioners.

As for the evangelical Churches, generally less concerned about the structural causes of violence and about collective action, they are not for all that passive in addressing violence (Wilde, 2016). Thus a growing number of researchers argue that the importance attached to personal conversion and inner change by the evangelical Churches may be another way, less traditional and thus often ignored, of intervening in the political arena. In reworking images of self and community, these Churches act on the power relations and methods of action (or withdrawal) of individuals (Brenneman, 2014; O’Neill, 2014). Hence Manuel often tells me how his conversion to the Principe de Paz Church radically changed him: he no longer drinks or smokes, he no longer bets his pay or cheats on his wife. He lives a life that ‘pleases God’. More broadly, and though he does not tell me this in so many words, I can see that the change brought on by his conversion goes well beyond his private life: heavily involved in the Church where he occupies a respected position, in 2012 he became a member the Community Development Council team in charge of communicating requests from the community to the upper echelons of the State. The values and self-esteem resulting from his conversion, as well as his experience of involvement at his Church opened the path to a highly political post within the community.

If the apolitical perception of the Churches must thus be significantly qualified with the facts, it is nonetheless predominant in the region. The political involvement of a Church’s faithful is considered to be a development related more to the personality of the religious leader or Church member than to the institution itself. The first object and mission of Churches is faith and worship and as long as they confine themselves to that, they are not subject to any reprisals. Although institutional spaces, the Churches thus form part of the spaces that are relatively safe to be frequented and which, for that reason, represent veritable collective spaces. Involvement in those spaces may be considered political, in a broad sense, for it is at the origin of relationships constructing the collective. Yet it is an involvement that is more tactical than strategic, to continue with de Certeau’s distinction (1990), since it plays itself out in a blur and ambiguity protecting it from repression. Largely invisible, the tactic emerges when the opportunity (the encounter allowing bonds to be established) arises, and disappears almost as quickly as it appeared so as not to attract attention, thus needing to be renewed on every occasion. This tactic is the weapon of the weak, playing itself out in a field controlled by others, it poaches and creates a blur that protects it. Providing ample get-together occasions beyond any declared political realms, the Churches and their various activities represent an important space of socialisation for those participating in it, a space for tactical political involvement.

The Churches: Lions’ dens

The ample opportunities for establishing bonds without risk of repression thus explain the Churches’ success but not the jealousies and tensions undermining them from inside. They are better explained by the dynamics of distrust weighing on any living-together in the region. Indeed, beyond repressions limiting political participation, the history of power configurations in the region has a major impact on the inhabitants and how they construct any living-together. ⁶ Unable to rely on a tradition of resistance that has been broken by migration, the inhabitants have not succeeded in developing principles for living-together capable of ensuring collective cohesion and solidarity in facing violence. On the contrary, the history of authoritarianism which characterizes the region has left the idea that power is always personalized and incarnated in someone who’s strong. In this conception of leadership, contradiction is perceived as treason and not as a valid way to consensus building (Perez-Sarazua, 2015). Consequently, conflicts are invariably resolved by force rather than the mediation of rules (written or oral) and become synonyms for violence.

Therefore, the inhabitants avoid conflicts as much as possible and, when that no longer works, dissimulate them (Simon, 2015: 84–91). They thus cultivate an agreement understood as a ‘facade of peace’ where what’s important is not saying what’s true or false but a matter of sparing one’s interlocutor and not divulging one’s quarrels in public (Laurent, 2013: 38). Thus the tensions natural to any society flow back into rumours whose lack of signature (Das, 2007: 105) allows the persons involved to choose to get into the conflict or not – in deciding whether to attribute the rumour to a particular person. The rumour’s uncertainty produces a third space between the persons where the conflict may be expressed, while maintaining an agreement on the general, societal level.

In this context, distrust becomes the rule and not the exception of social relations and any proximity is considered a source of danger as it increases the potential for rumours (Geschiere, 2013: 32). Each close relation, by his/her position of interface between the inside and outside opens the possibility of a breach to the outside. Present in the intimacy of persons, a place where they show their emotions and feelings, the close relation may make that intimacy visible to the outside and thus proliferate the conflicts and rumours they express. On the contrary, the group’s walling itself off imposes a veil of silence and hides what is said and expressed there from outside eyes. Hence being close to anyone requires taking a body and soul stand with him/her to maintain closure. In the case of the Churches, it is relatively easily established toward the outside but that doesn’t prevent conflicts and distrust from within.

Moreover conflicts, already inevitable in all groups, are exacerbated by competition between leaders and aspiring leaders, as Isabela’s account showed earlier. And the Churches represent spaces of choice for them not only through their regular activities but also through internal structuring in more restricted committees. There are three reasons for that. ⁷ Firstly, their various activities and events offer leaders many occasions to prove their talents as organizers. A leader is characterized by his/her ability to mobilize a large number of financial and human resources to serve the group. The quality of the activity or event, i.e. the ostentation and number of people taking part in it, shows the leader’s force/power publicly. Secondly, the Churches offer many occasions to chat informally and thus deploy a web of verbal ties, either to create loyalties by advice and support, or to neutralize competitors in propagating rumours. Lastly, by their many committees, the Churches offer positions conferring an official status on aspirant-leaders, which raises and formalizes their leadership that would be otherwise purely informal. Nomination onto a committee or team thus represents an important asset, leading to ceaseless struggles. Each leader’s position is renegotiated daily, liable to force a leader losing speed to withdraw herself from a function, or even leave a group when upstaged by a competitor.

Maneuvering in search of a position allowing them to prove their talents as organizers and warriors of the word, these leaders find themselves in the thick of all the collective spaces they seek to dominate. It is thus hard to be part of any collective space without finding yourself thrust into the leaders’ struggles, as Isabela explained at the beginning of the article. The leaders inevitably crystallize the community’s conflicts, the spaces they occupy being transformed into lions’ dens. To protect themselves from these fights, the inhabitants either avoid going where the leaders go or else keep a neutral distance in their relationships. In these last cases, they strive to never take positions and remain vague and flexible in establishing weak, opportunistic ties. The possibility the Churches offer of simply attending services without getting involved in the community life makes this type of tie possible, unlike more strategic spaces which necessarily involve an active participation.

Authority and a third party role

Only a change in the conception of leadership is capable of introducing a rupture into this dynamic of distrust and struggle, as the respite created by Padre Jaime during his four years at the head of the Catholic parish shows. On my arrival in Q. in 2011, the parish was directed by the firm and energetic hand of Padre Jaime, a Colombian accompanied in his work by Padre Luis, a recently ordained Salvadorian, and Fray Alfonso, he too of Latin American origin. All Franciscans, they depended on their order for their assignments as well as regarding their community life, but their pastoral work conformed to the lines decided upon by the department’s bishop. The arrival of Father Jaime in 2008 marked the return of the Franciscan order to Q. after more than twenty years of absence due to the order’s persecution and the murder in Q. of Father Tulio during the civil war. In a few years, Padre Jaime had accomplished the feat of stirring the Catholic community out of its lethargy and giving the parish a splendour it had never known, an exploit regularly admiringly recalled by his flock.

Juan is a Catholic delegate and father of three children. A few days after Padre Jaime’s departure, we were at a wedding where we both knew the bride. Conversing, he told me that Padre Jaime, the regañon (the scolding one) had left. Since I didn’t quite understand the term, he explained to me that he called him that because he often got upset, unlike Fray Luis who was easy ‘to put in his pocket’. Despite his quick temper, Juan had nothing but admiration for everything the priest had accomplished in four years. ‘He knows how to invest!’, he told me (Fieldnotes, 19 November 2011).

The open but testy character of Padre Jaime stood out in a group accustomed to looking for agreement rather than harmony. The tone of his sermons was anything but diplomatic and he readily and sometimes publicly lambasted his ‘lost sheep’, never mincing his words. Not used to being corrected in public, people got offended and angry but the energy expended by the priest as well as his honesty always ended up convincing them to look beyond his unusual character. The visible works he undertook in the parish as well as the personal experience of people who collaborated with him convinced the faithful to participate in collections, knowing that the money would go to the community. Seeking out all the good will available, Padre Jaime gathered around himself a growing number of people whom he got to work together. The significant events marking the Catholic calendar were the occasion of festivals in the village whose preparation and attendance, in my view, set records for participation. The reigning logic of distrust certainly did not stop at the congregation’s walls but Padre Jaime’s personality seemed strong enough to channel energies and quell the inevitable conflicts, thus breaking with the usual face-to-face people have. The Catholic Church had become an institution able to play a third party role between individuals, leading to a decrease in distrust and with it the tension omnipresent in relations.

For the individuals most involved in parish life, the activities and their organisation in Padre Jaime’s time were the occasion of a more pacified socialisation. The bonds established there were no longer simply verbal but also became ones of trust, greater or lesser depending on the extent of the parishioner’s investment. That trust created between them by the active members then, in part, extended to other members, like the rings around a stone cast in the water, diminishing as you move away from the centre. Obviously the tensions within the group did not disappear but rumour was no longer the only option for managing them.

Yet significant changes were clearly visible in the parish two years later. I perceived them above all from the strained atmosphere at Church activities and the fall in participation levels. Already in June, just a few months after the new priest’s arrival, the first thing the aspiring novices told me was that ‘Padre Jaime’s replacement isn’t working out too well. This priest needs to be alone more and won’t have anyone in the rectory, which has already caused several incidents’ (fieldnotes, 10 June 2012). Often absent and not getting all that involved, the new priest seemed more set on creating conflicts than in resolving them, as the following episode shows:

In late April 2013, I was nearing the end of my last stay. I carried out an interview with Isabela and we continued to chat a moment, with the Dictaphone off. After having referred to it on several occasions during my stay, Isabela finally told me the details of the disagreement she had had with Padre Rolando, something that distanced her from Church activities. ‘I told him what I thought of him and he took it badly. The others on the council advised me to go and apologize, even if I were right but just so things would get back to normal. I did but Padre Roland greeted me by telling me “who do you think you are to criticize me! You don’t follow the pastor the way you should!”. I can’t stand the sight of him since then and especially to hear him because I know he doesn’t think what he says. He talks a lot but doesn’t think what he says, he preaches but isn’t converted himself. I loved working with Padre Jaime and Padre Luis. They united the Church. Every time there was a problem between (Church) brothers they’d speak to them and solve the problem. “We have to remain united”, they’d said. They united us. I get the impression now that everything Padre Jaime built with Padre Luis, Padre Rolando’s going to wreck it in half that time. I’ve always been frank, I have no patience. When something upsets me, I say so and that’s the end of it, I don’t tell others about it. With Padre Rolando, I only told Paola and Berta about it but, in a few days, almost everybody knew about it but in a deformed way. Stuff had been added on to it. I then called Padre Luis and we decided to meet and talk. He told me that he had indeed heard the story in another way. He apologized in the Franciscan community’s name and blessed me. He (Luis) asked me to continue on but I didn’t want to. If he had stayed, acting as intermediary, I would have remained out of respect for him but there no. Perhaps in a few months. I’m waiting for Padre Rolando to leave before I get involved again’ (Fieldnotes, 28 April 2013).

Padre Luis does the best he can to continue the work begun with Padre Jaime but alone and not being as charismatic, he can just manage to keep the boat afloat before being transferred somewhere else (at his own request, some among the faithful suspect). In the absence of a priest both willing and able to play the third party role in his Church members’ interpersonal relationships, the dynamic of distrust and rumour reappeared in barely more than a year’s time.

Whether priest or pastor, the leader of the congregation can only break with that dynamic by placing him/herself in a third party role between the persons, which requires not only a certain charisma but also a conception of leadership which authorizes and values contradiction for reaching a consensus. That undoubtedly is where Padre Rolando’s problem lays: he expected the respect and obedience of his parishioners by the simple fact of his status as priest without getting worried about their concern and conflicts; his authoritative conception of leadership did nothing but reinforce the dynamics of rumour and distrust.

For the evangelical pastors, their situation is made even more complex by their common origin with their faithful. Coming from local communities, they share the same history of violent power configurations and thus an authoritative conception of leadership. In addition, they are not outsiders to the community as a Franciscan priest might be, replaced every four years and coming from somewhere else, even from another country. The origins, career and horizon of pastors are much closer, even identical to their faithful’s; they may thus have trouble distancing themselves to fill a third party position in conflicts. Whereas, in other contexts, just such a cultural and social proximity represents an asset for the pastors while the outsider status vis à vis the communities occupied by Catholic priests, socially closer to elites and culturally foreign, constitutes a handicap (Green, 1999; Theidon, 2016), in the region of Q. the dynamics of living-together reverse the asset/obstacle relationship. Thus, if the priests – like the pastors – are placed at the core of rumours by the proximity to the faithful their ‘guide function’ creates, Catholic priests are a priori better armed to resist there.

The Churches: Spaces of expression and proximity

In view of this dynamic of struggle and distrust the Churches are gripped by, it would not be astonishing to see them emptying out as are the remainder of institutional collective spaces. They however benefit from an important asset, in addition to the apolitical character attributed to them. In a context of violence where speaking seldom has the possibility of saying – either it is caught up in the dynamic of rumour or censured by the elites’ repression – the Churches offer a space where one can express, if not directly, violence suffered, or at least the daily tension resulting from it. The faith allows a reinterpretation of the facts through a religious prism, removing the suffering from a reality where everything is censured. God and the Devil then become explanatory figures of everyone’s fortunes and misfortunes, giving events a meaning beyond the tyranny of the facts. The violence and impunity of the region are facts but faith in God allows the inhabitants to challenge their fatality. It becomes the place of an impossible revolt, a place that is unattainable by the power of violence and money for it’s not a place but a utopia (de Certeau, 1990: 33–35).

Over and above religious discourse, each Church offers its own spaces for expression. The Catholic Church for instance opens a space through the De Colores group. Created on the initiative of its members, who it is entirely dependent on, this group gathers in the physical and symbolic enclosure of the parish every Sunday, between the two morning masses. It describes itself as a ‘fraternity’, whose members call themselves hermanos and hermanas, and is directed by a president.

The meetings always open with a word of welcome from the animator followed by a prayer said together, standing in a circle. They then sing the movement’s song, a joyous chant where the participants hold onto each others’ shoulders while swaying to the song’s rhythm or clapping. The effect is always quite dynamic and relaxes the atmosphere. The heart of the meeting is centred around the mini-rollo (mini-story/problem) told by a volunteer followed by a vivencia, a positive experience this time, where God and the Catholic faith have accomplished miracles on the scale of the participant’s life. These two moments are highly ritualized and present as an opportunity for desahogarse (unburdening), a hard moment to get through but truly liberating and which should be encouraged.

An organizer recalls that ‘these meetings are to recharge our batteries, we only have Sundays to say these things. If we miss two meetings, we’re already down to twice a month and risk exploding in the street and telling all our problems to somebody we run across in an abrupt and angry way instead of laying them out here calmly, with the forms – in front of our brothers and sisters’ (Fieldnotes, 27 January 2013). The meeting ends with a prayer and many go off to the 10 o’clock mass whereas the organizers try to retain them to discuss the group’s projects, organisation and all the practical aspects of its activities.

The meetings, opened and closed by prayers, with all the ritual involved, seek to create a space of trust where speech in its enunciative dimension, mediatized by a discourse on faith, is given back to each of the members, generally reduced to the silence of the perlocutionary speech ⁸ through the logic of distrust reigning outside. Admittedly, trust does not reign supreme there and the group is regularly the object of internal conflicts. They are however relegated outside the ritualized meeting times. The ritualized formats of expression where the faith is placed in the foreground guarantee participants that their word is outside the rumour mill. It is a reassuring formatting allowing them to express their sorrows, sufferings and angers, unlike the formatting of conversations the inhabitants resort to outside the religious sphere. A well-regulated follow on of agreed-to observations – never contradicted - this last formatting reassures the interlocutors on what’s involved in the conversation but leaves little space for expressing oneself, unlike the ritualized formatting of those meetings.

On invitation from friends of the Principe de Paz Church, I was able to participate in three evangelical activities: two services including a campaña organized by the Salem Church of Q., and an enseñanza (a prayer meeting in the home of a Principe de Paz Church member). Even though I was unable to observe a space of protected speech like that afforded by the meetings of the Catholic group De Colores at any of these activities, the evangelical activities were nonetheless a place where, in addition to the usual verbal bonds, a certain proximity, or even a certain trust between the participants was created, as well as a space of expression ⁹ of the tensions which assail the inhabitants.

Whatever the activity which is the pretext or context, the prayers open a space where the emotional overflow, always obligatorily under control, can be emptied freely with nothing being said about its origin or contents. With everyone doing it on his own, with closed eyes, the prayers resemble a liberating trance where people can finally lose self-control, let themselves go in crying out, weeping, dancing, moving. Some sway, others raise their hands, the sound of the prayers increasing, to a paroxysm and, then, subsiding gently, ending.

One day Marina told me that although her sister is Catholic, they get along well and visit regularly. Her sister told her that during mass she had wanted to cry out, weep and clap her hands. Marina explained to her that it was the Holy Spirit who had descended upon her and that she should pay attention lest it leaves. Her sister had told her that she respected her going to another Church, everyone goes where they want, but she herself doesn’t like their crying out. Marina replied that they don’t realize that they’re crying out or weeping; they no longer know what’s going on around them (Fieldnotes, 19 June 2012).

Lost in the possession of the Holy Spirit, people involuntarily lose control of themselves. The importance of self-control as a fundamental value of the agreement as a mode of living-together explains the discomfort and reticence of many non-Evangelicals with respect to this way of praying as well as the justifications the latter seem to have to supply. Lacking a place to talk, possession by the Holy Spirit during prayers allows a de-responsibilisation and thus a freedom they take advantage of to purge themselves emotionally. Highly charged emotionally, these cathartic moments establish a form of complicity between the participants, permeating their verbal bonds and why they call each other hermanos (brothers), perhaps even more so than do Catholics.

Conclusion

Thus, in its own way, each Church opens spaces where the ‘emotional overflow’ can be drained, where the fear and suffering prudently hidden on the general level of society – out of fear of jealousies and conflicts among neighbours and colleagues as much as fear of repression by dominant actors – can be expressed. Caught up in the dynamics of a speech which acts more than it speaks, the inhabitants seek and open various spaces to voice (fear and suffering) without stating (their causes). The Churches offer spaces of this type, justifying their success among the inhabitants. However, and unlike other contexts (Laurent, 2013; Brenneman, 2014; Dary, 2016; Theidon, 2016), they do not thereby represent spaces of trust a social fabric lacerated by daily violence can be rebuilt in. Despite the spaces of expression they offer, they are unable to break the dynamics of distrust and struggle reigning everywhere else. In the absence of a leader – priest or pastor – able to break the law of the strongest by inserting himself/herself in a third party role between his/her faithful, the proximity constructed within the Churches fosters rumours instead of allowing the creation of bonds of trust in a singular entourage, for lack of its extension to the whole society (Laurent, 2013).

Thus, it is not so much the Church as an institution or congregation which represents a ‘safe space’ (Brenneman, 2014) fostering individual reconstruction, as the discourse and experience it shelters. It is indeed speech mediatized by the religious register which gives voice to violence and suffering without stating their causes (conflict, repression, etc.), just as it is the experience of charismatic practices (Steigenga, 2007) which allows an easing of the tension provoked by that same violence and suffering without, ever, saying a thing. These are the spaces of ‘saying without saying’, which constitute true ‘safe spaces’ in the region, independently of the relational dynamics animating the congregation. For that matter, it is the very fact that it is possible to enter them without getting involved in the congregation’s life but on the contrary in keeping the distance and neutrality of tactical bonds that makes these spaces particularly tempting for a good number of inhabitants. Indeed, they can thus retain the opportunistic mobility of the tactic which, in opening margins and creating vagueness, protects them from rumours and murders. The choice ‘of persevering’ in a Church, expressed in terms of faith, thus depends on a subjective cost/benefit evaluation: as long as belonging to a Church does not represent a danger greater than the spaces of expression it offers, the member will continue to go to it. That danger may be external, as when active Catholics were persecuted during the civil war to punish them for their political commitments, or internal when the dynamic of rumours threatens the faithful, as in the case of Isabela with the new priest or evangelicals who change Churches or simply stop going to them.

These various elements make Churches particular, fundamental spaces in the dynamics of living-together in the region. Institutional spaces, they offer aspiring leaders positions of status and activities where they can show their talents without being considered as politicians by the dominant actors. If they are relatively safe vis-à-vis the latter, they are definitely less so vis-à-vis the leaders and their struggles – which the inhabitants rather seek to avoid. The inhabitants nevertheless continue attending them on the one hand because, as to the leaders, they offer many occasions to establish verbal bonds all the while maintaining mobility and a protective distance and, on the other hand, because they offer spaces for ‘saying without saying’ all the more invaluable as they are rare. In this way, without being spaces of trust, Churches belong to the places where the region’s collective is woven. They themselves do not amount to ‘safe spaces’ but offer them to those who manage to navigate through the struggles and tensions buffeting them.