Abstract
In this article, the case of the recent growth of the Pentecostal movement within the Catholic Church in Curaçao is analysed. The author applies the idea of “the popular use” of religion in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to explain this religious phenomenon. This idea is shown to be a dynamic process of symbolic production, where the Afro-Curaçao people are developing an interpretation of the charismatic movement very different from the clerical version of the same movement. The author describes the events of 1987, when the charismatic movement expressed a synthesis between its own, Afro-Antillean religious concept of healing and its social protest against the local government of the time. The author concludes that the religious phenomenon in the Caribbean is going through a series of changes, which must be analysed in each particular context.