‘We Will Revive’: addiction, spiritual warfare, and recovery in Latin America’s cocaine production zone

All interviews took place in Spanish. The name of research subjects has been changed for anonymity purposes. The name ‘We Will Revive’ is also a pseudonym. I intentionally do not disclose the exact location of ‘We Will Revive’ or any other ministries I studied.

Abstract

Once a key site in the War on Drugs against cocaine, the Upper Amazon in northeastern Peru has lately seen an increase in addiction to coca paste, a toxic by-product of the cocaine manufacturing process. Unregulated and coercive Pentecostal ministries, founded and administered by recovered pastors, constitute the main form of addiction treatment in the Upper Amazon today. Based on ethnographic research in nine ministries and using the example of the ministry ‘We Will Revive,’ this article suggests that Pentecostal ministries re-articulate addiction as demonic possession. Accordingly, ministries treat addiction through spiritual warfare against the Devil. In so doing, Pentecostal ministries change the locus of the War on Drugs from trade networks to sinful bodies.

Keywords:

• Addiction
• Peru
• Christianity
• Urban Poverty
• War on Drugs

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I thank the pastors and residents of Pentecostal addiction treatment ministries in Peru’s Upper Amazon for sharing their stories with me and welcoming me into their lives. Writing this article would not have been possible without the exceptional mentorship of Angela Garcia. I also give my sincere thanks to Thomas Blom Hansen, James Ferguson, Tanya Luhrmann, Liisa Malkki, Duana Fullwiley, Sharika Thiranagama, and Matthew Kohrman for their excellent and generous mentorship. The two anonymous reviewers for this article were incredibly helpful with their comments. I thank Ian Whitmarsh, Mauricio Najarro, Ellen Kozelka, Claudia Rafful, and Timothy Nest for valuable feedback on a paper presented on the basis of this article. Finally, my deepest appreciation goes to Maziyar Ghiabi for organising the Special Issue of which this article is part.

Notes

All interviews took place in Spanish. The name of research subjects has been changed for anonymity purposes. The name ‘We Will Revive’ is also a pseudonym. I intentionally do not disclose the exact location of ‘We Will Revive’ or any other ministries I studied.

1. Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine.

2. For Mexico, see Garcia, “Serenity,” 456. For Peru, see Becerra and Bazo, Diagnóstico situacional. For Latin America, see IDPC, “Compulsory Rehabilitation in Latin America.”

3. De Leon, The Therapeutic Community.

4. Hartch, Rebirth of Latin American Christianity.

5. Robbins, “The Globalisation of Pentecostalism,” 128.

6. Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 136–7, 190, 206–8, 214.

7. Ibid., 228.

8. Ibid., 255–89.

9. Kernaghan, Coca’s Gone, 10.

10. Ibid., 11.

11. Páucar, La guerra oculta, 6.

12. CVR, Informe final, Volume V, Chapter 2. For an example of non-state armed groups targeting drug users in Latin America, see Zeiderman, Endangered City, 85.

13. Kernaghan, Coca’s Gone, 1, 4.

14. UNODC, Pasta básica de cocaína, 37–9.

15. UNODC, World Drug Report, 51–4.

16. Durán-Martínez, “Drugs Around the Corner,” 124–9.

17. CIDDH, “El Éxito.”

18. UNODC, Pasta básica de cocaína, 27–40.

19. For a discussion of rickshaw pulling and informal labour, see Davis, Planet of Slums, 189.

20. UNODC, Pasta básica de cocaína, 83–118.

21. Douglas, Purity and Danger.

22. Caldeira, City of Walls, 91. For a review of the anthropology of evil, see Csordas, "Morality as a Cultural System?"

23. Miles, Crisis, 4.

24. Hansen, Melancholia of Freedom, 267.

25. Ibid., 269–70.

26. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 26–8.

27. Ibid., 61–3.

28. Taussig, Devil and Commodity Fetishism.

29. Hartch, Rebirth of Latin American Christianity, 93.

30. Meyer, “Aesthetics of Persuasion,” 753.

31. For a discussion of the capturing of drug users by Christian vigilante groups in Guatemala City, see O'Neill, "On Hunting."

32. Hansen, Melancholia of Freedom, 266–7.

33. For a description of such practices, see Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, 101–32.

34. Robbins, “Anthropology, Pentecostalism, and the New Paul.”

35. Ibid., 639–40.

36. Gooren, “Anthropology of Religious Conversion,” 99–100.

37. Meyer, “Aesthetics of Persuasion,” 751.

38. Davis, Planet of Slums, 195–8.

39. Ibid., 8–19.

40. Browder and Godfrey, Rainforest Cities.

41. Robbins, “Anthropology of Religion.”

42. Kling, “Conversion to Christianity.”

43. IDPC, “Compulsory Rehabilitation in Latin America.”

44. Jürgens and Csete, “In the Name of Treatment”; Wilkinson, “Sin sanidad.”

45. Garcia, “Serenity”; O’Neill, “On Liberation.”

46. Hansen, “The New ‘Masculinity,’” 3.

47. Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil.

48. Biehl, Vita.

49. Han, Life in Debt.

50. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

51. Agamben, Homo Sacer.

52. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 125–30.

53. Franco, Cruel Modernity, 214–46.

54. Herlinghaus, Violence Without Guilt, 10.

55. O’Neill, Secure the Soul, 9–10.

56. Garcia, “Serenity,” 462.

57. Becerra and Bazo, Diágnostico situacional, 68; UNODC, Pasta básica de cocaína, 119–24.

58. Mangelinckx, “Comunidades Terapéuticas en Perú.”

59. Galli, “¿Centros de rehabilitación?”

60. Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being,” 261.