Historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett writes: “A peculiar legacy of Guatemala’s deep anticlericalism is that since 1921, diocesan bishops have not been subject to the direct authority of the bishops. They are, therefore, free to adopt political and theological lines that the metropolitan primate does not endorse, a system that permits an unusual amount of autonomy within the hierarchy.” This regulation certainly has the potential to exacerbate existing tensions and conflicts. Virginia Garrard-Burnett 2010: 116. Garrard-Burnett quotes Richard Adams in this respect. See Richard N. Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944 – 1966 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), 287.

Interview Bischof Álvaro Ramazzini Imeri, November 9, 2001, San Marcos.

Interview Padre Hugo Estrada (CCR), February 18, 2002, Guatemala City.

In 2001, the conflicts in Quetzaltenango and many other dioceses had considerably decreased. Interview Laura Fernández Pérez (Parish San Francisco de Asis, Quetzaltenango, pseudonym), May 6, 2001, Quetzaltenango.

In a way this communiqué is an update of the above-mentioned pastoral letter of 1986. The fifteen years that lie between the two publications show that the CCR is still the subject of (Catholic) seekers looking for a religious home. Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala (CEG) 1997: 402.

Obispado San Marcos, “Orientaciones y disposiciones sobre la Renovación Carismática en la Diócesis de San Marcos,” (San Marcos: April 25, 2001).

Interview Padre José, November 20, 2001, Tajumulco, San Marcos.

Padre Eric stated in an interview in 2001: “Catechists are a fine institution but the Church has no control over them. They are independent and it will stay that way.” Interview Padre Eric Gruloos, December 10, 2001, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos.

Interview Bishop Álvaro Ramazzini Imeri, November 9, 2001, San Marcos.

Interview Israel López Guzman (IdPdP), October 17, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos.

As will become evident shortly, those who became Charismatic Catholics in Concepción Tutuapa also acted on their own accord. In Tajumulco the situation was similar. Padre José from the municipality Tajumulco asserted that in his parish the Charismatic groups were not established under the influence of outsiders. Interview Padre José, November 20, 2001, Tajumulco, San Marcos.

Ibid.

Christian Gros, Políticas de la etnicidad: identidad, estado y modernidad (Bogotá: Instituto Columbiano de Antropología e Historia, 2000), 127.

DICOR – Proyecto de Desarrollo Integral de Comunidades Rurales, Diagnóstico del Municipio Concepcion Tutuapa (Concepción Tutuapa: Municipalidad de Concepción Tutuapa, February 2000).

The priest also mentions a musician who helps by organizing church choirs. Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Catholic Priest, Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos. Information on the parish comes from the local priest, unless indicated otherwise.

Ibid., interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Catholic Priest, Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos. This information was confirmed in conversations with two Dominican sisters attending the parish. Furthermore, see Proyecto de Desarrollo Integral de Comunidades Rurales (DICOR) February 2000.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Priest, CCR member, Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos. During the interview Padre Mario maintains a neutral stand regarding these visits and the role of Mayan priests. For instance, he does not say that he tries to convince his parishioners not to consult Mayan priests; nor does he take a positive stand. The priest in the neighboring community of San Miguel Ixtahuacán acts totally differently. He organizes mass on nearby hilltops – in the style of traditional Mayan ceremonies – carries out anthropological studies and has translated a vast number of hymns into the local indigenous Mam language. In other words, he tries to endorse and support Mayan culture and spirituality in the course of his pastoral activities.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos; interview Juan Tornero (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 6, 2002, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos; interview José María Durango (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 4, 2002, Llano Grande, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

The effect of this is that the saints’ days are not celebrated in the municipality anymore. Only a few surrounding hamlets celebrate the fiesta. The new priest stated that one of his goals is to reunite the few members of the existing cofradías with the catechists in order to reanimate the local fiesta. However, this is not easy, he says, partly because the members of the cofradías never saw themselves as part of the local parish and the Catholic Church but as a group whose sole responsibility is the arrangement of the saints’ days.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Juan Tornero also thinks that the catechists are in reality afraid of the Aj Q’ij, because they do not know about their religious background. Interview Juan Tornero (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 6, 2002, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos; interview Juan Tornero (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 6, 2002, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos; interview José María Durango (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 4, 2002, Llano Grande, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

I was not able to gather much information on Protestant churches in the area. However, conversations with catechists indicated that there are far fewer Protestant congregations in Concepción Tutuapa than in neighboring highland communities and provinces. The only explanation I have at hand for the lack of Protestant presence is that there had been almost no missionary activity in the past. Only the largest Evangelical missionary agency, the Central American Mission (Misión Centroamericana), established a few churches.

Interview José María Durango (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 4, 2002, Llano Grande, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Ibid.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Interview Juan Tornero (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 6, 2002, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos. The signs were referring to Protestants and Charismatics alike.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Speaking in tongues or glossolalia is a phenomenon that, from a Christian Charismatic standpoint, constitutes a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The believer speaks in words or word-like sounds, forming a language unknown to him or her, which is regarded as a mark of the gift of the Spirit as in Acts 2:1 and 1 Corinthians chapters 12 – 14.

Interview Juan Tornero (Maya Mam, catechist, pseudonym), January 6, 2002, Llano Grande, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Charismatics who are driven by the desire to establish boundaries with local catechists, the clergy, or both, find plenty of evidence from the Bible to defend their views. To name just two prominent examples where biblical literalism equips Charismatics – and for that matter Protestant Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals – with better arguments, we can point to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the role of the saints, themes that are at best dimly alluded to or inferred in scripture. In short, from a strictly biblical standpoint, one that the more radical Charismatics and certainly Protestants share, they are not imperative for salvation. See John Bowker 1997: 987.

In this, Guatemala differs from Mexico. There, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has much closer ties to the Church hierarchy. Also, the Mexican CCR movement was highly successful in linking national identity with the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the latter being without a doubt something of a national-religious icon. The different status of the Virgin also indicates that the Mexican movement has reconciled tradition and scripture to a much greater extent.

Interview Rosario Fernández (CCR, Maya K’iche’, pseudonym), May 21, 2001, Quetzaltenango.

Interview Padre Mario Arango (Maya Mam, Catholic priest), December 5, 2001, Concepción Tutuapa, San Marcos.

Yet Concepción Tutuapa differs from other neighboring provinces, such as El Quiché, Huehuetenango, and the Verapaces, where Catholic Action was highly prevalent. In other words, within San Marcos, Concepción Tutuapa occupies something of an exceptional position. Interview Bishop Álvaro Ramazzini Imeri, November 9, 2001, San Marcos.

Hans Siebers writes in this respect, “In general, catechists remain quite obedient to the clergy and only reluctantly develop activities outside of the framework of the church.” Hans Siebers, ‘We Are Children of the Mountain’, Creolization and Modernization among the Q′eqchi’s (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 1999), 180. Richard Wilson notes, “Catechists are willing agents of the institutional Church, expounding its orthodox discourse in their villages.” Richard Wilson 1995: 201.

One example will suffice here: The bishop of San Marcos, Álvaro Ramazzini Imeri, was the only person interviewed who ranked the conflict between Catholics and Protestants as being worse than a few years ago. He even voiced concerns about the potential of a religious war. After I asked him what the ground for his opinion was, he said that it was based on reports from catechists. Interestingly, and in contrast to the bishop, many catechists and Protestants to whom I spoke told me that conflicts between different religious factions have considerably abated compared to the situation in the 1980s.

Before the reforms of the liberal governments of the nineteenth century, the land Mayans used but did not necessarily own – because it was the property of cofradías, Churches, or the community – can also be seen as an important factor that ensured the preservation of cultural knowledge. It kept Mayans in the isolation of highland communities. With the establishment of a modern plantation economy, however, this situation completely changed, because it forced the highland Mayans to migrate in search of work and exposed them in a much greater way to the broader social and economic structure of the newly established nation.

People who sleep off their intoxication on the streets are a common sight in many indigenous towns and villages.

Padre Tomás García in Almolonga describes the Charsimatic movement metaphorically as a exhaust pipe (tubo de escape) and refuge (refugio). Interview Padre Tomás García (Maya K’iche’), June 3, 2003, Almolonga, Quetzaltenango. The context in which he used this metaphor was the civil war, poverty, and indigenous marginalization.

The habitus as a subjective system of dispositions that are internalized and attached to personal identity is therefore not jeopardized but strengthened. In other words, central schemes of perceptions in thinking and acting are actually maintained, e. g., issues of tradition, mystic religiosity, etc. Furthermore, it is necessary not to understand this process as a conscious reflection on self- and group- identity and affiliation.

See also John Watanabe, who refers to Brintnall (1979) and Annis (1987) in the following quote: “These studies all demonstrated that substantial changes in Guatemalan Maya communities could occur without resulting automatically in acculturation or Maya obedience to Ladino will.” John M. Watanabe 1992: 10.

CNN International, “Mayans to ‘cleanse’ Bush site,” March 12, 2007, on http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/12/bush.guatemala/index.html.

See the general introduction on the terms pan-Maya movement, Maya revitalization movement, and Maya movement.

Culturally, Mayan groups are usually distinguished by language. Today there are approximately twenty-two Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. Edward Frederick Fischer and R. McKenna Brown 1996; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country ,,MRGI,,GTM,,49749d163c,0.html.

Victor Montejo mentioned about 360 organizations in 1997. See Victor Montejo, “The Pan-Mayan Movement: Mayas at the Door of the New Millennium,” in Cultural Survival Quarterly 2, no. 21 (Summer 1997). http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/guatemala/pan-mayan-movement-mayans-doorway-new-millennium .

In former decades, religion among the indigenous people in Latin America was mostly studied in the field of anthropology and ethnology (Redfield 1947, Rojas Lima 1988). Indigenous religious expressions were seen in these studies as part of popular religions and especially as a branch of Latin American Catholicism labelled as popular Catholicism. In the Guatemalan and Mexican areas where the percentage of the indigenous population is high, such as Chiapas or the Guatemalan Western Highlands, religion was studied as a part of the civil religious hierarchies (cofradías) in the indigenous communities (Brintnall 1979, Cancian 1967, Wolf 1957, Redfield 1947). In these studies, due to their local focus, religion appeared to be a part of the indigenous community universe and in this context as a part of the ethnic identity of the villagers. The title of Eric Wolf’s essay, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities,” probably best describes the image Western anthropologists had of indigenous communities. Douglas E. Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979); Frank Cancian, “Political and Religious Organizations,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, 6 (1967): 283 – 298, Eric Wolf; “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 1, no. 1 (1957): 1 – 18; Robert Redfield, “The Folk Society,” in American Journal of Sociology 52 (1947): 293 – 308.

Xavier Albó, “El Retorno del Indio,” in Revista Andina 1, no. 2 (1991): 299 – 345; Phillip Wearne, The Return of the Indian: Conquest and Revival in the Americas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Kay B. Warren and Jean E. Jackson, eds., Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). For Columbia, see Christian Gros, Políticas de la etnicidad: identidad, estado y modernidad (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2000).

Mario Roberto Morales, La articulación de las diferencias o el síndrome de Maximón: los discursos literarios y políticos del debate interétnico en Guatemala (Guatemala: FLACSO, 1999), 83.

A well-known public figure who is recognized as part of this group is Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

Didier Boremanse, “Situación actual del debate étnico en Guatemala,” Taller sobre la Dimensión Multilingüe, Pluricultural y Multiétnica de Guatemala, November 4, 1997 (Guatemala: PNUD), 20; quoted in Mario Roberto Morales 1999: 83.

The concept of Mayan priests and Mayan priesthood refers to traditional Mayan authorities in Mayan culture, those responsible for religious rituals. They are not connected to Catholicism.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London: Verso, 1992). Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, a Venezuelan-French author and anthropologist, had taped her life story in twenty hours while Rigoberta Menchú Tum was visiting her in Paris. Burgos-Debray is married to the famous French intellectual, writer, politician, and former combatant of the Bolivian guerrillas, Régis Debray. This background most likely helped to establish contact to the guerrilla umbrella organization URNG (Unidad Revolucionaria Nueva Guatemala).

David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999).

It is important to point out that David Stoll’s criticism and his confirmation of a lack of authenticity was not so much directed towards a Guatemalan audience as toward a North American academic elite, who had turned the original version of Rigoberta Menchú’s autobiography into a new field of research. See David Stoll 1999.

That the Nobel Prize committee had chosen Menchú Túm in 1992, the year of celebrations –and anti-celebrations! – of 500 years of colonization, was certainly no coincidence. In this sense, Rigoberta Menchú Túm symbolized indigenous resistance but also brought attention to the situation of the poor and the women.

Important to note is that this image is not only a product of Rigoberta Menchú’s writings and popularity but, again, often the outcome of media presentation in Western societies. Bolivia, a country with a high percentage of indigenous people, illustrates this: In 2003, the Spanish newspaper El País published an article called “The growing protagonism of the indigenous people” (El creciente protagonismo de los pueblos indígenas), (El País, Sunday, November 9, 2003). The article referred to social upheavals in Bolivia. During a conference that had taken place a little earlier that month in Berlin, a journalist who frequently visits La Paz and was covering the situation, explicitly rejected the connection and emphasized that the social protests in the Andean country were in no way expressing exclusively the discontent of indigenous people, but reflecting social concerns of different population groups, including the non-indigenous population. The causes, he said, were the catastrophic living conditions and other social ills. He added that in order to confirm certain stereotypes, the media would often deliberately falsify reports. He mentioned in particular a report on Bolivia on the German TV news program “Weltspiegel” (ARD, Weltspiegel, November 2, 2003). Conference Heinrich Böll Fundation, Berlin, presentation: “Revolte der Indígenas: Der Machtwechsel in Bolivien.” Berlin, November 4, 2003).

Comité de Unidad Campesina and Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Klage der Erde. Der Kampf der Campesinos in Guatemala (Göttingen: Lamuv, 1996); Rigoberta Menchú Tum 1992; Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Rigoberta, nieta de los Mayas (Madrid: El País-Aguilar, 1998).

Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG), El entorno histórico. Tomo III. Informe del Proyecto Interdiocesano Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (REMHI) (Costa Rica: LIL, S.A. 1997), 124.

In a way, her position can also be seen as a response to the political necessities of the present. Her battle for human rights requires a coalition with the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, which has been at the forefront of defending human rights for decades. Moreover, her position equals that of the former guerrilla front EGP, a position that always tried to unify the contemporary challenges of both Ladinos and Mayas, e. g., the issue of wages, poverty, land, and human rights.

In her book Rigoberta: La nieta de los Mayas, she says: “My mother prayed to Nature (p. 143). […] My father was a catechist and a fervent believer of the Catholic religion (p. 146) […] There was never an unbalance between the beliefs of my mother or my father (p. 146).” Rigoberta Menchú 1998.

Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 140.

In Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, she writes: “Sometimes, the religions of the world have been an instrument of oppression and sometimes, at other moments, they have been a weapon of conquest and colonization. In our experience as indigenous peoples, religion has been used like a powerful rifle, like a machine gun, or like a powerful arrow in order to destroy our cultures” (p. 137). She continues: “I want to distinguish between what religion means to people as a doctrine and religion as a belief to peoples. For us, our belief is something that gives us support, something we entrust with our sorrows and which makes us feel modest in terms of life, pain, nature, generations and times.” Rigoberta Menchú Tum 1998: 143.

Menchú says in her autobiography, which was taped in the early 1980s: “The world I live in is so evil, so bloodthirsty, that it can take my life away from one moment to the next. So the only road open to me is our struggle, the just war. The Bible taught me that. I tried to explain this to a Marxist compañera, who asked me how I could pretend to fight for revolution being a Christian. I told her that the whole truth is not found in the Bible, but neither is the whole truth in Marxism, and that she had to accept that. We have to defend ourselves against our enemy but, as Christians, we must also defend our faith within the revolutionary process. At the same time, we have to think about the important work we have to do, after our victory, in the new society.” Rigoberta Menchú Tum 1992: 246.

It would be wrong, however, to call Rigoberta Menchú Tum a person who totally rejects her Catholic past.

Interview Antonio Otzoy (Pastor Presbyterian Church, Maya Kaqchiquel), May 9, 2001, Guatemala City.

Susanne Jonas, Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s Peace Process (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998). A closer look at the negotiation process shows again how international dynamics were embedded in national agendas. Barbara Kühhas, an anthropologist and in 1994 a United Nations Human Rights observer in Guatemala, quoted participants of the Assembly for Civil Society who remembered that whenever the meetings became critical, the participants looked at the already existing Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention from the International Labor Organization from 1989 (ILO Convention No. 169), designing the text according to this template. This example also illustrates the close connection between ethnic identity constructions facilitated by international networks in the context of globalization. Barbara Kühhas, Die indigenen Frauen Guatemalas: Vom Bürgerkrieg zum Friedensprozess – der Kampf um politische Partizipation (Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel, 2000), 68.

For instance, the state policies of the nineteenth-century liberal governments contributed greatly to the exclusion and marginalization of the indigenous population, among other things by cutting down on indigenous land tenure in the indigenous communities. Later, in the 1920s, the indigenous population had to participate in forced labor campaigns for infrastructure projects.

A piñata is a paper doll that is hung up during birthday parties. The doll is filled with sweets. Holding a stick and with his or her eyes blindfolded, the birthday child has to hit the doll until the sweets fall out.

Diane M. Nelson 1999: 76.

USIP – United States Institute of Peace Library, ed., Peace Agreements Digital Collection: Guatemala. Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.usip.org/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/guat_950331.pdf

The Peace Accords also fostered access to money from the international community to help fund the Guatemalan democratization process. Furthermore, Mayan organizations created jobs for the highly marginalized indigenous sector.

Atxum Mekel Pas Ashul and Miguel Matías Miguel Juan, “La espiritualidad maya y su papel en la construcción de la identidad,” in Identidad. Segundo Congreso de Estudios Mayas 6 – 8 Agosto 1997 (Guatemala: Universidad Rafael Landívar, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales (IDIES), 1998), 285.

The Mayan Priest Gerardo Camó was shot with seven bullets on May 3, 2003, while saying a prayer during a Maya ceremony. He was a member of ADIVIMA, the Association for an Integral Development of the Victims of Violence Maya Achí. On April 3, 2003, Diego Xon Salazar, a member of the Guatemalan Mayan Language Academy (ALMG) and a Mayan priest, was kidnapped. His body was later found in a field outside the community where he lived. In December 2002, the 72-year-old Mayan Priest Marcos Sical Pérez and his 71-year-old wife were shot. Sical Pérez died from twelve shots to his face. His wife survived the attack, receiving five bullets in her leg (Amnesty International Press Release, AI Index: AMR 34/037/2003 (Public) News Service No: 154, 28 June 2003, http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/print/ENGAMR340372003; also AI Index: AMR 24/020/2003, Urgent Action UA 93/2003, April 8, 2003; and Fijáte 9, no. 286 (June 4, 2003): 3. On October 9, 2002, the Mayan priest and lawyer Antonio Pop Caal was kidnapped. His body was found a few days later, having been dismembered. Fijáte 9, no. 286 (June 4, 2003): 3; interview by the author with his nephew Amilcar de Jésus Pop, Cologne October 23, 2003. A revision of the urgent action files of Amnesty International between 2004 and December 2010 seems to indicate that the violence against Mayan priests has abated since 2004. Other human rights incidents continue however, e.g., Amilcar de Jésus Pop became himself the victim of death threats in August 2008. According to his own account, these threats were related to his work as a lawyer, in particular his support of indigenous peoples in the municipality of San Juan Sacatepéquez, where he tried to assert their right to be consulted about the construction of a cement plant.

Richard Wilson, Comunidades ancladas: Identidad e historia del Pueblo Maya-Q’eqchi’. Textos Ak’Kutan. No. 4. (Alta Verapaz: Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, 1994); Richard Wilson, Ametralladoras y espíritus de la montaña. Los efectos culturales de la represión estatal entre los q’eqchíes de Guatemala. Textos Ak′Kutan. No. 2 (Alta Verapaz: Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, 1995b).

Exceptions are the Popul Vuh, the Annals of the Kaqchiqueles (Memorial de Sololá: Anales de los Cakchikeles), the Título de los Señores de Totonicapán, and the Libro de los Libros de Chilam Balam. See explanations on the origin of the Popul Vuh below.

Víctor D. Montejo, Maya Intellectual Renaissance: Identity, Representation, and Leadership (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 129 – 130.

Interesting to note in this respect is that Mayan Evangelicals, in particular Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals, share a great deal with the practitioners of Mayan spirituality regarding bodily praxis and sensations. Abigail E. Adams, “Making One Our Word: Protestant Q’eqchi’ Mayas in the Highland Guatemala,” in Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America, eds. James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom (Westport: Praeger, 2001); Andrea Althoff, “Iglesias de fufurufus: neopentecostales y política en Guatemala,” in Papeles de Cuestiones Internacionales 80 (Winter 2002), 83 – 89.

Interview Amilcar de Jésus Pop, Cologne, October 23, 2003. I should add that generally it is agreed that indigenous culture cannot be characterized in terms of race and blood, because the interbreeding between Europeans and the indigenous population made an argument of ‘clean’ blood impossible. Consequently, in contemporary Latin American societies, or elsewhere for that matter, one cannot speak of indigenous cultures in terms of race anymore. Kay B. Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1989), 182.

Spivak (1988) openly combines her analysis with an actor approach that asks NGOs to use strategic essentialism. From my perspective, this strategy can also be counterproductive, because it creates conflicts between different segments (rural and urban) of the Mayan population, thus endangering the cohesion of the Maya movement. Also, it does not allow Mayans who reject this essentialism to participate. The social effects of strategic essentialism in a Mayan town are discussed later in this chapter. Victor Montejo (2005) is an interesting writer and scholar in this regard. He openly talks about the need for Mayans to create an indigenous pan-Mayan identity. That is, he opts for the application of what Spivak calls ‘strategic essentialism,’ although he does not refer to her directly. At the same time, he views the current Mayan culture as proof that the thousand-year-old Mayan culture has survived and, more importantly, survived intact. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays on Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1988).

Fijáte 9, no. 286 (June 4, 2003): 2.

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

Virginia Garrard-Burnett, “God Was Already Here When Columbus Arrived”: Inculturation Theology and the Mayan Movement in Guatemala,” in Resurgent Voices in Latin America, eds. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 125 – 153, 141.

Interview Dolores Martínez Nube (pastoral indígena, Maya Mam, pseudonym), June 26, 2001, San Marcos.

Adriana Pascual Batz (theology Student, University Rafael Landívar, pseudonym), May 10, 2001, Guatemala City.

Ibid.

Bruce Calder, “Interwoven Histories: The Catholic Church and the Maya, 1940 to the Present,” in Resurgent Voices in Latin America, eds. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 93 – 124, 100; Flavio Rojas Lima, La cofradía: reducto cultural indígena (Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social, 1988).

Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil, “The Politics of Maya Revindication,” in Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala, eds., Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (Austin: Texas University Press, 1996), 19 – 50, 36.

Interview Nikolai Grube, September 21, 2000, University of Bonn.

Kay B. Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 249.

Flavio Rojas Lima 1988. In 1968 Rojas Lima was the General Secretary of the Seminario de Integración Social. The Seminario has been in operation since 1955. From a group of social scientists who had been working on problems related to the social integration of Guatemalan Indians into the Guatemalan nation-state, in 1968 it became a permanent, state funded institute that published several studies of the indigenous population. See Current Anthropology 9, no. 1 (February 1968): 71 – 72. In 1986, Rojas Lima started to work for the Ministry of Culture and Sports, a ministry that was established in the same year. In 1992, he became the vice minister. Diane M. Nelson 1999: 116.

Interview Amilcar de Jésus Pop, Cologne, October 23, 2003. He became a member of congress in the 7^th legislative period (2012 – 2016) and is affiliated with the left-wing Winaq-alliance.

The ASC was a forum established during the peace process to facilitate a dialogue between the state and the insurgency movement by, at least formally, including civil society. The Civil Society Assembly did not participate directly in the negotiations. Negotiations were bilateral and officially included only the state and the guerrillas (URNG). The mandate of the ASC was to discuss the substantive issues addressed in the negotiations – among them the identity and rights of indigenous people – and to formulate a consensus. The Framework Accord for the Resumption of Negotiations specified that the ASC recommendations or guidelines would be considered by the negotiators but were not binding. Moreover, the ASC did not have the power to veto the outcome of the agreements; they could only endorse them to give them the force of national commitments. See Enrique Alvarez, “The Civil Society Assembly: Shaping Agreement,” (London: Conciliation Resources, 2002), http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/civil-society-assembly-shaping-agreement .

Ulf Hannerz, Cultural Complexity (New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1992), 264 – 265.

Stuart Hall, David Held, and Tony McGrew, eds. Modernity and its Futures (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1992), 310.

Charles Stewart, “Syncretism and its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture,” in Diacritics, 29, no. 3 (1999): 4 – 62, 55.

See Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga 2004: 233.

Carlos Gúzman Böckler and Jean Loup Herbert, Guatemala: una interpretación histórico-social (México, D.F.: Siglo Veintiuno Ed., 1970). The book translates the old Marxist paradigm of the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ into an ethnic dualism. Now it is not capitalism that determines society and its inequality but the divide between the indigenous and non-indigenous (Ladino) population. It should be added that Gúzman Böckler is not only a highly influential but also an extremely controversial figure, organizing seminars for indigenous university students and defending the idea that an ‘Indian war’ may be necessary to protect Mayan rights and assert their culture. Tom Barry, Inside Guatemala: The Essential Guide to its Politics, Economy, Society and Environment (Albuquerque: The Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1992), 228. For a detailed description of Gúzman Böckler and his ideas, see the section on ideological factors and Mayan exclusion in the Catholicism part of this book.

Audelino Sac Coyoy (Mayan priest and employee of the ILO, Maya K’iche’), May 17, 2001, Quetzaltenango. Audelino Sac is not the only Mayan activist who emphasized the important influence of this particular intellectual on his own ideas and agenda. The indigenous lawyer Amilcar de Jésus Pop also mentioned Gúzman Böckler’s influence on his own thoughts; in fact, he used the very same words: “He was my teacher.” Interview Amilcar de Jésus Pop (Lawyer, Maya Kaqchiquel), October 23, 2003, Cologne.

Audelino Sac Coyoy (Mayan priest, employee ILO, Maya K’iche’), May 17, 2001, Quetzaltenango.

Here the Maya movement understanding is similar to that of Jews and Hindus in that religious affiliation is acquired by birth.

The Belgian priest Eric Gruloos mentioned a former catechist in this context: “He says he is unable to pray anymore because he learned the prayers from the Catholic Church. All this, that is Catholicism, would be impossible for him to practice now.” Interview Padre Eric Gruloos, December 10, 2001, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos. The members of a local revitalization group in Tuixoquel used a similar expression in stating that they needed to learn the Catholic religion.

The term ‘way of life’ or lifestyle indicates, in my view, the creative element he refers to. In other words, he himself emphasizes the self-construction that is inherent in the connection he makes between life-philosophy, way of life, and conscious spiritual choices.

Audelino Sac Coyoy (Mayan priest, employee of the ILO, Maya K’iche’). Sac’s categorization is in line with that of Catholic scholars and ordinary priests. The indigenous Catholic priest Tomás García, for instance, distinguished groups of Mayan believers in a similar fashion. Interview Padre Tomás García (Maya K’iche’), June 5, 2001, Almolonga, Quetzaltenango.

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, From Caballo to Landrover, 87–89. Unpublished manuscript, n.d.

Ibid.

Audelino Sac Coyoy (Mayan priest, employee of the ILO, Maya K’iche’).

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, From Caballo to Landrover, 87–89. Unpublished manuscript, n.d.

David A. Snow and Richard Machalek, “The Sociology of Conversion,” in Annual Review of Sociology 10 (1984): 167 – 190.

Víctor D. Montejo 2005: 5 – 6.

Scott H. Beck and Kenneth J. Mijeski found similar dynamics in Ecuador. They write, “The authors found that indigenous students with greater ‘acculturation experiences’ with mestizo culture were more strident in rejecting elements of that culture than were their colleagues who had had fewer encounters with mestizo elements of Ecuadorian society.” See Scott H. Beck and Kenneth J. Mijeski, “Indigena Self-Identity in Ecuador and the Rejection of Mestizaje,” in Latin American Research Review 35, no. 1 (2000): 119 – 137, 119. Richard N. Adams has summed up this phenomenon: “For isolated groups, ethnic identity is a relatively marginal concern. It becomes important when contacts with other societies or ethnicities pose some kind of threat to one’s identity or survival. Therefore, the expansion of, first, indigenous, then colonial, and, most recently, nation-states has constantly reduced the time and space between societies. Maintaining self-identity has emerged as a central problem as marginal peoples have been swept up by expanding state interests and demo-economic pressures.” See Richard N. Adams, “Strategies of Ethnic Survival in Central America,” in Nation-States and Indians in Latin America, eds. Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 186 – 187.

Manuel Barrios, for instance, a Mayan activist from San Miguel Ixtahuacán, emphasized that he was a catechist before he became a Mayan activist. He attributes his ethnic awakening to his work with a Swedish development agency in his native village and his participation in the Mayan organization Ajchmol in San Marcos, the provincial capital. Interview Manuel Barrios (Maya Mam, Ajchmol, pseudonym), December 16, 2001, San José Ixcaniché, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos.

It seems to me that no popular religion in Latin America is much different from the others in this respect. Anyone who has ever been to Cuba and has seen the popular altars in people’s houses with their smorgasbord of soup tureens, jewelry, dolls, flowers, and goblets and compared them with the house altars of Guatemalan Mayan priests, even ordinary Guatemalans, comes inevitably to the conclusion that it is the objects that are the real carriers and mediators of the transcendental and not the priests or representatives of religion. In my opinion, the crusade of Pentecostals, Charismatic Catholics, and also Mayan activists against the saints and all their adherent iconoclastic presentation of the holy is part of this desire to reject syncretism and to obtain a religious purity and authenticity, in short, to gain essentialism.

Aura Marina Cumes (Maya Kaqchiquel, Mayan Priestess, UNESCO), June, 14, 2001, Guatemala City.

Cleary and Steigenga in Conversion of a Continent argue (2007: 5) observe: “Within the wide disciplinary range of European and North American scholars studying the theme, there has been a general consensus that conversion involves a process of radical personal change in beliefs, values, and, to some degree, personal identity and worldview.” They refer to Snow and Machalek’s well-known “Sociology of Conversion,” in Annual Review of Sociology 10 (1984): 170. See also the classic article by John Lofland and Rodney Stark, “Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective,” in American Sociological Review 30, no. 6 (December 1965): 862 – 875.

Religion is defined here as a system that is composed of four domains: discourse, religious practices, community, and institution. All of these elements are united through the discourse, which has to be concerned with a truth and authority that is other than human, temporal, and contingent. See Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors, Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 5 – 8.

Whether or not there is also a crisis-related aspect that induces the change in religious affiliation among members of the Maya movement needs to be proven, since Audelino Sac’s biography alone is not sufficient evidence to make this claim.

I find striking parallels to Judaism in this respect. Similarly to activists in the Maya movement, converts are sought among the same ethnic group, either Jewish or, in this case, Mayan.

Canessa (2000) has argued that the principal aim of these policies in Bolivia was to create a new homogeneous national identity and to turn Indians into Mestizos. I do not know to what extent the Guatemalan government tried to enforce an assimilationist agenda, but the rejection of Mayan languages certainly reflected the existing racism and the inferior place of indigenous culture, including indigenous language, in Guatemalan society. Andrew Canessa, “Contesting Hybridity: Evangelistas and Kataristas in Highland Bolivia,” in Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 1 (2000): 115 – 144.

Rubén Feliciano Pérez described in an interview how the traditional medical system was weakened by health centers. Traditionally, midwives and healers (curanderos/as) were paid with goods, such as a pound of beans or corn. The health center then started to train some of the local midwives and to give them a certificate when they completed the course. With this certificate, the midwives started to ask for money instead of natural produce. This new system broke with the communal mechanism that was based on solidarity and introduced new, monetary aspects. Rubén Feliciano Pérez, August 27, 2001, Comitancillo.

The chuj is widely used in the indigenous highlands. The chuj is usually made of typical adobe bricks, is about 1.5 meters high, and resembles a bread oven, except that it is a little bigger. The indigenous population attributes medical benefits to it, and it serves hygienic purposes. The latter is of great importance, because many of the households, especially in remote areas, do not possess a proper water supply.

Padre Eric Gruloos, December 10, 2001, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos.

Notable exceptions are Syliva Brennwald (2001), Ricardo Falla (1978), Douglas Brintnall (1979), and Richard Wilson (1995a). The connection of researchers to the Catholic Church – some well-known academics are also Catholic priests – is one likely reason for this lack of criticism. The positive role of Catholicism (e.g., support for the poor and efforts to protect human rights after the first democratic elections in 1986) and the persecution of Church members in the past might be additional factors responsible for the predominant narratives.

Ricardo Falla is a priest who was also trained as an anthropologist. He studied the indigenous community San Antonio Ilotenango in the mid-1970s. See Ricardo Falla, Quiché rebelde: estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales, en San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiché (1948 – 1970) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1978a).

Kay B. Warren 1989.

There are also scholars who describe the missionary campaigns of the Catholic Church and the growth of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as a reaction to the unparalleled growth of Protestantism, in particular Pentecostalism (see R. Andrew Chesnut, Competitive Spirits. Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003b). It has to be noted, nevertheless, that the campaigns of the Guatemalan Catholic Church against Mayan spirituality in the 1950s and 1960s took place before the unprecedented growth of Pentecostalism in the villages. They were also not designed to drive back a religious competitor but to regain those indigenous Mayans whom the Church felt were lost to pagan superstitious practices.

Interview with Severo Sánchez, Flavio López, Silvia Gómez, Felix Pérez (Maya Mam, Catholics, pseudonyms), October 9, 2001, Tuixoquel, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Ibid.

Carlos Pérez Alvarado (Mayan priest, Maya Mam, pseudonym), November 15, 2001, Taltimiche, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Ibid.

Varas are special sticks or staffs, which are assigned special powers.

Interview with Javier Llamazares (pseudonym), Member of the Mayan organization Ajchmol and a Mayan priest, San Marcos, December 8, 2001. The Protestant pastor Anselmo Pérez Tomás from the Central American Mission confirmed that Protestants also participated in these burnings. His father, he said, was a Mayan Priest and burned his cult objects when he converted. Interview Anselmo Pérez Tomás (CAM, pastor, pseudonym), October 10, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Walburga Rupflin Alvarado, El tzolkin es más que un calendario (México: CEDIM, 1997).

Audelino Sac Coyoy (Mayan Priest and employee of the ILO), May 1, 2001, Quetzaltenango.

Traditional Mayan priests are, in my view, a mix of what Max Weber described as ideal types of ‘traditional authority’ and ‘charismatic authority.’ They are traditional because their authority rests on customs. They are also charismatic authorities, because their power is bound to their person, resting on devotion to their exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character and to the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained in that person. Max Weber [1921], “Kapitel III. Die Typen der Herrschaft. 4. Charismatische Herrschaft,” in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Siebeck), 1980), 140 – 148.

Interview Patricia Morales (Maya Mam, midwife, pseudonym), September 23, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Two events that document the changing nature of Mayan religious rituals were a ceremony held on October 10, 1994 to celebrate the extension of the local power lines and another celebration on September 6, 1994 at the founding of the Mam cultural association Jyol B’e. See Rubén Feliciano Pérez, Monografía del municipio Comitancillo (Comitancillo: Pueblo Partisans, 1996), 47.

Don Constantino (a pseudonym) is a Mayan priest and a member of the local revitalization group.

Carlos Pérez Alvarado (Mayan priest, Maya Mam, pseudonym), November 15, 2001, Taltimiche, Comitancillo, San Marcos. Religious pluralism means that only parts of the community participate in the ceremony. Protestants, orthodox Catholics, and charismatic Catholics usually abstain. However, this does not mean that the audience is small. People from the entire region join in, including the neighboring province of Huehuetenango, resulting in sort of a holiday atmosphere.

Aurelio Maldonado (Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 15, 2001, Chicajalaj, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Miguel Ortiz Domingo from the adjoining municipio San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán (Huehuetenango) was among the first who led and performed the Mayan New Year ceremonies. Only in recent years have Mayan priests from Comitancillo participated in and led ceremonies. Interview Carlos Pérez Alvarado (Mayan priest, Maya Mam, pseudonym), November 13, 2001, Taltimiche, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Group interview with Severo Sánchez, Flavio López, Silvia Gómez, Felix Pérez (Catholics, Maya Mam, pseudonyms), Tuixoquel, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Ibid.

The Mayan cross is a pre-colonial religious symbol that can be found throughout the entire region of what is today Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Conversation with Elias Diego Sánchez (Maya Mam, Maya activist, pseudonym), September 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

The focus of this chapter is on these two movements. Definitions in terms of theological doctrine, history, etc., are explained throughout the chapter.

Pentecostalism has also become the largest Christian movement worldwide. See André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani, eds., Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America (London: Hurst and Co., 2001); Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990); David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

This sentence refers to different theoretical perspectives, in particular those that go along with secularization theories, including the hypothesis of the privatization of religion (Luckmann 1967) and the demise of religion according to Max Weber’s ‘disenchantment of the world’ hypothesis. See Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Hans Heinrich Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 129 – 156, 155. For more information, see the introduction to this volume.

Brazilian scholar Leonildo Silveira Campos aptly captured these seemingly opposed features of market capitalism and religion, entitling his study on the Brazilian neo-Pentecostal Church of the United Kingdom of God “Theatre, Temple or Market?” Leonildo Silvera Campos, Teatro, templo y mercado. Comunicación y marketing de los nuevos pentecostales en América Latina (Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes Ltda, 1997).

It is important to note that mainline Protestant churches only constitute a minority in Guatemala. Heinrich Schäfer already talks about an extinction of historic mainline churches such as Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Email correspondence with Heinrich Schäfer, August 8, 2002. In an interview on November 13, 2001, Fernando Mazariegos Rodríguez, President of the Central Presbyter of the Presbyterian Church of Guatemala, gives the figure of approximately 385 pastors and a membership of 49,500 people. Roger W. Grossmann, Interpreting the Development of the Evangelical Church in Guatemala: Year 2002 (Wake Forest, N.C.: D.Min. project, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, September 2002), 474.

Many of these religious practices relate to the so-called Toronto Blessing or ‘Father’s Blessing,’ a revival-like manifestation that began in a small strip mall just outside Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in January 1994. However, the “seeming pandemonium” experienced had precedents in early American revivals and church history. See Margret M. Poloma, “Toronto Blessing” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1149 – 1152, 1149 – 1150; H. Vinsan Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 1997).

Timothy J. Steigenga and Edward L. Cleary, eds., Conversion of a Continent: Contemporary Religious Change in Latin America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 3.

Edward L. Cleary, “Shopping Around: Questions about Latin American Conversions,” in International Bulletin of Missionary Research 28 (2004): 50 – 54. In many recent volumes one can also find a generalization of terms such as Pentecostalism. For instance, in André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani 2001; Philip Jenkins 2002; David Martin 1990, 2002. The generalization also supported the misleading assumption that no difference exists between Evangelicals on various continents, in particular between those in the United States and Latin America. However, what an Evangelical is and what it means in the United States is markedly different from an Evangelical in Guatemala or, for that matter, in Germany.

Timothy J. Steigenga and Edward L. Cleary 2007: 3; Lilian R. Goldin and Brent E. Metz, “An Expression of Cultural Change: Invisible Converts to Protestantism among the Highland Guatemala Mayas,” in Ethnology 30, no. 4 (October 1991): 325 – 338; Goldin, “Work and Ideology in the Maya Highlands of Guatemala: Economic Beliefs in the Context of Occupational Change,” in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 41, no. 1 (October 1992): 103 – 123; Goldin, “Models of Economic Differentiation and Cultural Change,” in Journal of Quantitative Anthropology 6, no. 1 – 2 (1996): 49 – 74.

Among the exceptions are Christopher L. Chiappari’s dissertation, Rethinking Religious Practice in Highland Guatemala: An Ethnography of Protestantism, Maya Religion, and Magic (Minneapolis: Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1999), and C. Mathews Samson, Re-enchanting the World: Maya Protestantism in the Guatemalan Highlands (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007).

Popular or folk Catholicism in Guatemala is characterized by its unique blend of pre-Columbian Mayan spirituality and European Catholicism. For a more detailed description of folk Catholicism, see the Catholicism chapter in this book.

Manuela Canton Delgado, Bautizados en fuego: protestantes, discursos de converión y política en Guatemala (1989 – 1993) (Antigua: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoa-mérica (CIRMA), 1998); Virginia Garrard-Burnett, A History of Protestantism in Guatemala (New Orleans: Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1986); Ingelore Möller, Kirche und Kultur in Mexico und Guatemala. Auswirkungen des christlichen Engagements auf die kulturelle Selbstbestimmung der Maya (Bonn: Holos Verlag, 1997); Elisabeth Rohr, Die Zerstörung kultureller Symbolgefüge: Über den Einfluß protestantisch-fundamentalistischer Sekten in Lateinamerika und die Zukunft der indianischen Lebenswelt (München: Eberhard Verlag, 1990); Juliana Ströbele-Gregor, Indios de piel blanca. Evangelistas fundamentalistas en Chuquiyawu (La Paz: HISBOL, 1989); Juliana Ströbele-Gregor, Dialektik der Gegenaufklärung. Zur Problematik fundamentalistischer und evangelikaler Missionierung bei den urbanen Aymara in La Paz (Bolivien) (Bonn: Holos-Verlag, 1988).

Daniel Ramírez, “Public Lives in American Hispanic Churches: Expanding the Paradigm,” in: Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, eds. Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177 – 195, 179 – 180.

Ríos Montt belonged to the church El Verbo.

Enrique Domínquez and Deborah Huntington, “The Salvation Brokers: Conservative Evangelicals in Central America,” NACLA. Report on the Americas 18, no. 1 (January / February 1984): 2 – 36; David Stoll, “Evangelistas, guerrilleros y ejército: El triangulo Ixil bajo el poder de Ríos Montt,” in Guatemala: Cosechas de violencia, ed. Robert M. Carmack (San José, C.R.: FLACSO, 1991), 155 – 199; Stoll, “Jesus is Lord of Guatemala”: Evangelical Reform in a Death-Squad State,” in Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, eds. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 99–123; Veronica Melander, The Hour of God? People in Guatemala Confronting Political Evangelism and Counterinsurgency (1976 – 1990) (Uppsala: Uppsala University Library, 1999).

For an answer to this question, see historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s excellent study, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982 – 1983 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

For a more detailed criticism regarding the Pew data, see the upcoming section on the distribution of Protestantism among the indigenous and non-indigenous population.

Roger W. Grossmann, The Deleterious Effects of Syncretism in the Evangelical Chuch of Guatemala. Paper presented to Intermissions (Antigua: March 2007). Pew presents the figure of 11.2 percent with no religious affiliation in 1995 and 15.6 percent in 1998 – 99. That is an astonishing rise of 4.4 percent in only three to four years. See Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (Washington D.C.: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2006), http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/pentecostals-06.pdf , 76.

Roger W. Grossmann 2007: 2.

For Grossmann, indicators of the internalization of the gospel are biblical knowledge and scripture combined with the absence of ‘pagan’ Mayan elements in worship.

It is not just a sympathetic Evangelical researcher, Roger W. Grossmann, who acknowledges the longstanding weak or absent growth of Protestantism in Guatemala. Dutch anthropologist Henri Gooren also noted in his research that Protestant growth had already stagnated at the beginning of the 1990s. See Henri Gooren, “Reconsidering Protestant Growth in Guatemala, 1900 – 1995,” in Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America, eds. James W. Dow, and Alan R. Sandstrom (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 167–201.

This point – the distribution of Protestantism among the indigenous and non-indigenous population – gives insight into the question of whether, from an ethnic perspective, some Protestant faith traditions are attractive to some but not to other members of society. For instance, does ethnic identity increase the likelihood that a person will be Protestant or Catholic?

There is a whole set of sub-aspects related to these issues: Can we distinguish indigenous from non-indigenous Protestantism? If so, what are the differences and similarities between them, for example in terms of organizational structure, doctrine, history, and motivations for participation? Is it possible to identify ethnic or cultural motives as to why certain faith traditions are more attractive to certain groups? Can we trace a connection between racial marginalization, racial superiority, and the appearance of Protestantism? Here it is useful to be reminded of the fact that different Protestant movements – and for that matter the Maya movement – recruit members from the same ethnic groups and the same class but with differing success; Pentecostal congregations are much more successful, although they do not explicitly resort to ethnicity in their religious agenda.

Roger W. Grossmann 2002; David Martin 1990: 91; David Stoll 1990.

The following studies were published in part after the signing of the Peace Accords in December 1996. Nevertheless, the data they use and the period they cover is from the 1970s to the 1990s. These studies represent, although not exclusively, the most important hypotheses that have been made about Protestant growth in Guatemala. Manuela Cantón Delgado 1998; Edward L. Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino, Conflict and Competition: The Latin American Church in a Changing Environment (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992); Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1986; Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998); Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Lilian R. Goldin 1992; Lilian R. Goldin and Brent E. Metz (1991); Henri Gooren, Rich Among the Poor: Church, Firm, and Household Among Small-Scale Entrepreneurs in Guatemala City (Amsterdam: Thela Thesis, 1999); Luis Samandú, ed., Protestantismos y procesos sociales en Centroamérica, (San José, C.R.: Programa Centroamericano de Investigaciones, Secr. General de CSUCA, 1990); Heinrich Schäfer, Protestantismus in Zentralamerika: Christliches Zeugnis im Spannungsfeld von US-amerikanischem Fundamentalismus, Unterdrückung und Wiederbelebung “indianischer” Kultur (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992); Amy Sherman, The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Gutemala (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997); David Stoll 1990.

Garrard-Burnett, “Like a Mighty Pushing Wind”: The Growth of Protestantism in Contemporary Latin Amerika,” in Religion and Latin America in the Twenty-first Century: Libraries Reacting to Social Change, ed. Mark L. Grover (Austin: SALALM Secretariat, 1999), 61–70; Henri Gooren 2001: 167–201.

Tom Barry, Inside Guatemala (Albuquerque, N.M.: Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1992), 300.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1998: 121–122.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett mentioned a 14 percent growth in the number of Protestants in 1976, the year the earthquake occurred. Garrard-Burnett 1998: 121.

Today, Sheldon Annis’ argument is obsolete in two ways. First, conversion is no longer a significant factor because the Protestant boom has stopped. The social reality of current Protestantism deals more with the phenomenon of people switching from one church to another within Protestantism. Second, the importance and the function of the cofradías is not the same when compared to the 1970s. Still, Annis’ data are important because he relates Protestantism to the broader nation-state. In other words, Protestantism facilitates the economic integration of indigenous people into the nation-state, because it provides a reconciliation of faith with the requirements of modern labor. Religion appears then to be a by-product of economic integration. Sheldon Annis, God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (Austing: University of Texas Press, 1987).

Sheldon Annis describes Protestantism as the “anti-milpa force” to document the connection between traditional crop growing and popular Catholicism and argues that a new religious institution offered a means to break out of this system. See Annis 1987: 10.

Waldemar R. Smith, The Fiesta System and Economic Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

See Ricardo Falla, Quiché rebelde: estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales en San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiché (1948–1970) (Guatemala: Ed. Universitaria, 1978); Douglas E. Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979). For detailed information on the Acción Católica movement, see the preceding chapter on Catholicism.

Sheldon Annis 1987. Douglas E. Brintnall (1979) speaks of a new indigenous pride through conversion. Ricardo Falla 1978.

For Almolonga, see Lilian R. Goldin 1992; Goldin and Brent Metz 1991. For information on similar phenomena in Mexico, see Carlos Garma Navarro, Protestantismo en una comunidad totonaca de Puebla: un estudio político (México D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Serie de Antropología Social. Colección Número 76, 1987).

Everett Wilson noted in this respect, “The conclusion that Guatemalans resorted to ideologically neutral evangelical churches to escape military suspicion, however likely, does not account for the conversions that were made outside the military zone and the ongoing institutional development that the Pentecostals achieved during times of relative security. […] Only by ignoring the Pentecostals’ independence, initiative, and organizational tendencies can these groups be represented as passive and largely irrelevant to social changes occurring in the troubled country.” Wilson, “Guatemalan Pentecostals: Something of Their Own,” in Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America, eds. Edward L. Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 139 – 162, 151. Moreover, if one believes the statistical data, the earthquake contributed to conversions to a much larger extent then the civil war.

According to Tom Barry, between 1974 and 1982, thirteen Catholic priests were killed. Barry 1992: 192. Bruce Calder, “Interwoven Histories: The Catholic Church and the Maya, 1940 to the Present,” in Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change, eds. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 93 – 124.

Yvon LeBot, La guerra en tierras Mayas: comunidad, violencia y modernidad en Guatemala (1970 – 1992) (Mexico, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Sección de Obras de Sociología, 1995).

María del Pilar Hoyos de Asis, Dónde estás? Fernando Hoyos (Guatemala: Fondo de Cultura Ed., 1997).

Yvon LeBot 1995: 147; David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

Samuel J. Escobar, “Conflict of Interpretation of Popular Protestantism,” in New Face of the Church in Latin America, ed. Guillermo Cook (New York: Orbis Books, 1994), 117.

Interview with Herbert Mauricio Álvarez López in Fíjate, no. 264 (June 17, 2002): 2. Officially, under the Carter administration the United States stopped giving money to the Guatemalan military. Unofficially the policy might have been different, because links between the CIA and the Guatemalan military were often reported. The CIA has since opened its archives, but many of the files were censured.

Tom Barry 1992: 187.

Santiago Bastos and Aura Cumes, eds. Mayanización y vida cotidiana: la ideología multicultural en la sociedad guatemalteca (Guatemala: FLACSO / CIRMA, 2007); PNUD Guatemala, Guatemala: ¿una economía al servicio del desarrollo humano?: informe nacional de desarrollo humano: 2007 – 2008, Vol. 2 (Guatemala: PNUD Guatemala, 2008).

Luís E. Samandú 1990: 70.

It seems to me that the continued service of aging Catholic priests is a serious issue in many indigenous communities, not just in Guatemala.

For example, interview with Valentín Quezada (IdDEC, Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 19, 2001. Ixmoco, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Data from field research on the congregations Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, the Central American Mission, and the Iglesia del Nazareno stems from the municipalities of Comitancillo and San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Cristóbal Ixchiguán, and Concepción Tutuapa. Research on these municipalities included the sourrounding areas. Additionally, interviews with overseers from the departments of San Marcos and Quetzaltengo were held, in particular Román López (pastor IdDEC), June 29, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos; and Orlando Valenzuela (IdDEC, Supervisor Region Los Altos), May 15, 2001, Quetzaltenango.

See Enrique Domínguez and Deborah Huntington 1984; David Stoll 1991, 1994, and Veronica Melander 1999.

Centro de Estudios Integrados de Desarrollo Comunal (CEIDEC), ed., Guatemala. Polos de desarrollo. El caso de la desestructuración de las comunidades indígenas (México D.F.: Editorial Praxis, 1990).

Veronica Melander 1999.

See Veronica Melander 1999: 290 – 292.

Hoksbergen and Madrid Espinoza, “The Evangelical Church and the Development of Neoliberal Society: A Study of the Role of the Evangelical Church and its NGOs in Guatemala and Honduras,” in Journal of Developing Areas 32, no. 1 (Fall 1997): 37– 52, 47.

See Sherman 1997.

Amy L. Sherman 1997: 147– 149.

David Martin 1990: 253; Waldemar Smith 1977.

Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford, and Susan D. Rose, eds., Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism (New York: Routledge, 1996).

See Sheldon Annis 1987; Douglas E. Brintnall 1979; Robert S. Carlsen, Of Bullets, Bibles and Bokunabs: What in the World is Going on in Santiago Atitlán? (Boulder: Ph.D. diss., Ann Arbor, Mich. Microfilms Internat., 1992); Robert S. Carlsen, “Social Organization and Disorganization in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala,” in Ethnology 35, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 141 – 160; Robert S. Carlsen and Martin Prechtel, “The Flowering of the Dead: An Interpretation of Highland Maya Culture,” in Man. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26, no. 1(1991): 23–42; Robert S. Carlsen, The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997); Duncan Earle, “Authority, Social Conflict and the Rise of Protestantism: Religious Conversion in a Mayan Village,” in Social Compass 39, no. 3 (1992): 377 – 388.

Many studies underline that women, independent of their ethnic or class identity, make up a sizable majority within Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches. See Elizabeth Ellen Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). Also, it has been stressed that among Pentecostals the constituency is predominantly poor or lower-middle class. See Cecilia Loreto Mariz, Coping with Poverty: Pentecostal and Christian Base Communities in Brazil (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).

Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala (CEG), “Quinientos Años Sembrando el Evangelio. Carta Pastoral Colectiva de los Obispos de Guatemala, 15 de Agosto de 1992,” in Al Servicio de la Vida la Justicia y la Paz. Documentos de la Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala 1956 – 1997, ed. Conferencia Epsicopal de Guatemala (CEG) (Guatemala: Ediciones San Pablo, 1997): 572 – 630, 588.

David Stoll 1990.

Henri Gooren has published an article that deals exclusively with Protestant growth, but unfortunately he does not differentiate between indigenous and non-indigenous Protestants. Gooren 2001: 167– 201. A brief summary of arguments that explain Protestant population growth is included in his Ph.D. dissertation. See Gooren 1998: 58 – 59.

Hans Siebers, ‘We are Children of the Mountain’, Creolization and Modernization Among the Q’eqchi’es (Amsterdam: CEDLA, Centrum voor Studie en Documentatie van Latijns Amerika, 1999).

In general, a word of caution has to be added regarding statistical reliability in developing countries such as Guatemala, with SEPAL clearly being an exception. Often churches do not collect data on their membership or boost numbers in order to appear more successful. See Roger W. Grossmann, “Conclusiones acerca de los hallazgos de este proyecto,” in Estado de la Iglesia Evangelica en Guatemala – Enero 2,003 – Reporte Actualizado (Guatemala: SEPAL, 2003): 4; Interview Israel López (PdPdP, Pastor), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos. The language variety – besides Spanish 22 different indigenous languages and dialects are spoken – adds to the difficulties in conducting meaningful surveys. Well-trained translators are difficult to find, and they also have to be paid.

The SEPAL and Pew percentages are very similar. SEPAL’s figures are: 58.1 percent Catholics, 25.4 percent Evangelicals (this category refers to Protestants in general, including mainline denominations, Pentecostal, and neo-Pentecostal churches), 13.9 percent without a religious affiliation, and 2.6 percent what they call ‘sects,’ including Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses (Roger W. Grossmann 2003). Pew, referring to the 1998 – 99 Guatemalan Demographic and Health Survey, documents 52.6 percent Catholics, 29.4 percent Protestants, 15.6 percent Non-Affiliated, and 1.9 percent Other (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (Washington D.C.: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2006), http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/pentecostals-06.pdf., p. 76. Also, CID/ Gallup polls from January and June 1994, quoted in Gooren, indicate similar percentages. According to these polls, 23.2 percent and 21.6 percent of the population say they are Protestants (Gooren 2001: 195). I consider the Pew data problematic, since this estimate is based on the Guatemalan Demographic and Health Survey, a public survey whose accuracy is highly questionable. It asserts, for instance, “Indigenous Mayans make up 0.5 percent of the population.” (p. 76). Questions were only asked in Spanish (p. 93), and therefore monolingual indigenous speakers were either not considered or probably gave inaccurate answers because they could not understand the questionnaire. See Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2006, http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/pentecostals-06.pdf . In contrast, Roger Grossmann’s data is more detailed in its analysis and procedure. He also recognizes the language problem and states, “[U] sually the surveyors worked with translators in the heavily Indian areas, but even at times, there have been problems in the translation from Spanish to a particular Mayan language.” Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 370.

Interview Abner Rivera, (SEPAL), August 9, 2001, Guatemala City.

Roger W. Grossmann 2003: 13 – 14.

Participant observation included services at Fraternidad Cristiana (Pastor Jorge L. López), May 13, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia de Cristo Central Ministerio Rey de Reyes (Apostel Alex González), May 27, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia Casa de Dios (Pastor Cash Luna), February 3, 2002; and Iglesia Eben-Ezer (Apostel Sergio Enríquez), February 17, 2002, Guatemala City. Sermons were taped, transcribed and codified.

The only exception is the Bethany church, a non-denominational church which was founded in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city. Because Quetzaltenango’s population has a higher percentage of indigenous people, so does the Bethany church. The following figures from researcher Roger Grossmann provide a more detailed look into the percentage of Ladinos and Indígenas in major denominations. The predominantly indigenous churches are: Bethany (neo-Pentecostal), 36 percent Ladino, 64 percent Indian (N 146); Church of God Gal, 3 percent Ladino, 97 percent Indian (N 36); Church of God NJ, 30 percent Ladino, 70 percent Indian (N 54); and Central American, 30 percent Ladino, 70 percent Indian (N 359). Other churches with a majority of Ladino membership include: Assemblies of God, 66 percent Ladino, 34 percent Indian (N 684); Elim, 76 percent Ladino, 24 percent Indian; Church of God WG, 51 percent Ladino, 49 percent Indian (N 797); Miel, 69 percent Ladino, 31 percent Indian; Nazarene, 63 percent Ladino, 37 percent Indian; Prince of Peace, 72 percent Ladino, 28 percent Indian. Others denominations are broken down as follows: Presbyterian, 72 percent Ladino, 28 percent Indian; CAM, 30 percent Ladino, 70 percent Indian. See Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 391.

Roger W. Grossmann 2003: 15.

Interview with Orlando Herrera Pinzón, Assembly of God, 5 October 2001, Guatemala. Quoted by Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 398.

Roger W. Grossmann 2001: 10 – 11. Rose and Schultze wrote: “And from one-fourth to one-third of all Guatemalan evangelicals are indigenous, representing an adult population of 125,000 out of a total of 400,000.” Susan D. Rose and Quentin J. Schultze, “The Evangelical Awakening in Guatemala: Fundamentalist Impact on Education and Media,” in Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education, eds., Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 415 – 451, 419.

Roger W. Grossmann 2003: 13.

Bischop Álvaro Ramazzini Imeri, November 9, 2001, San Marcos.

Interview Abner Rivera (SEPAL), August 9, 2001, Guatemala City; Interview Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City.

Israel López (Pastor, IdPdP), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos.

Henri Gooren 1998: 57.

Interview Abner Rivera (SEPAL), August 9, 2001, Guatemala City.

See Henri Gooren 2001: 175, who refers to Clifton Holland (1981: 69 – 70), and also the above-quoted Susan D. Rose and Quentin Schultze (1990: 419). See also Clifton Holland, ed., World Christianity: Central America and the Carribean (Monrovia, CA: MARC/World Vision, 1981).

Henri Gooren 2001: 175; Roger W. Grossmann 2002.

Guatemalan provinces according to their ethnic distribution are as follows: Totonicapan, 94.5 percent indigenous, 3 percent non-indigenous; Sololá, 93.6 percent indigenous, 4.8 percent non-indigenous; Alta Verapaz, 89 percent indigenous, 9.1 percent non-indigenous; Quiché, 83.4 percent indigenous, 13.8 percent non-indigenous; Chimaltenango, 77.7 percent indigenous, 20.2 percent non-indigenous. Quetzaltenango has a percentage of 59.6 percent indigenous and 38.5 percent non-indigenous, and San Marcos 42.5 percent indigenous, 55.1 percent non-indigenous. Naciones Unidas en Guatemala (CEPAL), Guatemala. Los Contrastes del Desarrollo Humano (Guatemala: CEPAL/PNUD, 1998), 220. UNDP uses INE sources (Instituto Nacional de Estadística). As already mentioned, these figures can only be used with caution and at best as an approximation. INE numbers the total indigenous population at 41.7 percent (and non-indigenous even higher at 55.7 percent) even though there is general agreement that Guatemala has an indigenous population of at least 60 percent. Unfortunately as of July 2013, more current data is not available.

Andrés Opazo Bernales, “El Movimiento Protestante en Centroamérica. Una aproximación cuantitativa,” in Protestantismos y Procesos Sociales en Centroamérica, Luis Samandú ed., (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1990), 11 – 38, 24; Heinrich Schäfer, Befreiung vom Fundamentalismus. Entstehung einer neuen kirchlichen Praxis im Protestantismus Guatemalas (Münster: Edición Liberación, 1988), 22. Both rely on data from PROCADES (Programa Centroamericano de Estudios Socioreligiosos) from the 1980s. Schäfer slightly modified the dataset and supplemented it with other material.

Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City; Israel López Gúzman (IdPdP, Pastor), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos.

The word ‘charismatic’ is derived from a Greek word meaning grace or gift. It is used in the Bible – especially in 1 Corinthians 12 – 14 – to describe a wide range of supernatural experiences.

Spittler, “Glossolalia,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 670 – 676, 670.

At exactly this point, the ambivalence between the neo-Pentecostal prosperity gospel and classical Pentecostalism comes to the surface. Neo-Pentecostalism accepts the representation of wealth as a sign of God’s blessing, yet the desire to achieve and maintain wealth is also seen as mixed with the temptations of evil. This in a way reflects the old dilemma of living a Christian life: how to be good when evil is everywhere. In a modern form and applied to Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism, this means that classical Pentecostalism denounces wealth and clearly distinguishes between a ‘corrupt this-world’ and ‘holy other-world.’ Nevertheless, the believer has to bring his or her holy identity into the corrupt present. Within neo-Pentecostalism, on the contrary, the boundary between good and evil is much more blurred. In sum, money, to use one of the most prominent symbols of the prosperity gospel, represents both Satan and God’s grace.

The origin of this opposition comes from the history of the missionary movements and their background. Roger Grossmann provided me with the following details on missionary history regarding the antagonisms between Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism: “The thrust of Pentecostalism entered Guatemala in the 1940s and was associated with the Church of God and the Assemblies of God. Their missionaries and missionary target groups were generally poorer and less educated. From these, many fragment groups and independent groups were birthed, most notably Munoz’s Príncipe de Paz. Until the 1980s the Pentecostal groups remained in the poorer strata. In contrast, neo-Pentecostals have a very interesting background in that most of their early leaders were trained by the traditional denominations, notably the Presbyterian Church and the Central American Mission. Later, when they established their own denominations and churches, they coupled their more formal training with Pentecostal zeal and the media. Through the 1990s much of their way to promote the gospel came from Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn and others from the U.S., closely linking it with the prosperity gospel in the U.S. Currently, some groups, such as El Shaddai and Familia de Dios, are returning to a more traditional theology.” Email correspondence with Roger W. Grossmann, July 22, 2009.

Information from Summer Institute of Linguistics missionary staff member, Karen Vaters, July 16, 2001, Comintancillo, San Marcos.

Kevin Lewis O’Neill, City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) and email correspondence with author on February 14, 2010. See also Heinrich Schäfer, Identität als Netzwerk: Zur Theorie von Habitus und Identität am Beispiel sozialer Bewegungen. Eine Theoriestudie auf der Grundlage der interkulturellen Untersuchung zweier religiöser Bewegungen in Guatemala (1985/1986) (Berlin: Ph.D. diss., Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2002).

This of course does not mean that neo-Pentecostal churches do not attach importance to biblical training. As Roger Grossmann pointed out in personal email correspondence, many neo-Pentecostal churches emphasize Bible training, and most will have a commitment to Christian education ranging from informal seminars to Bible institutes and, in a few cases, seminaries. He also stated, “The leadership wants trained lay people with a common vision whereas in local Pentecostal churches the direction comes primarily from the pastor.” He adds, “It is true that the mega-churches have anonymity for those who choose it, but leadership always tries to move spectators to a closer relationship with Christ, the congregation, and the ministries of the church.” Grossmann to author, email correspondence, July 22, 2009.

Tithing, however, is one exception. In the neo-Pentecostal services visited (Fraternidad Cristiana, Iglesia de Cristo Central Ministerio Rey de Reyes, Iglesia Casa de Dios, Iglesia Eben-Ezer), tithing occupied an important role. The many temples built show that parishioners do take tithing seriously.

Martin Riesebrodt, Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

Martin Riesebrodt 1993.

Eschatology refers to the theological and philosophical study concerned with what is believed to be the final stage of the world or what people more commonly call ‘the end of the world.’

A comment from a Guatemalan member of a Pentecostal congregation in Chicago is telling in this respect. In a conversation after the church service, he said that hurricane Katrina occurred because God wanted to punish the inhabitants of New Orleans for their immoral lifestyles. Iglesia Elim, Rogers Park, Chicago, January 29, 2006.

Allan H. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 219.

Ibid., p. 217 – 220.

Christian Zwingmann and Sebastian Merken, “Coping with an Uncertain Future: Religiosity and Millenarianism,” Archiv für Religionspsychologie, 23 (2000): 11 – 28.

John Bowker ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 642.

Ibid.

Schäfer’s hypothesis is that Pentecostalism can be equated with premillenialism and neo-Pentecostalism with postmillennialism. See Heinrich Schäfer 2002. Yet it is not only my data that contradicts this clear-cut distinction. Roger W. Grossmann, an expert on Guatemalan Protestant churches who has lived for twenty years in Guatemala, became curious after I sent him a first draft of this chapter, and he started asking his colleagues in Guatemala about this. His observation and that of his fellow missionaries is as follows: “In the Western Highlands post-millennialism is virtually unknown. I spoke with […] a missionary who has a Bible School. His school […] has trained more than 600 students, most of whom are neo-Pentecostal like himself. They teach a pre-tribulation-premillennialism eschatology. He said that some of the students “are confused as they come in with a mix of post-tribulation and premillenialist views.” The ‘confusion’ stems from their understanding of the Great Tribulation, namely these students believe in both pre- and postmillennialist doctrinal elements at the same time. I then spoke with a Baptist pastor […] on August 20, 2009. He told me that two pastors in Cantel from Verbo and Elim backgrounds who are originally from the South coast […] do not use the term post-millennialism but their theology is just that; the Church improves society and will usher in the thousand years. […] Furthermore, I suspect that their world view shapes their interpretation of scripture more than scripture shapes their world view. This is because pastors usually do not cogently express their view scripturally, nor are they trained deeply in Bible interpretation.” Roger W. Grossmann in email correspondence to author, July 22, 2009 and February 14, 2010.

Interestingly, in Pentecostal congregations the eschatological content returned for a short period after September 11, 2001, a time when I was conducting fieldwork in Guatemala, but vanished after a few days. Taped services included Pentecostal Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo on September 12, 2001 in Comitancillo (San Marcos) and on September 18, 2001 in Chicajalaj, a hamlet that forms part of the municipality Comitancillo in the province of San Marcos.

Roger W. Grossmann 2003: 6; Roger W. Grossmann 2003.

Historically, the start of the movement was a revival that began on January 1, 1901 at Charles F. Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, KS. The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements says in this respect: “With the identification of speaking in tongues as the evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit, Parham and his students made a vital theological connection that has remained essential to much of classical Pentecostalism. While the immediate impact of this event was limited, Parham’s ministry gained more acceptance several years later in a revival conducted outside Houston, TX. From there William J. Seymour, a black Holiness preacher who had become convinced of the truth of Parham’s teaching, travelled to Los Angeles, CA, to preach the new message.” The revival at the Aszusa Street Mission ensued, and Pentecostalism began its march toward global success. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van der Maas 2002: xviii.

Allan H. Anderson 2004.

Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van der Maas 2002: xviii.

For information on the situation in South Africa, another racially divided country, see Allan H. Anderson, “Pentecostals and Apartheid in South Africa during Ninety Years 1908 – 1998,” in Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 9 (2001). http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj9/anderson.html (9 February 2001).

H. Vinson Synan, “Classical Pentecostalism,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 553 – 555, 553.

“Dispensationalism was the belief that history was divided into linear epochs, or ‘dispensations’, in which God progressively revealed His divine nature and plan to humanity. The Final Dispensation would culminate in the end of the world and the beginning of the thousand-year reign of Christ.” Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1998: 25. Regarding the influence of premillenarianism, Garrard-Burnett writes: “It is important to note that […] many Presbyterians, including some missionaries who came to Guatemala, were attracted to conservative theologies and even to the fiery eschatological doctrines of premillenarianism.” See Garrard-Burnett 1998: 28.

Virgilio A. Zapata Arceyuz, Historia de la iglesia evangélica en Guatemala (Guatemala: Génesis Publicidad S.A., 1982); Garrard-Burnett 1986; Garrard-Burnett 1998.

Richard E. Waldrop is a member of the Full Gospel Church of God. See Waldrop, “The Social Consciousness and Involvement of the Full Gospel Church of God of Guatemala,” in Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 2 (1997). http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj2/waldrop.html (2 July 1997).

Presbyterians, for instance, who were among the first missionaries in Guatemala, immediately established schools when they arrived. However, it is debatable whether those schools were established out of a social concern for the poor and disadvantaged, since they were open for the children of the richest families and represented an important source of income for Presbyterians. See Virgilio A. Zapata Arceyuz 1982. Roger Grossmann also commented on an earlier draft of this chapter, indicating that the Guatemalan Presbyterian schools in the 1930s were considered among the finest of the nation.

See Richard E. Waldrop 1997.

Ibid.

Interview Anselmo Pérez Tomás (Pastor CAM, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 10, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos. The CAM is officially not a Pentecostal but an Evangelical church. However, the theological differences between the CAM and Pentecostal churches with regard to the categorical neglect of Mayan spirituality are the same. Put differently, there are differences, but not when it comes to a forceful rejection of religious practices that are not considered Christian.

For instance, interview with Bernardo Flores Gutiérrez (IdDEC, Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 22, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Interview Bernardo Flores Gutiérrez (IdDEC, Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 22, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos; Anselmo Pérez Tomás (Pastor CAM, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 10, 2001.

Mario Gómez Morales (IdPdP, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 17, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Hans Siebers 1999: 39. This quote contains an interesting reference to Catholic catechists. Indeed, many catechists reject Mayan spirituality and religious practices as forcefully as Protestants. The chapter on Catholicism contains more information on this issue.

To protect the identity of my informants, no names are given. Mayan priest (Pocomchí) from Alta Verapza, May 21, 2001, Quetzaltenango; Mayan priest (Maya Mam), October 15, 2001, Aldea Chipel, municipality of Comitancillo, province of San Marcos. Whether their observation is correct cannot be proven. In the end, Mayan priests are also part of the religious landscape and have an interest in promoting their skills by saying that even the Protestant competition – that is members of churches who fiercely oppose their religious work – are among their customers.

For Almolonga, see Lilian R. Goldin and Brent E. Metz 1991; Goldin 1992.

To protect the identity of my informant, no name is given. Interview with Mayan priestess (Maya K’iche’), May 16, 2001, Zunil, province of Quetzaltenango.

Roger W. Grossmann 2002; Grossmann 2003.

Interview with Antonio Otzoy (Pastor, Presbyterian Church, Maya Kaqchiquel), May 9, 2001, Guatemala City.

Mario Gómez Morales (IdPdP, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 17, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

This aspect is part of the discourse of spiritual warfare and implies that sins are passed on in the family line over several generations. The belief is that these sins bring judgment or bondage into the life of individuals, reducing their quality of life. Consequently, spiritual warfare calls for individuals to repent of the sins and then the demons that caused the curses can and should be exorcised. What is of interest here is the type of sin – e. g., Mayan sacrifice in former generations – and the close relationship that exists between the idea of a ‘generational curse’ or ‘generational bondage’ and Guatemalan culture, in particular the importance of family and ancestor worship. For a full account of spiritual warfare and generational curses from the perspective of the neo-Pentecostal movement, see the website of Spiritual Warfare Ministries Online: http://www.sw-mins.org/gen_curses.html.

Among the neo-Pentecostal churches were: Fraternidad Cristiana (Pastor Jorge L. López), May 13, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia de Cristo Central Ministerio Rey de Reyes (Apostel Alex González), May 27, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia Casa de Dios (Pastor Cash Luna), February 3, 2002; and Iglesia Eben-Ezer (Apostel Sergio Enríquez), February 17, 2002, Guatemala City.

Service Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz, October 14, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos; Service Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz, November 20, 2001, Tajumulco, San Marcos; interview with indigenous Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz member on October 17, 2001 in Comitancillo, San Marcos; interview with indigenous Fraternidad Cristiana member on May 6, 2001.

Israel López Guzman (IdPdP, pastor), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez; interview with indigenous Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz member on October 17, 2001 in Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Evangelisches Missionswerk (EMW) ed., Geistbewegt und bibeltreu. Pfingstkirchen und fundamentalistische Bewegungen. Herausforderung für die traditionellen Kirchen (Hamburg: EMW, 1995), 14.

Other biblical references that deal with the question of race and ethnicity are Genesis 9:19; I Corinthians 15:45 – 46; Genesis 3:20; Genesis 10:5; Romans 3:23; I John 2:2; Revelation 5:9 and 17:15. I am indebted to John D. Morris from the Institute for Creation Research, who has put together these references in an article titled, “Are All Men Created Equal?” See Morris, “Are All Men Created Equal?” in Back to Genesis, Institute for Creation Research (ed). October 2006. Number 214. p.1 Online: http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/btg/btg-214.pdf.

Richard E. Waldrop 1997.

The origin of this denomination is in the United States. The complete English name is Full Gospel Church of God (Cleveland).

Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 391. According to Grossmann’s survey, 51 percent of the constituency are Ladinos and 49 percent Mayan.

Dennis Smith, CEDEPCA, April 23, 2001, Guatemala City; Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City. The first Protestant churches in Guatemala were part of mainline Protestantism, e. g., Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists and Mennonites. The important factor is the connection between them and the liberal Guatemalan state, which invited the first Protestant missionaries – Presbyterians – to Guatemala in 1882. Liberal president Justo Rufino Barrios tried to use Protestant missionaries to curtail the influence of Catholicism and the conservative elite associated with it. Catholicism was also strongly associated with the colonial period, a time from which the liberal elite tried to distance itself. Consequently, the emerging religious pluralism after independence was part of hegemonial power structures. See the chapter Catholicism for more details; see also Heinrich Schäfer, 2002.

Interview Virgilio Zapata (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City; Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz 1982; interview Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1998: 37.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 38.

Richard E. Waldrop 1997.

Henri Gooren 1998: 12, 2001: 175; David George Scotchmer, Symbols of Salvation: Interpreting Highland Maya Protestantism in Context (Albany: Ph.D. diss., State University of Albany, 1991), 9. Susan D. Rose and Quentin Schultze wrote: “Three-quarters of Protestant churches are located in the provincial towns and countryside, where one-half of the population lives.” Rose and Schultze 1993: 419.

Participant observation and surveys in the province of San Marcos, particularly the municipalities of Comitancillo, Concepción Tutuapa, and San Miguel Ixtahuacán, March 2001 until February 2002.

Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith: Cultural Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (Nashville, TN: Vanderbuilt University Press, 1967); Christian Lalive d′Epinay, Heaven to the Masses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile (London: Lutterworth Press, 1969).

Emilio Willems 1967; Bryan R. Roberts, “Protestant Groups and Coping with Urban Life in Guatemala,” in American Journal of Sociology 73, no. 6, (1968): 753 – 767; Christian Lalive d′E-pinay 1969.

Interview Fernando Suazo (former priest, Catholic Church employee), August 1998, Santa Cruz del Quiché, El Quiché.

The prosperity gospel has to be considered in this context, too. Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches have often been confronted with the accusation that they try to manipulate congregants in order to get their money. Bearing in mind that many rural Pentecostal congregations are built on kin means that money stays in the congregation. From this perspective, the congregation is like a religious family enterprise.

In my research I focused on the Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, Ministerios Elim MI-EL, Central American Mission, Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz, Fraternidad Cristiana (capital), Iglesia Eben-Ezer (capital), Iglesia de Dios (capital), Iglesia de Cristo Central Ministerio Rey de Reyes, and small, local, independent Pentecostal churches in indigenous villages.

Dennis Smith referred here to the innumerable small indigenous Pentecostal congregations. Interview Dennis Smith (CEDEPCA, Presbyterian missionary), April 23, 2001, Guatemala City.

For neo-Pentecostal churches in rural areas I would not apply this assessment.

Document provided by the Guatemalan Bishops Conference. Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Fechas para recordar (Guatemala: CEG, 2006). Email from CEG, June 9, 2009.

Andrew Canessa, “Contesting Hybridity: Evangelistas and Kataristas in Highland Bolivia,” in Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 1, Andean Issue (February 2000): 115 – 144, 134.

Hans Siebers 1999: 60 – 61.

This dynamic was probably reinforced by the political persecution of Catholic groups throughout the civil war. Corruption seems to be another factor, which confirms the symbolic retreat from the world.

Contrary to the opinion of many observers, Roger Grossmann found that worship is often not conducted in indigenous languages. Does that mean that indigenous pastors want to imitate what is considered non-indigenous culture? Is there an orientation towards ‘Western’ or at least Ladino culture? I don’t have an answer to these questions, but for the sake of argument this empirical fact is included here. See Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 361 – 363; and Roger W. Grossmann, “Language Usage Among Various Indian Groups of Evangelicals,” SEPAL Study April 2002. http://www.prolades.com/cra/regions/cam/gte/grossmann/Lang_Use.pdf.

Interview Virgilio Zapata (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City; see also Luís Samandú 1990: 74.

Interview Virgilio Zapata (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Interview Fermín Cuyuch (Pastor, IdDEC), February 9, 2002, Guatemala City.

He was 58 in February 2002, when the interview was conducted.

Interview Fermín Cuyuch (Pastor IdDEC), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City.

In this congregation I observed an exorcism during a Sunday service. Service Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, February 10, 2002, Zone 7, Guatemala City.

According to missionary Roger Grossmann, from the perspective of the convert, conversion often means upward social mobility with a better future and more prestige. He is also certain that “[t]his story can be repeated hundreds of thousands of times only with different names and faces.” Email correspondence, Grossmann to author, November 27, 2009.

See Silvia Brennwald 2001: 19.

Andrew Canessa 2000: 121.

This assessment is based on interviews with pastors, church leaders, representatives of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and participant observation. Linda and James Baartse (SIL), November 20, 2001, Tajumulco, San Marcos; Andy and Karen Vaters (SIL), July 16, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos; Wesley M. Collins (SIL), August 2, 2001, Guatemala City; Dennis Smith (CEDEPCA), April 23, 2001, Guatemala City; Domingo Güitz (ASIDE), June 12, 2001, Guatemala City; Orlando Valenzuela (Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, Supervisor Region Los Altos), May 15, 2001, Quetzaltenango; church meeting Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, 22 pastors present, December 4, 2001, District no. 6, Aldea El Colmito, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos.

Pseudonym.

I am well aware that treating conversion narratives as factual evidence is problematic. In neo-Pentecostal, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christian movements they form part of membership recruitment. In other words, they are strategic communication serving evangelizing purposes. Consequently, to differentiate between church discourse and factual (biographic) information seems at first impossible. To escape this dilemma, the method of German sociologist Fritz Schütze proved helpful. He suggested separating the transcript into ‘indexical’ and ‘generalized’ statements. Indexical statements have a concrete reference to ‘who did what when, where and why,’ while generalized statements point beyond the mere events. The latter include worldviews, religious doctrine, justifications, and arguments. The interviews were analysed according to these differences. Because the information provided here is indexical information and refers to the informants’ biography, it was retained to illustrate broader theoretical schemes.

On this point see Sheldon Annis, particularly the section of “The Holy Trek: Del suelo al Cielo.” Annis 1987: 81–106. In English, ‘del suelo al cielo’ roughly means ‘from the dirt to heaven.’

Oscar Navarro (Iglesia del Aposento Alto, Maya K’iche’, pseudonym), May 4, 2001, Quetzaltenango. He also stated in the interview: “You know, since I started in the church, God has given me spiritual and economic prosperity. I have my accountancy office at home and I have my work here.”

I have used here Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology of social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital. See Bourdieu, “The forms of capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 241 – 258.

Multiple Bible references are the primary source for these teachings, particularly from the New Testament. Since Pentecostals put New Testament teaching at the forefront, most of them emphasise the gifts of the Spirit because that is New Testament terminology.

Enrique Sandóval (CAM, Maya Mam, pseudonym), August 19, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Henri Gooren 1998: 59.

I did notice clear differences between Mayan and non-Mayan Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals regarding physical phenomena. For instance, I did not observe any exorcism or descriptions of the so-called ‘Toronto blessings’ in Mayan Pentecostal churches. Exorcisms and the ‘Toronto blessings’ are mostly paralleled by strong physical manifestations. I also asked colleagues who had participated in many Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal services and interviewed Ladinos and Mayans alike about their observations. Heinrich Schäfer, for instance, a theologian and sociologist by training, confirmed my observation. He said that he did not come across any exorcist practices or crude emphatic and emotionalized liturgy in Mayan Pentecostal and Mayan neo-Pentecostal worship services.

See interviews with Ignacio Méndez Gómez (IdDEC, Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 27, 2001, Comitancillo; Mario Gómez Morales (IdPdP, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 17, 2001, Comitancillo; Israel López Guzman (IdPdP, pastor), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez ; Anselmo Pérez Tomás (CAM, Maya Mam, pastor, pseudonym), October 10, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos. The physical experiences mentioned were trembling, crying, shouting, feelings of warmth, and visions. Now the well-informed reader of Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements might again object at this point and regard my question as being pure rhetoric by inviting the convert to simply repeat church doctrine. Yet I deem it important to take the assessments of converts seriously in order to understand certain phenomena. One such powerful explanatory aspect is that converts have experiences they regard as ‘holy,’ and that ultimately these phenomena are biblically described. Put differently, converts participate in rational, emotional, and physical ways in a faith tradition that is over two thousand years old.

Ignacio Méndez Gómez (IdDEC, Maya Mam, pseudonym), September 27, 2001, Comitancillo.

See the following section on the history of neo-Pentecostalism. Henri Gooren wrote that neo-Pentecostalism in Guatemala started in 1962. According to Gooren, the first organized churches were Calvario – with links to the U.S. Calvary churches – and Elim, which separated itself from the Central American Church (Henri Gooren 1998: 61). Moreover, the literature suggests that only a few neo-Pentecostal churches operated before the mid-1970s. See for instance Virgilio A. Zapata Arceyuz 1982.

Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford, and Susan D. Rose 1996.

See Wolfgang Bühne, Explosión carismática: Un análisis crítico de las doctrinas y prácticas de las llamadas “tres olas del Espíritu Santo” (Terrassa, España: Clie, 1994), 11. The start of the movement is usually associated with the founding of the International Full Gospel Businessman’s Fellowship by Demos Shakarian in 1951. See Peter D. Hocken, “Charismatic Movement,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 477 – 519, 477. Roger Grossmann’s observation is that in Guatemala, “Lutherans were never very influential. Instead Presbyterians (in Guatemala since 1892), and the Central American Mission (in Guatemala since 1899) were by far the largest and most influential denominations through the 1950s, with CAM going very strong through the early 1990s. Other churches that were significant are the Nazarenes who entered in 1902 and focused on the north eastern part of Guatemala. In Eastern Guatemala the Friends or Quakers entered in 1902.” Grossmann in email correspondence, July 22, 2009.

Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz 1982: 169.

Stanley M. Burgess, “Neocharismatics,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 928; David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Doctrinally, the boundaries between Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism are, with the exception of biblical literalism, extraordinarily fluid. Neo-Pentecostals share this with fundamentalism (conservative Evangelicals). Original fundamentalist faith principles include: a) inerrancy of the Bible, b) the Virgin Birth, c) the substitutionary Atonement of Christ, and d) Christ’s physical return. John Bowker 1997: 360 – 361; H. Vinson Synan, “Fundamentalism,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 655 – 658; Martin Riesebrodt, Fundamentalismus als patriarchialische Protestbewegung. Amerikanische Protestanten (1910 – 28) und iranische Schiiten (1961 – 79) im Vergleich (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1990), 12; Florencio Galindo, El “fenómeno de las sectas” fundamentalistas. La conquista evangélica de América Latina (Estella, Navarra: Ed.Verbo Divino, 1994): 162.

In Latin American colloquial language, ‘fufurufus’ means people of the elite. The antonym of ‘fufurufus’ is ‘chusma,’ lower class.

Kevin Lewis O’Neill 2010: xviii.

This is not to say that in the Guatemalan context being poor equals being indigenous. Still, the Guatemalan political and economic elite – and by this I mean the richest of the rich – is clearly non-indigenous. Moreover, most of the poor are also indigenous. See Marta Casaús Arzu for an analysis of the most influential Guatemalan families, their ethnicity, and racism. Marta Elena Casaús Arzú, Guatemala: linaje y racismo (San José, C.R.: FLACSO, 1992). Also, Marta Elena Casaús Arzú, La metamorfosis del racismo en Guatemala. (Guatemala: Ed. Cholsamaj, 1998).

Dennis A. Smith, Una tipología de las iglesias evangélicas en Guatemala (Guatemala: CEDEPCA, April 23, 2008); Interview Vitalino Similox (CIEDEG, Presbyterian Pastor, Maya Kaqchiquel), Guatemala City, May 14, 2001. In 2000, construction was ongoing on seven buildings that could seat between 2,000 and 15,000 people. These were El Verbo, Iglesia de Cristo Rey de Reyes, Iglesia de Jesucristo la Familia de Dios, Fraternidad Cristiana de Guatemala, Misión Cristiana Evangélica Lluvias de Gracia, El Shaddai, Casa de Dios, and Príncipe de Paz. Information provided by Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado.

On music, Roger Grossmann observed: “Christian pop music is a hallmark of neo-Pentecostal churches. They were the first to bring it into the country on a large scale. Now a lot of traditional churches copy their music. Generally, churches with pop or praise music appeal to people in their twenties and early thirties.” Roger W. Grossmann, email correspondence, July 22, 2009.

Kevin Lewis O’Neill comes to a similar conclusion with regard to the missionary conduct of the neo-Pentecostal church El Shaddai. See O’Neill 2010: 143 – 169.

El Verbo only appears at the bottom of the list. El Shaddai is not even on the list (Roger Grossmann 2002: 162). These churches are mentioned here because they have received much media attention due to the prominent political membership of ex-presidents José Efraín Ríos Montt and Jorge Serrano Elías; see the section on politics and neo-Pentecostalism.

These congregations were Fraternidad Cristiana (Pastor Jorge L. López), May 13, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia de Cristo Central Ministerio Rey de Reyes (Apostel Alex González), May 27, 2001, Guatemala City; Iglesia Casa de Dios (Pastor Cash Luna), February 3, 2002, Guatemala City; and Iglesia Eben-Ezer (Apostel Sergio Enríquez), February 17, 2002, Guatemala City.

Iglesia Eben-Ezer (Apostel Sergio Enríquez), February 17, 2002, Guatemala City.

Interview with Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City; Abner Rivera (SEPAL), August 9, 2001, Guatemala City; Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 20, 2002, Guatemala City.

Similox 1991: 56, quoted in Gooren 2001: 175 – 176. I agree with Roger Grossmann, who noted that this is not racial but social exclusion. He noted in an email correspondence: “In theory all are welcome, but in practice the churches have a corporate professional idea of how these churches should be operated and, consequently, want a well educated, organized, and committed leadership. Precisely because the majority of Mayans does not have this upper business and professional education, they do not run these churches.” Roger Grossmann, email correspondence, June 22, 2009. Unfortunately this dynamic creates a ‘racial’ vicious circle, because ethnic distinction is perpetuated by this social dynamic. For information on the United States and sociological data on how groups tend to exclude people who do not belong to their own group, see Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Enrique Naveda, “Harold Caballeros sale en busca del país de las maravillas,” in El Periódico, November 19, 2006, http://www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20061119/actualidad/34114/. This description is confirmed in an interview with a superintendent of the Assemblies of God denomination; interview with Orlando Herrera Pinzón, Assemblies of God, 5 October 2001, Guatemala, Guatemala, quoted in Roger Grossmann 2002: 399.

David Stoll (1994: 108) quoted a missionary who estimates that “even if 30 percent of the country as a whole is evangelical, as few as 5 percent of the elite might be.”

Interview with Efraín Avelar, Senior Pastor of Bethany Church, March 20, 2001, Quetzaltenango; quoted in Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 402 – 409.

Because of the importance of this position and the conflicts that arose from the claim of unique authority, I have added a section which discusses this doctrinal and organizational feature of neo-Pentecostalism.

Unfortunately, Gooren does not provide data on the ethnic identity of churchgoers or the ethnic profile of this congregation; see Gooren 1998: 88, 98; 2001: 175 – 176.

Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 204.

One example are the services of the Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz on October 14, 2001, in Comitancillo, San Marcos and again in Tajumulo, San Marcos, on November 20, 2001.

In particular, the aspect of autonomy has been underlined by several other scholars. See for instance Gooren 1998: 63; Hans Siebers 1998: 60 – 61.

Adolfo Barrientos, from the Pentecostal Church of God, noted in an interview that Pentecostal churches in rural areas are often the result of spontaneous initiatives. Moreover, there is little or no exact data available on the number of members. Conversation with Adolfo Barrientos (Pastor IdDEC), May 9, 2001, Guatemala City. This is quite different in neo-Pentecostal churches. They often apply the church growth model of the famous Korean Pentecostal Yonggi Cho.

Neo-Pentecostal churches mostly center around a charismatic leader, with the effect that when the leader dies, church life also ends. Prominent examples of churches that followed this path are El Calvario, Ríos de Agua Viva, and Elim. Elim used to be the largest neo-Pentecostal church, but since their leader Otoniel Ríos Paredes died, it has divided into Elim, MI-EL, and several other groups. Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz has stagnated since its leader Muñoz died. In contrast, Pentecostal denominations are not as dependent on a charismatic leading figure and, therefore, are not as severely affected by leadership transitions. Information provided by Roger W. Grossmann, email correspondence, June 22, 2009.

Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Álvarado, El Neopentecostalismo? Un Movimiento de Religiosidad Popular o de Fé Popular? (CLAVE 4), 68–69, manuscript from author, n.d.; see also Dolores Alvarado, Valores que se fomentan en los jóvenes dentro de la Iglesia Cristiana Familiar Casa de Dios (Guatemala: Colegio Alemán, 2002).

Michael Riekenberg, Zum Wandel von Herrschaft und Mentalität in Guatemala: Ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte Lateinamerikas (Köln: Böhlau, 1990).

Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City.

Ibid.

D.J. Wilson, “Cho, David (Paul) Yonggi (Yong-Gi),” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 521.

Healing courses are, for instance, an important part of the Charismatic movement in the United States.

On April 27, 2013 a new temple was inaugurated, with a seating capacity of eleven thousand people. President Otto Pérez Molina, Vice President Roxana Baldetti, several secretaries of state, members of Congress, Mayor Álvaro Arzú, and Christian celebrities such as singer Marcos Witt, pastor Guillermo Maldonado, Edwin Santiago, John Milton, and Job Eliú Castillo were in attendance. For more information, see the website of the Iglesia Casa de Dios, http://cgnnoti-ciasdeguatemala.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/casa-de-dios-estrena-nuevo-templo/ .

Dolores Alvarado 2002. The same can be said about the temple that was inaugurated in April 2013.

Interview with Orlando Herrera Pinzón (Assemblies of God, Superintendent), May 10, 2001, Guatemala City, quoted in Roger W. Grossmann 2002: 399.

This argument is sustained by Roger Grossmann’s data. He analysed the biblical knowledge of Guatemalan Protestants. See Grossmann 2002.

I refer here to the practice of tithing.

See Emilio Antonio Núñez, El Movimiento Apostólico Contemporáneo (Guatemala: Ed. Y Public. Marlor, 2001). Domingo Güitz from the Asociación Indigenista Guatemalteca, a Guatemalan Evangelical Development Agency for indigenous people, even spoke of a schism within the Alianza Evangélica Guatemalteca (AEG) due to the controversy around the apostolate. Interview Domingo Güitz (ASIEDE), June 14, 2001, Guatemala City. Vitalino Similox (CIEDEG, Pastor Presbyterian church, Kaqchiquel), also referred to this issue in a similar vein. Interview, May 14, 2001, Guatemala City.

See Bill Hamon, Apostles, Prophets, and the Coming Moves of God (Santa Rosa Beach, Florida: Ed. Christian International, 1999); David Cannistraci, The Gift of Apostle: A Biblical Look at Apostleship and How God is Using It to Bless His Church Today (Ventura, California: Regal Books, 1996). Note that there are different phases of nominating Christian authorities. Some years ago, mainly in the 1990s, there was a trend to nominate prophets. In the early part of this century, the tendency has shifted to apostles.

The Guatemalan context is important in this regard. Roger Grossmann suggests speaking about a wooden biblical interpretation or selective biblical application instead of biblical literalism, along the lines of finding what you like in the Bible and ignoring the rest. Such a description makes sense, he comments, because most Evangelicals in Guatemala would identify as being biblical literalists in the sense of taking the Bible as the Word of God and the standard for faith and practice. This includes the fact that neo-Pentecostals and Baptists, to pick one example, might come to very different conclusions on certain points, although both fall into the category of being biblical literalists. Finally, it is helpful to distinguish between biblical literalism and hermeneutics, the latter referring to a more holistic approach to biblical interpretation and application.

Lisardo Ruiz (church delegate Elim, MI-El), September 15, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City.

We will encounter once again the existence of a strong ambiguity within neo-Pentecostalism, of both cultural rupture and continuity and of global and local traits, when the doctrinal features of neo-Pentecostalism are discussed. Important to note here is the cultural affinity of neo-Pentecostalism with Catholicism, an aspect that explains why neo-Pentecostalism possesses this enormous capacity for cultural adaptation. From Roger Grossmann’s perspective, this is underlined by the popularity of figures such as Jorge Úbico (a Guatemalan president and dictator who governed the country from 1931 to 1944) and ex-dictator and president Efraín Ríos Montt. A general in the Guatemalan Army, Ríos Montt came to public office through a coup d’etat on March 23, 1982. He stayed in office 17 months, until August 8, 1983. Grossmann also opines that Ladinos are attracted by ‘caciques,’ a term that can be roughly translated as ‘a strong local authority’ or ‘strong man.’ He contrasts this with Mayan social structure and thought and adds that community is prevalent in Mayan thought, whereas ‘caciquismo’ is prevalent in Ladino thought. Grossmann, email correspondence, August 8, 2009.

Certainly this cannot be said about women in these positions. There are no women among the apostles, and in line with the strong patriarchal agenda of neo-Pentecostalism, it is likely that there will never be women in this position.

Lisardo Ruiz (church delegate, MI-EL Elim), September 15, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

In 2002 Elim had, according to Roger Grossmann’s data, a constituency that was 24 percent indigenous. Grossmann 2002: 391.

Lisardo Ruiz (church delegate MI-EL Elim), September 15, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos. According to Ruíz, other apostles include Harald Caballeros from the neo-Pentecostal church El Shaddai, Sergio Enríquez from Misión Eben-Ezer, Edmundo Madrid from Lluvias de Gracia, and Alex Gonzales from Iglesia Rey de Reyes. Virgilio Zapata also mentioned Eliú Castillo and his brother Abraham from the Iglesia del Calvario. Virgilio Zapata (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City. According to the homepage of Elim in 2009, the correct name of the original denomination founded by Otoniel Ríos Paredes in 1962 is Iglesia de Cristo Elim Central. In 2001, the church called itself Ministerios Elim (MI-EL).

Santiago Atitlán is located by the famous Lake Atitlán, one of the hotspots of the Guatemalan tourist industry. Therefore, it is important to note that Santiago Atitlán is not an isolated rural area.

In 2004 he was still called the general pastor of Elim, and his church in Santiago Atitlán appeared under the name Iglesia de Cristo, Ministerios Elim (http://iglesia-usa.com/ca239-iglesia-elim.html , accessed May 11, 2009). Since the denomination Ministerios Elim also called itself MI-EL, an abbreviation for Ministerios Elim, it seems that he tried to keep some familiarity to his institutional roots in the name. The following text, taken from a church announcement posted on the Internet, introduced him in November 2002 as follows: “Apostle Gaspar Sapalú is the General Overseer (cobertura) of Elim Ministries, and at the same time the General Pastor of the Church of Christ, Elim Ministries, in Santiago Atitlán as well as General Pastor of the Church of Christ, New Center of MI-EL Elim Ministries in the capital of Guatemala, Central America.” http://vensenor.iespana.es/menupart/cobertura.htm, accessed May 11, 2009. According to Dennis Smith, who helped with the translation of the original Guatemalan phrase, ‘cobertura’ refers to the Old Testament concept of having the general authority of a prophet, known in contemporary pentecostal circles as apostolic authority, that is, the power to name other leaders and have other pastors under one’s mandate. E-mail correspondence, Dennis Smith, September 25, 2010.

My guess is that after the separation the percentage of Mayans within Elim dropped to almost zero.

YouTube makes it possible to watch parts of the worship and observe the attire of presenters. This video shows a women’s choir in Sapalú’s church, wearing the typical traditional dress and singing Christian hymns. Also note the musical style, with the men playing brass instruments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUGO46cIuyQ&NR=1, accessed, May 10, 2009. This video shows the mix of business attire and indigenous garments worn by Apostle Gaspar Sapalú. http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=4216aa9ab42baa0b4adc, accessed May 11, 2009.

It is also important to note that Sapalú’s use of indigenous clothing as a conscious statement is a total exception in the neo-Pentecostal and Pentecostal community. Pastors usually dress only in business suits and try to carefully avoid any indigenous connections in their dress.

Manuela Canton Delgado 1998; Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1986; Ingelore Möller 1997. For informatin on Ecuador, see Elisabeth Rohr 1990; for Bolivia, see Juliana Ströbele-Gregor 1988, 1989.

CEDEPCA is an example of a Protestant institution where workshops on Mayan spirituality are offered.

Colocho is a common term in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador for someone with curly hair. Although not mentioned in standard dictionaries, it might also refer to people of African descent. Martín Alonso, ed., Enciclopedia del Idioma: Diccionario Histórico y Moderno de la Lengua Española: Etimológico, Technológico, Regional e Hispanoamericano, Vol. I (Madrid: Aguilar, 1982), 1128.

Lisardo Ruiz (church delegate, MI-El, Elim), September 15, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

See also Manuela Canton Delgado 1998; Pilar Sánchiz Ochoa, Evangelismo y poder: Guatemala ante el nuevo milenio (Sevilla: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla, 1998).

They reject not only the ceremonies, such as Catholic patrons’ feasts and processions, but also the consumption of alcohol that usually accompanies these customs and the above-mentioned feasts.

Interview Virgilio Zapata (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City.

Ibid.

Below I include the full quote from the Epistle to the Ephesians 6:10 – 18. It reflects the extraordinary power that stems from the combination of poetic language and what is considered by believers a divine text. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.” Biblical quotation from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

For a full account of spiritual warfare and generational curses from the perspective of the neo-Pentecostal movement, see the website of Spiritual Warfare Ministries Online: http://www.sw-mins.org/gen_curses.html .

Lisardo Ruiz (coordinator, MI-EL Elim), September 15, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos. The informant was not Mayan.

Heinrich Schäfer, Der Protestantismus in Zentralamerika. Modernisierung und Identitätskonstruktion (Bielefeld, 2002), 10–11 (quoted from manuscript of the author). Schäfer adds, “This practical logic of eliminating the enemy played an important role in justifying the radical counterinsurgency campaigns of Ríos Montt.”

Heinrich Schäfer 2002: 304.

Israel López Gúzman (Pastor, IdPdP), November 30, 2001, San Pedro Sacatepéquez.

My interviews suggest that the largest part of the neo-Pentecostal constituency works in business. This is in line with Henri Gooren’s (1999) findings on the church Lluvias de Gracia (Rains of Mercy) and sustained by the publication Private Organizations with U.S. Connections, Guatemala: Directory and Analysis (Albuquerqe: The Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1988), 8.

On January 26, 2013, a Guatemalan judge ordered Efraín Ríos Montt to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with massacres in remote highland communities three decades ago. Sonia Pérez-Días, “Guatemalan ex-dictator to stand trial on genocide,” in Miami Herald (Monday 28, January 2013). http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/28/3205022/guatemala-ex-dictator-to-stand.html . On May 10, 2013, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison by a Guatemalan court. Only ten days later, the sentence was annuled by the Constitutional Court, citing procedural irregularities. Human rights activists agree that this ruling reflects Guatemala’s long-standing problem with impunity and a weak judicial system. BBC news, November 6, 2003, “Guatemala Ríos Montt Genocide Trial to Resume in 2015.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24833642.

However, the political abstinence of Pentecostals has changed over the past years. Now more Pentecostals hold political offices as mayors and become political candidates. See Paul Jeffrey, Recovering Memory: Guatemalan Churches and the Challenge of Peacemaking (Uppsala: Life and Peace Institute, 1998); Paul Freston, ed., Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

The directory Private Organizations with U.S. Connections, Guatemala describes this group as led by urban professionals who had been active in the presidential campaign of Jorge Serrano Elías. Serrano Elías, the report continues, headed Ríos Montt’s Council of State and placed a respectable third in the 1985 presidential race. See Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center 1988: 9. In 1991 Serrano Elías was elected president. In 1993 he initiated a self-coup d’etat. The coup failed, and he went into exile in Panama. Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (CIDOB), ed., “Biografías Líderes Políticos,” February 21, 2012, http://www.cidob.org/es/documentacion/biografias_lideres_politicos/america_central_y_caribe/guatemala/jorge_serrano_elias .

Marco Tulio Cajas, La Tarea Política de los Evangelicos (Guatemala: Ediciones MAS, 1985); Heinrich Schäfer, Protestantismus in Zentralamerika. Christliches Zeugnis im Spannungsfeld von US-amerikanischem Fundamentalismus, Unterdrückung und Wiederbelebung “indianischer” Kultur (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992), 81.

Andrea Althoff, Religion im Wandel: Einflüsse von Ethnizität auf die religiöse Ordnung am Beispiel Guatemalas (Halle: Ph.D. diss., Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 2005); Kevin Lewis O’Neill 2010.

In 1977, Ríos Montt left the Roman Catholic Church and became a minister in the California-based evangelical/neo-Pentecostal Church of the Word. Virgina Garrard-Burnett 2010: 55. See also Joseph Anfuso and David Sczepanski, ¿Dictador o Servidor? for a more detailed account of Ríos Montt’s religious identity at that time. Important to note is that the authors have a U.S.-evangelical perspective. Joseph Anfuso and David Sczepanski, ¿Dictador o Servidor? (n.p, n.d). English edition, Joseph Anfuso and David Sczepanski, He Gives – He Takes Away: The True Story of Guatemala′s Controversial Former President Efraín Ríos Montt (Eureka, CA: Radiance Press, 1984). Ironically, his brother, Mario Ríos Montt, is not only a Catholic bishop but succeeded the assassinated Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera in 1998 as head of the human rights commission, which uncovered in part the atrocities the Guatemalan military had committed under his brother’s presidency. Juan Hernández Pico, “Gerardi Case: Justice for a Man,” in Revista Envío, no. 239 (June 2001), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1509.

That Ríos Montt carries personal responsibility for the atrocities has not been verified by a court sentence yet (November 2013). However, the Guatemalan Truth Commission (CEH) and scholars have gathered plenty of evidence that under his de-facto rule the military committed most of the human rights abuses; the CEH conclusion is that over 90 percent of the violence was army related. See Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala, Memory of Silence: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification. Conclusions and Recommendations (Guatemala: CEH, 1999), 33 – 34; Virginia Garrard-Burnett 2010.

Three examples will suffice: First, he seized power through a coup d’etat. Second, he, along with other men who served in high positions in the military governments of the early 1980s, are defendants in several lawsuits alleging genocide and crimes against humanity; one of these cases was filed in 1999 by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Maya K’iche’ activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum. Third, four times he ignored a law that bans people who had participated in military coups from becoming president, deliberately trying to change this law in 2003 by inciting riots through his FRG party supporters. Juan Hernández Pico, “Militares en el banquillo y reformas constitucionales,” in Revista Envío, no. 366 (September 2012), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4585 ; The Carter Center, ed., Guatemala Election Observation 2003. Final Report (Atlanta: The Carter Center, 2003), 15.

Declaration of General Ríos Montt from August 8, 1982, quoted in Rafael Mondragón: De Indios y Cristianos en Guatemala (México, D.F.: COPEC/CECOPE, 1983), 151.

According to Heinrich Schäfer, who wrote his Ph.D. on Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism in the 1980s, spiritual warfare was an element that was taught in El Verbo at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. Email correspondence, April 8, 2013. See also Schäfer, Identität als Netzwerk: Zur Theorie von Habitus und Identität am Beispiel sozialer Bewegungen. Eine Theoriestudie auf der Grundlage der interkulturellen Untersuchung zweier religiöser Bewegungen in Guatemala (1985/1986) (Berlin: Ph.D. diss., Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2002).

At this point, it is important to distinguish between the apocalyptic vision of Pentecostals of the 1980s and the theocratic understanding of faith of neo-Pentecostals. See Heinrich Schäfer 2002: 315, 329.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett writes, “Ríos Montt graduated from the U.S.-run officer training institute that would eventually be known as the School of the Americas.” Garrard-Burnett 2010: 54 – 55. In a footnote, however, Garrard-Burnett states that neither the official Lista de Oficiales Militares, nor the School of the Americas Watch list for Guatemala, nor Ríos Montt’s own CV, include this as part of his biography (2010: 201). It is safe to assume that he studied briefly at the American post Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone (1950) and at Fort Bragg in North Carolina (1961). At Fort Gulick and Fort Bragg he received special training in counterinsurgency tactics and irregular warfare. In 1961 and 1962 he was a student at the Italian War College (1961 – 1962). See Garrard-Burnett 2010: 55. The School of the Americas trained more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers between 1946 and 2001. Some of them include Manuel Noriega and Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer as well as some of Augusto Pinochet’s officers. For more on the School on the Americas, and specifically its training of the Guatemalan officer corps, see Lesley Gill, Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); David M. Lauderback, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Mission and Policy during the Cold War (Austin: Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 2004).

On the nexus of religion and nationalism, see Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s chapter “Ríos Montt and the New Guatemala” in Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit. Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982 – 1983, 53 – 85. For her book Garrard-Burnett also completed a thorough analysis of the TV broadcasts.

Public speech, May 1, 1983, quoted in Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala: Memoria del silencio. Causas y orígenes del conflicto armado [Capítulo 1] (Guatemala: CEH, 1999d), 98.

Ejército de Guatemala, Plan Nacional de Seguridad y Desarrollo, CEM, Guatemala, 1982, quoted in Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), 1999d: 100.

Ibid.

New York Times, July 20, 1982, quoted in Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala: Memoria del silencio. Causas y Orígenes del Conflicto Armado [Capítulo 1] (Guatemala: CEH, 1999d), 101.

Paul Freston 2001: 275; El Confidencial – EFE, “Desaparece FRG, partido fundado por Ríos Montt, y surge el PRI guatemalteco,” January 26, 2013, http://www.elconfidencial.com/ultima-hora-en-vivo/2013/01/desaparece-partido-fundado-montt-surge-guatemalteco-20130126–87138.html .

Carter Center 2003: 9; Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (CIDOB), ed., “Biografías Líderes Políticos,” February 13, 2012, http://www.cidob.org/es/docu-mentacion/biografias_lideres_politicos/america_central_y_caribe/guatemala/efrain_rios_-montt .

The FRG is not a Protestant Party, as the presidency of Alfonso Portillo attests. Yet it is important to note the influence of Ríos Montt on both the FRG and Alfonso Portillo. See Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (CIDOB) 2012.

The Carter Center 2003: 14–15. Ríos Montt’s campaign for presidential candidacy was accompanied by violence and intimidation, all issues tied to human rights abuses in the past. The Carter Center wrote in this respect, “On July 24, after a judicial decision temporarily suspended the Ríos Montt candidacy (later to be rescinded), trucks from the countryside carrying thousands of farmers, many of them reportedly ex-PACs [abbreviation for Civil Defence Patrols, military’s adjuncts comprised of civilians, often rural indigenous peasants, active during the armed conflict and an important component of FRG’s support base in the countryside, A.A.] and government employees, converged on Guatemala City. During ‘Black Thursday’ and ‘Friday of Mourning’, as the events are known, FRG officials, including congressional deputies enjoying immunity from prosecution, allegedly gave individuals weapons, gasoline and food, and orchestrated the mob violence that followed. The masked protestors targeted institutions and groups that were perceived to be leading the opposition to Ríos Montt’s candidacy, including the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the offices of the newspaper El Periódico and other media groups. A crowd of protestors attempted to lynch photographer Juan Carlos Torres of El Periódico, who managed to escape. Tragically, journalist Héctor Ramírez from Radio Sonora died of a heart attack after being chased by the mob. Residential areas, including those where embassies are located, were also targeted. All human rights organizations and many schools closed down during the crisis.”

With this result he could not participate in the second round, which is reserved for the top two candidates, in this case Oscar José Rafael Berger Perdomo and Álvaro Colóm Caballeros. Oscar Berger finally won the second round in the 2003 elections. See The Carter Center 2003: 21–23. Álvaro Colóm turned out to be the winner of the presidential election of 2007.

Interview with Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City. C. Mathews Samson wrote in 2006 that “Ríos Montt himself, along with a few associates, left the congregation at some point during the last three or four years.” C. Mathews Samson, “Shifting Religious Currents in Mesoamerica: Navigating Globalization, Transnationalism, and the Negotiation of Identity,” Paper presented at the Transnational Religion in Contemporary Latin America and the United States conference at University of Texas, Austin, January 26 – 27, 2006, 7.

CIDOB published that on December 2, 1994 he was elected president of Congress. Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (CIDOB), ed., “Biografías Líderes Políticos,” February 13, 2012; The Carter Center 2003: 10 – 11.

Amnesty International USA, Justice Without Borders. Story three: The Campaign to Bring Efraín Ríos Montt to Trial (July 2008), 2. http://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/websec6july2008.pdf.

Elisabeth Malkin, “Ex-Dictator is ordered to trial in Guatemalan war crimes case,” in New York Times (January 28, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/world/americas/ex-dictator-is-ordered-to-trial-in-guatemala-for-war-crimes.html ; Sonia Pérez-Días, “Guatemalan ex-dictator to stand trial on genocide,” in Miami Herald (January 28, 2013), http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/28/3205022/guatemala-ex-dictator-to-stand.html .

Virginia Garrard-Burnett 2010.

David Stoll, “Evangelicals, Guerrillas, and the Army: The Ixil Triangle under Ríos Montt,” in Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemala Crisis, ed. Robert M. Carmack (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 90 – 116, 100.

Centro de Estudios Integrados de Desarrollo Comunal (CEIDEC) 1990; David Stoll 1988: 100; Blake Charles Scott, The Crossroads of Religion and Development: The Ixil Region, Evangelical Religion, and Ríos Montt (Athens, Georgia: B.A., Florida State University, 2005), 42.

M. Hernández and J. Gramajo, “FRG prepara fin de su vida política,” in Prensa Libre (January 25, 2013).

Ibid.

Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City.

Blake Charles Scott 2005: 37; Paul Freston 2008: 74.

Interview with Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 10, 2002, Guatemala City.

See Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado 1999: 65.

Interview Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz (AEG), February 10, 2002; Paul Freston, Protestant Political Parties: A Global Survey (Hampshire, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 132 – 133.

In 2001, he switched churches from El Verbo to El Shaddai. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in Guatemala,” October 5, 2006. http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Historical-Overview-of-Pentecostalism-in-Guatemala.aspx . The act was probably related to the political ambitions of El Shaddai’s pastor Harold Caballeros.

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in Guatemala,” October 5, 2006. http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Historical-Overview-of-Pentecostalism-in-Guatemala.aspx .

Timothy J. Steigenga, The Politics of the Spirit: The Political Implications of Pentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001), 63.

“Exilio. Señalan que han falsificado documentos y pruebas en su contra. Serrano Elías acusa al Estado de Guatemala,” in Prensa Libre (June 28, 2001): 10.

Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (CIDOB), ed., “Biografías Líderes Políticos,” February 21, 2012, http://www.cidob.org/es/documentacion/bio-grafias_lideres_politicos/america_central_y_caribe/guatemala/jorge_serrano_elias .

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

“Exilio. Señalan que han falsificado documentos y pruebas en su contra. Serrano Elías acusa al Estado de Guatemala,” in Prensa Libre (June 28, 2001): 10.

In November 2011, newly elected president and former military man Otto Pérez Molina nominated Caballeros Minister of State. However, his time as a political representative did not last long. In January 2013 Pérez Molina substituted him with Fernando Carrera, who until then held the office of Secretary of Planning and Programming of the Presidency (SEGEPLAN). “Ex pastor evangélico es designado ministro de relaciones exteriores,” in Noticias de Guatemala (November 13, 2011), http://noticias.com.gt/nacionales/20111113-ex-pastor-evangelico-ministro-relaciones-exteriores-perez-molina.html ; “Otto Pérez Molina reemplaza al canciller Harold Caballeros,” in Publinews (January 7, 2013), http://www.publinews.gt/index.php/otto-perez-reemplaza-al-canciller-harold-caballeros/ . The background of his demise merits attention. On October 4, 2012, a peaceful protest of K’iche’ Mayans against the rise in electricity fees, constitutional reforms, and the extension of the period for teacher training (carrera magisterial) was answered by a military attack which left nine people dead and more then thirty people wounded by gunshots and fragmentation bombs thrown from a helicopter. In a meeting with diplomats on October 8, Caballeros commented, “I acknowledge with sadness that the death of eight people is a big thing in certain parts of the world. But it isn’t, although it sounds very bad to say it, because we have twice that many deaths here every day. So, it shouldn’t attract so much attention.” Later he was criticized, and called his critics on Twitter “jackasses” (burros) and “fools” (pendejos). The following day he apologized, stating that this is never going to happen again. Apparently, his apology was not enough to save his political career. For a detailed description on the whole issue, see Ricardo Falla, “Toto, 4/10/12: Primera masacre del ejército tras la firma de la Paz,” in Plaza Pública (Tuesday, 13 November 2012), http://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/toto-41012-primera-masacre-del-ejercito-tras-la-firma-de-la-paz ; Jorge Agurto, “Guatemala: ¿Qué sucedió en Totonicapán?” in Servindi (October 6, 2012), http://servindi.org/actualidad/74122 .

Enrique Naveda 2006.

Ibid.

This university is a product of the El Verbo denomination and church, of which former president Ríos Montt was a member. C. Mathews Samson 2006: 8. It merits attention that Samson stresses in this paper that Harold Caballeros of El Shaddai is a strong proponent of spiritual warfare. C. Mathews Samson 2006: 7.

Enrique Naveda 2006.

Rigoberto Manuel Gálvez Alvarado (neo-Pentecostal Seminary), February 8, 2002, Guatemala City.

The attitude of neo-Pentecostal and Pentecostal churches in South Africa was very different. There, the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), held between 1996 and 1998 and chaired by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was supported by Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, in particular the Assemblies of God and the umbrella association International Fellowship of Christian Churches. See Allan H. Anderson 2001.

This is, of course, a sociological and psychological assessment, which means that I am aware that I dismiss here the potential for underlying supernatural causes as primary motivations.

Margret M. Poloma 2002: 1150.

See Rubén Feliciano Pérez 1996: 46. His estimates are not based on hard statistical data but on personal estimates.

Although the survey did not include the total population of Comitancillo, it covered not just the township but several of the surrounding hamlets.

Strictly speaking, that is in terms of doctrine, the CAM is not part of the Pentecostal movement. Neither is the Iglesia del Nazareno, another one of the four large congregations in the village. Yet the Iglesia del Nazareno shares one major characteristic with Pentecostal congregations, namely the emphasis on the Holy Spirit (speaking in tongues, faith healing) and a more emotional style of worship. Overall, the CAM more closely resembles the traditional Guatemalan Protestant churches, e. g., Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. Their worship is more solemn and restrained from emotionalism; for instance, people do not applaud. However, individual churches may be very pentecostalized in their worship practices, depending on the preferences of the pastors.

Most of the competition stems from non-denominational churches.

Rubén Feliciano Pérez 1996: 45 – 46; interview with Ruben Feliciano Pérez (Pueblo Partisans, Maya Mam), August 27, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

With regard to the specific region of San Marcos where this research was located as well as to Huehuetenango, the ethnic group of the Maya Mam form a majority of the population.

Interview Karen and Andrew Vaters (SIL-missionaries), October 18, 2001, Instituto Bíblico, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

Ibid.

Heinrich Schäfer, “Modernisierung und Identitätskonstruktion: Zum Protestantismus in Zentralamerika (1980) bis heute,” in Zentralamerika heute, eds., Sabine Kurtenbach, Werner Mackenbach, Günther Maihold, and Volker Wünderich (Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert Verlag, 2008), 485 – 508. See also Heinrich Schäfer 1992: 150 – 151.

Douglas E. Brintnall 1979; Sheldon Annis 1987; Waldemar Smith 1977.

Interview with Ruben Feliciano Pérez (Pueblo Partisans, Maya Mam), August, 27, 2001, Comitancillo.

This is confirmed by Temaj himself as well as by several other villagers. Cidiaco Temaj (IdN, Maya Mam), October 10, 2001, Chicajalaj, Comitancillo. He plainly stated, “Yo fui Yux,” which translates into “I was a shaman priest or sorcerer.” This is also confirmed in interviews with Rubén Feliciano Pérez (Pueblo Partisans, Maya Mam), August 27, 2001, and Javier Llamazares (Ajchmol, Maya Mam, pseudonym), October 8, 2001, San Marcos; in conversation with the Mayan priest Don Constantino Ruiz López (pseudonym) from the hamlet Tuizacaja (Comitancillo); and in a group interview in Tuixoquel (Comitancillo) with Severo Sánchez, Silvia Gómez, Felix Pérez, and Flavio López (Maya Mam, pseudonyms), October 9, 2001.

Temaj was able to read and write, skills he had learned while he was serving in the military under General Jorge Úbico. Úbico was also president of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944.

He was still administering the parish when I did field research in Comitancillo (2001–2002).

See the interview with former mayor Daniel Muñoz, August 29, 2001, Comitancillo, San Marcos.

According to the Catholic sexton, Monseñor José Carrera had an interest in controlling the cofradía, in particular the financial aspects of it. When he found out that he was not able to do that, he assembled some Comitecos around him to organize a parallel institution, the hermandad.

Group interview in Tuixoquel (Comitancillo) with Severo Sánchez, Flavio López, Silvia Gómez, and Felix Pérez (Maya Mam, pseudonyms), October 9, 2001. Ruben Feliciano Pérez (Pueblo Partisans, Maya Mam), August, 27, 2001, Comitancillo.

In particular, Catholic customs such as the veneration of the saints, infant baptisms, and the celebration of the local fiesta seemed to him religiously inappropriate and not in compliance with the Bible.

In this line, people from Tuixoquel described the resistance of Cidiaco Temaj to the establishment of local Catholic groups in surrounding hamlets. According to them, his resistance was based on fears that new groups would endanger his pioneering religious role.

CAM characteristics were underlined by the representatives of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, participant observation, and Temaj’s own comments, which confirmed his economic and professional situation.

Rubén Feliciano Pérez stressed that he was an important Catholic leader when he decided to convert and establish his own Protestant church.

The reasons why historical, mainline, or immigrant Protestant churches – such as Lutherans, Episcopalians, or Presbyterians – were not among the selected groups are quite mundane. Despite their long-term presence in Guatemala, they only form a tiny minority among the vast number of churches. It is also agreed that these denominations are losing members to Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, further weakening their social importance and impact. Timothy J. Steigenga and Edward L. Cleary 2007.

Dennis Smith, 2008. With regard to the Presbyterian Church, see the work of Heinrich Schäfer, in particular Protestantismus in Zentralamerika (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992), 157 – 159, 214 – 216.

An example of this development is the classical Pentecostal church Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, which bought a piece of real estate in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Quetzaltenango – Los Cerezos – to construct a new temple. Other strategies to gain ground in higher social strata are changes in doctrine and liturgy. The aim of this strategy is most likely to make new converts and to profit from the financial resources of high society through the religious practice of tithing, giving a tenth of one’s income to the church. Naturally, the money that the church gains from tithing among upper classes is considerably higher. See Adolfo Barrientos (Pastor, IdDEC), May 9, 2001, Guatemala City.

In my view, the participation of lower classes in neo-Pentecostalism has not been explained satisfactorily. If we frame this as a question; why do poor people participate in a movement that legitimizes wealth as a sign of God’s blessing, ostracizing themselves for not having sufficient faith? For an example of the doctrinal aspect and class composition of Brazilian neo-Pentecostalism, see Eric W. Kramer, “Spectacle and the Staging of Power in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals,” in Latin American Perspectives 32 no. 1, (January 2005): 95 – 120. Kramer, however, does not explain this anachronism.