Residual Masculinity and the Cultivation of Negative-Charisma in a Caribbean Pentecostal Community

Abstract

This chapter considers men, masculinity, and charismatic authority among Pentecostal Christians in the Dominican Republic. Above is a selection from the conversion narrative of someone I call Juan Carlos. Limited space here prevents me from detailing his testimony in its entirety, but what I have included are particulars that have become commonplace in the conversion narratives of Pentecostal men in urban barrios throughout the country.¹ Through these testimonies Juan Carlos and others like him claim a certain type of authority and male prestige that are critical, I propose, to the ways in which he and other male converts legitimate their transformation in Christ and shape their new identities as Christian leaders and as men of God.

I left Nagua around the age of 16 and moved to la 42, in Capotillo [a depressed area of Santo Domingo, notorious for crime and violence]. You know what they move there, right? Anything and everything; it’s a drug cartel. I arrived there as a jovencito (youth) with little experience. I had many dreams. I allied myself with the tígueres (macho men) in the neighborhood; the tígueres there are ruthless. When I arrived it was something else. There were many people there who knew me from Nagua and they said that they were going to kill me, because, you know, I was involved in the vices, the games, the drinking, the gangs. I remember like it was yesterday... I made a lot of money selling drugs there in Capotillo. Lots of money, but I would drink it... We would go to the club and, you know, we weren’t thinking about anything … I was young …With machete in hand I would go out on the streets with my gang to fight. I knew how to “dance” the machete. Even on the twenty -fourth of December I was in the streets. I remember going up and down the barrio with a machete in hand and a bag of drugs in the other. Selling to people, and waiting for othergangs…

When I converted to the gospel the Lord immediately cast away my problems. I accepted the bible and I began to give testimony that God had indeed transformed me. Now I go to Capotillo, where I once sold drugs, and I preach. Where I used to sell drugs, now I go and I speak against drugs. When I go there the men say “But my God, you are different. You are much younger now! You look much better now, what is happening?” And I say that I have Christ now. Because remember, I used to spend 30 days a month in the streets, “smashed,” with a machete in hand and with a.38 at my side. So now when I go there the men they say “but you are much younger now!” It’s that I have Christ and I’m not in sin... Since converting I am a serious man, I work more, I am soon going to have ten years in the gospel. I go to where I used to sell drugs, I preach and go with my bible and nobody desires to do anything bad to me, nor do I desire to have other women. God has done a cleansing in me... God has told me to be an example for other drug addicts and I want to be an example to other drug addicts. I want to go to different countries and testify to God, because there are people who are in this life that don’t believe that they can change. I preach that there is still hope; everything is not lost... I was a drug addict and now I am free. I was a macheteroa bandoleroand today I am free.