Page 240 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Chapter 10

Seized by the Spirit. The Mystical

Foundation of Squatting among

Pentecostals in Caracas

(Venezuela) Today

Rafael Sánchez

Democracy is always a matter of temporizing. It cannot be conceived of
without this continual obligation to take the time—to develop proposals, to
discuss the possible outcomes, to persuade, to implement decisions. Democratic
power is always exercised more slowly than individual authoritarian power.
Thus democracy must remain patient. even at those times when it encounters,
more or less fortunately, the media’s haste.
—Sylviane Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia

“Our God is a Living God,” or “we do not believe in God, we believe God.”
The Pentecostal squatters in Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas, among
whom I have recently done fieldwork, voice these and other related state-
ments often to distinguish their own brand of spirituality from that of
other religious communities across Venezuela. Although I originally found
what the squatters said somewhat puzzling, their statements soon began to
resonate powerfully with what I had first observed during the initial
moments of fieldwork, namely, the strange (at least to me), unexpected
spectacle of these squatters illegally occupying—in the name, and on the
behalf, of the Holy Ghost—an empty 12-story building located in what