Page 243 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

228 Rafael Sánchez

Himself. Faced with such a predicament, Spirit, in other words, cannot but
intervene in the world or, what comes to the same, in the spatiotemporal
manifold so as to constantly reclaim and return it to its originating source
and foundation.
When Hermana Juana told me that in order to “receive blessings” from
the Holy Spirit she and the other Pentecostal squatters must “occupy
spaces,” she was simply voicing the extent to which her own and the other
Pentecostal squatters’ agencies overlap with that of the Holy Ghost to the
point, indeed, of both being one and the same. It is precisely such an over-
lap that the squatters have in mind when, in line with all other Pentecostals,
they insist on their self-proclaimed status as mere “vessels” or conduits of
the Holy Spirit, with no independent will or agency of their own. Given
such a folk theory of the person as a sheer empty medium available to the
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designs of the deity, it is little wonder that such expressions as “I was used
by the Holy Spirit” or “the Father used me” are uttered so often among the
squatters. They use such phrases to signal God’s exclusive hand in some
singularly momentous or delicate matter over which they claim no special
responsibility, for example, a miraculous healing or, as happens to be the
case, the occupation of the Yaracuy building followed in short succession
by the seizure from its Portuguese owner of a relatively large shoe factory
in the building’s basement or garage. Such expressions unambiguously
convey how much the squatters view their illegal activities not as “theirs”
but the Father’s. In other words, in the squatters’ understanding, they are
merely the docile instruments that the Holy Spirit “uses” to occupy and
repossess those spaces away from the undeserving.
But the peculiarly aggressive spatiotemporal tendency of the squatters’
religious practices as forms of seizure and occupation of spaces hitherto
held by others is not only present in these invasiones or tomas, as they are
called in Venezuela, although these disclose such a tendency in a singularly
dramatic fashion. It is, for example, evident in the processions that
Hermana Juana orchestrated on several occasions with the aim of reclaim-
ing, in all its filth, messiness, and chaos, the Boulevard of Sabana Grande
for Christ. I remember catching my breath while trying to keep up with
her, single-mindedly walking straight ahead of me on one of the long ave-

nues parallel to the boulevard with a small group of Pentecostal sisters
lagging a few steps behind. With their long, colorful skirts adding a some-
what anachronistic touch to the surrounding cityscape of street vendors,
dilapidated storefronts, occasional manic honking, and slightly amused
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passersby, Hermana Juana and the other sisters made a remarkable sight.
Seemingly oblivious to anything going on around her, she accompanied
her walking with the staccato recitation of a series of barely inaudible for-
mulas. These amounted to so many invocations of the Father to “take out”