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Seized by the Spirit 229

the Evil One from one object or place to the next so that He could repos-
sess them all. Every once in a while Hermana Juana would rapidly extend
either her left or right hand to touch one or another object, briefly pausing
while slightly inclining her whole body forward as if to use her weight to
push her powerful words right into the wall, phone booth, or lamp post she
was passing.
In line with the belligerent overtones of Pentecostalism everywhere, for
which the Manichaean battle between God and the Devil is a structuring
force immanent in the most diverse religious practices, what Hermana
Juana and the sisters sought to accomplish with this kind of procession was
straightforward enough: namely, chasing the Devil from the boulevard
while turning it into “Christian territory” freed from all the un-Christian
practices and commodities so prevalent in the area.

“Blessed, Prosperous, and Victorious”

The sheer excitement and energy that filled the air each time the possibility
of a new seizure arose give an idea of the consuming desires that render the
squatters as subjects of a certain lack—one that can be filled only momen-
tarily by adding yet another space to a list that keeps serially expanding.
Discernible in the many frantic comings and goings, and in the mischie-
vous smiles, quick glances, knowing looks, and hushed words the squatters
hastily traded among themselves, such outbursts of enthusiasm were clearly
in excess of any utilitarian calculation of needs. Indeed, they betrayed a
subjective disposition for which ceaselessly seizing or occupying space after
space is clearly an end in itself.
The places the squatters considered seizing ranged from the small
businesses located on the ground floor of the Yaracuy building, includ-
ing a relatively large restaurant, a pub, and an electric appliance shop, to
a series of unoccupied buildings, private homes, and, even an abandoned
hospital on the coast far away from Caracas filled with bats and hun-
dreds of rusting metal beds. As for those other spaces that Hermana

Juana and her daughter Nivea had already seized with the help of the
other squatters before I arrived among them, the list includes part of the
ground floor of what at some point was a bank in another part of the city
away from Sabana Grande, the Yaracuy building itself, and a shoe factory
located in what used to be this building’s garage. The latter the squatters
occupied with the purpose of turning it into a storage place where, for a
price, the informal merchants of Sabana Grande could store their goods
at night.