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236 Rafael Sánchez

of water released by the armed thugs from the penthouse flowed down-
ward through the Yaracuy’s stairs. And all of this punctuated by rumors,
shouting, or the string of ominous threats, say, of point blank execution or
rape confronted by the occasional “hallelujah” or “Christ loves you” from
the Pentecostal camp that, occasionally, some of them cannily shouted at
their oppressors in the theatrical attempt to, momentarily, turn the tables
around until some more conclusive means were mustered to permanently
redress the situation in their favor.
The leadership of the building never directly incriminated themselves
with regard to the killings, yet widespread talk of “Christian warriors”
brought by the Pentecostals themselves into the building from far away
barrios during the worst moments of the conflict between the rival camps
intimate God’s hand in the matter, as well as the extent to which, in all of
what happened, the Pentecostal squatters were not so much believing in
Him as heeding His commands. In case there were any doubts about the
killings’ Christianity, the frequency and conviction with which Hermana
Juana and the rest appealed to the Bible, either invoking the text’s canoni-
cal beheadings or, if not, reveling in those passages where, trumpets in
hand, Joshua and his followers bring the walls of Jericho down, surely
served to dispel them. In yet another indication of the Bible’s prodigious
encoding capacities, not the least due to its condition as a vast repository of
many gory deeds, Hermana Juana and the other Pentecostals seamlessly
linked the building’s bloody killings to God’s overall design to repossess
His creation. Or, as they often put it while significantly drawing a finger
across their throats, “you know what happens when anyone messes with a
Pentecostal.”
Nor is it as if in and of themselves the killings were devoid of all
Christian pathos or significance. One of the stories that the squatters like
to tell is of one of the sicarios—as hired killers are called in Venezuela—
refusing to die while being shot at one, two, three, many times from
above. All along, according to the squatters, this sicario simply stayed
seated in the pool of his blood while twitchingly taking the bullets that,
one after the other, someone fired at him in succession. The bloody mess
did not, however, get in the way of Hermana Juana’s daughter trying to

discharge her Christian duties. In one more manifestation of the logic of
increase inherent in the Prosperity Gospel practiced by the squatters, all
throughout the event she greedily urged the dying man to surrender to
Christ, thus adding yet one more soul to His Harvest. As one would
expect, with all the twitching involved, to do so was farthest from the
man’s mind, or that, in any case, is what not without some perverse humor
several of the squatters told me, clearly attuned to the slapstick comedy
possibilities of the incident.