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12:00 p.m. 1:30 p.m.
The Latin American and Latino Studies Program Brown Bag Series Presents: HOMIES AND HERMANOS: God and Gangs in Central America (Forthcoming, Oxford University Press)
Robert Brenneman, Post-doctoral Fellow University of Notre Dame Commentator John Hagedorn, Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice
Bring your lunch. Drinks will be provided!
The transnational youth gangs of Central America promote a hyper-machismo that idealizes violent, risk-prone codes of conduct and lifelong affiliation. Meanwhile, Central American evangelicals promote a "domesticated" machismo that prohibits drinking, promotes marriage, and eschews interpersonal violence. Yet several studies involving interviews with current and former members of Central American gangs report that conversion to evangelical-Pentecostal Christianity may be a common pathway out of the gang. Based on interviews with more than sixty former members of transnational gangs in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, this presentation examines how and why gang members convert to "strict religion." Findings from this project challenge traditional assumptions of religious conversion as either the product of a rational-pragmatic choice on the one hand or of an ideological concession to the convert's changing social networks on the other. I argue that an important factor in the ongoing popularity of evangelical-Pentecostal religion in Central America is its promotion of ritual contexts for the discharge of shame.
Event is co-sponsored by the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Latino Cultural Center. For more information: 312.996.2445
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