‘I always knew that there was someone knocking at my door, trying to open my heart. I just didn't know who it was. I didn't even know God existed. […] All I knew were the gangs’ (p. 5). These are the words of Mateo, a former gang member deported from Los Angeles, during a church service in one of Guatemala's marginalised neighbourhoods, where he is invited to speak. In Secure the Soul, Kevin Lewis O'Neill shows how Mateo's search for survival and security – outside of the gang – is deeply affected by Christian piety – the struggle to ‘make good with God’ (p. 11). Discussing several forms of gang rehabilitation and prevention, the author shows how Christian piety is a recurring element in all of them. Written in beautiful prose, the book presents an extremely rich account of the ways former gang members look for, but tragically often fail to find, a stable life outside of the gang. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Central American gangs and the role of Christianity.
The book consists of five separate ethnographies in which the author maps the ‘affective infrastructure of post-war security’ in Guatemala (p. 18). Chapters about the life of Mateo connect these different domains. The book starts with the prison system, where pastors, who have ‘a monopoly on morality’, struggle to turn prisoners into self-governing subjects (pp. 44–5). It moves on with a chapter about a reality television show, Desafío 10 (‘Challenge 10’), in which ten former gang members learn to ‘better manage themselves’, to start enterprises and ‘become what they were supposed to become: shoe shiners, car washers’ (p. 88). The next chapter is about the experience in a call centre, which serves US customers, and where some deported, English-speaking (former) gang members find employment. The centre combines strict supervision with calls to self-improvement: piety taught at the workplace. In a chapter called ‘Left Behind’, the author discusses how an internationally funded adoption programme plays out in the neighbourhood of La Paloma, helping a relatively small number of kids, until they turn 16, and leaving most others out. The final chapter deals with the Pentecostal rehabilitation centres, of which as many as 200 exist in Guatemala City. They serve as de facto prisons for former gang members, who are often sent to the rehabs by their own family members as they can no longer handle them.
Each of these five forms of gang prevention is analysed as a security scheme in its own right, while it is shown how each is deeply influenced by Christianity. Together they form a security assemblage whose effect on the lives of its subjects is, however, extremely precarious. This is not a safety net, O'Neill argues, ‘but a series of randomly inflating and suddenly deflating life rafts’ (p. 185). They do provide some temporary support to former gang members, but not enough to make a lasting change. The story of Mateo, who has experience with each of them, is no different. He had a troubled childhood with a father who used to beat him up. Although he was never adopted, he worked in preventive programmes and tries to help youth in his own neighbourhood. But the help of his father, after they reconciled, serves as his life raft. The townhouse that his father bought in one of the suburbs of Guatemala City makes an important difference to Mateo – for as long as it lasts. At the end of the book, which covers almost a decade, Mateo lives from pay cheque to pay cheque. The chances of survival for ex-gang members are slim. Sadly, five years after the reality show El Desafío six out of the ten participants have been killed.
Deeply influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, O'Neill sees gang prevention as a technique of soft security, in which he is particularly interested (n. 6, p. 208). In an important footnote in the beginning of the book, O'Neill argues that soft security is concerned with the security of the population against internal threats, while hard security is about the protection of territory and borders (n. 2, p. 206). Elsewhere he argues that soft security is about life (administering, optimising, multiplying life), and hard security about death (suppressing, punishing life) (p. 186). Recognising that this distinction is not unproblematic, O'Neill uses these terms as ‘basic coordinates’ (p. 206, n. 2). It would, however, have been interesting to read more about the ways in which the two relate.
In this regard, I was intrigued by the instances where hard and soft security seemed to meet and merge in different ways. For example, O'Neil shows that, confronted with high levels of non-state violence, soft security provided by non-state actors can turn hard: from a pastor who beats the boys in his rehab, to Mateo who beats a young boy who likes to hang around in his house but doesn't show respect, and USAID stopping a reinsertion programme and literally leaving many of the beneficiaries (dead). Elsewhere, O'Neill states that the essence of Christian piety – that salvation is in your own hands – is a form of violence: ‘the violence of piety is not its inability to extend prevention to everyone but its tendency to distinguish between the deserved and the disposable […] To let die is not piety's limitation: it is Christian piety's most basic function’ (p. 188). So, for instance, those who returned to the gang were not pious enough and don't deserve to live. When one of the former participants of Desafío 10 (who didn't return to the gang) is killed by a gang member, one of his Desafío 10 coaches says, ‘He died well. He died as a good person.’ (p. 85). This shows the importance of Christian piety to deal with death and adversity more broadly, including those who made ‘good with god’ (p. 11). However, the book is full of examples of how Christian piety provides hope for a better life in a context of social exclusion and violence. This hope may be unwarranted or even false, but it appears to be the only strategy to survive (or to die well) outside of the gang.
