"cEspiritus? No.

Pero la MaUad Existe": Supematuraisin, ReHous Change, and the Problem of Evl in Puerto Rican FUk Religion
C. JEffPEY JACOBSON JR.

ABSTRACT A life-history-based, ethnographic study of first- and second-generation Puerto Rican migrants to Cleveland, Ohio, examined religious and ethnopsychological conceptions of altered states of consciousness and the supernatural. This article describes the unexpectedly rich and complex lexicon of evil and malevolence (la maldad) that emerged in many of the study's 60 interviews. It is suggested that individuals undergoing religious change acquire and use an increasingly radicalized Christian notion of evil to describe, condemn, and replace traditional conceptions of the supernatural (including witchcraft). However, while the social effect may be to stigmatize and eradicate what are perceived as "superstitious''conceptions of the supernatural, a variety of liter alistic narratives of encounters with supernatural evil suggest that key psychocultural dispositions may be retained.
To suppose belief in the Devil outdated and superstitious is false . . . no idea that fits into a coherent worldview can properly be called superstitious. Those who believe in the devil without fitting this belief into a worldview may be superstitious, but those who have a coherent structure embracing the concept are not. [Russell 1989:22) Witches embody all the contradictions of the experience of modernity itself, of its inescapable enticements, its self-consuming passions, its discriminatory tactics, its devastating social costs. [Comaroff and Comaroff 1993, quoted in Geschiere 1998]

Ethos 31(3):43<M67. Copyright 2003, American Anthropological Association.

Evil in Puerto Rican Folk Religion 435

uring a brief life-history interview conducted in 1998 with a 48-year-old Puerto Rican Glevelander named Luis,11 asked about Spiritism (Mesa Blanca Espiritismo), a Puerto Rican derivative of the 19th-century French Spiritist movement (Koss 1980) that accompanied migrating Puerto Ricans to the United States during much of the 20th century (Garrison 1977; Harwood 1977). Widely recognized and practiced alongside informal, Puerto Rican folk Catholicism, espiritismo was one of several key interview topics "unusual dreams" and "religious visions" were othersthat I used to elicit conceptions and descriptions of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) during recorded life-history interviews with 60 Mainland Puerto Rican migrants between 1997-98.2 For Luis, as for many other "converted," "born again," or evangelical Christian Puerto Ricans interviewed and examined here, Protestantization and processes of religious modernization had begun to reorder and polarize a diverse and morally ambiguous cluster of traditional Catholic-Spiritist and other Catholic-syncretic, supernatural expressions and sensibilities. Drawing partly on Pentecostal and more general evangelical Protestant Christian notions of demons and deliverance, this "reordering" also clearly retained a kernel of the traditional witchcraft belief and accusation. We can see this in Luis's measured response to my query about espiritismo.
JJ: Luis: Do you know anything about Spiritism or anyone that practices it? A person who hurts another person is influenced by the devil, understand? And if he is fooling around with Spiritism to hurt somebody, he's evil and consorting with the devil, and he's dangerous.3

Echoing a theme also suggested with the title, "I don't believe in spirits, but I know that evil exists," a remarkably common sentiment in the interviews, Luis's statement expresses a complex and ambivalent moralreligious sensibility toward the supernatural. One the one hand, he appears to reject traditional espiritista conceptions of spirits and the supernatural. Consistent with sectarian Protestantand especially Pentecostalcondemnation of Catholic idolatry, his statement uses the language of "evil" and the "devil" to rhetorically distance himself from traditional spiritualistic beliefs by demonizing them. As we will see, Luis's statement also indexes his modern Christian identity and morality, and in so doing, it constitutes an important speech act in a religiously fractionalized inner-city Puerto Rican community. On the other hand, Luis's and many similar statements to be examined here express a realistic and radical sense of supernatural evil: "la maldad existe." When Luis warns that a Spiritist "consorting with the devil" to harm somebody is "evil" and "dangerous," the message is also clearly one of concern or caution: "these people can harm you." Thus, while stigmatizing and demonizing the spiritualistic sensibilities of traditional folk

436 ETHOS

religious orientations, his statement also suggests the retention of these orientations in a radicalized, evilistic form. Though avoiding the vocabulary of brujeria (witchcraft), Luis's warning epitomizes it, that is, the belief and assertion that certain individuals or spiritual entities have the power to effect bad (and good) through a command of magicalin this case diabolicalpractices. The common use and rich elaboration of conceptions of evil and malevolence among persons of all religious and mental-health status backgrounds in this study was largely unexpected. Aiming at providing person-centered, descriptive-phenomenological accounts of altered states of consciousness in a migrant community, I expected to elicit a wide variety of reports of religious and other normal and abnormal visions, hallucinations, dreams, and so on. However, the nature and preponderance of "evil-speak" raised a number of interpretive questions and, in this sense, presented a "problem." Was evil-speak to be understood as a "religiously correct" manner of responding to culturally (in)sensitive queries about the supernatural, that is, the taking of a position against supernaturalism and superstition? Or was this language more referential and literalistic, communicating a fearful, experiential/subjective sense of and "belief in" radical, supernatural evil? Either in its literal or rhetorical forms, how is Christian fundamentalist diabolism different from (or the same as) more traditional notions of witchcraft and sorcery (e.g., in Seda-Bonilla 1973)? Is witchcraft retained or conserved, and if so what metaphysical and rhetorical forms does it take? Resulting in part from the evocative nature of the questions asked, the symbolism of evil and the devil emerged repeatedly in the interviews and imposed a complex moral-interpretive framework on my attempts both to elicit and describe participant understandings and reports of altered states of consciousness. The attempt to sort out this interpretive "problem of evil"4 and the wealth of life-history material I could draw on provided an unusual opportunity to explore the uses of "evil" in a religiously modernizing Hispanic Caribbean migrant community. As this exploration will suggest, evil-speak plays important rhetorical and experiential roles in the expression of "modern" Christian identities and spiritualities. In diverse ways, it also symbolizesin the sense of sign or "symptom"the struggle to find moral meaning and an acceptable modern notion of self in an inner-city, economically depressed and marginalized migrant Caribbean community.

Approaches to evil from anthropological and historical perspectives provide some orientations for interpreting and understanding expressions of evil and diabolism among modernizing populations. As Parkin (1985)

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 437

has noted, anthropologists have given limited attention to "evil," per se, as a social or religious theme. Where they have examined forms of human and supernatural malevolence, it has generally been in the context of explorations of witchcraft and sorcery. Broadly defined as the belief that certain individuals have the power to effect bad or good through command of magical practices, witchcraft is thought to occur in all human societies (Boyer 1994; Kluckbohn 1967), although many of the classic anthropological studies of witchcraft have focused on traditional rather than modern societies, and many of these studies have been conducted in Africa (e.g., Douglas 1970; Evans-Pritchard 1976). The recent florescence of studies of witchcraft in Africa, and the "modern forms of African witchcraft" as discussed referenced in the second epigraph (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1998; Onyinah 2001), suggest that in spite ofand perhaps because ofmodernization, witchcraft beliefs and practices persist in many parts of Christian Africa. Although among migrant Puerto Ricans here, there was little explicit use of the language of witchcraft, as I have suggested, the basic ideas and forms of traditional Puerto Rican witchcraft appear to persist alongside contemporary Christian notions of "deliverance." Using the West African context of Ghana as an example, Onyinah (2001) has suggested that an emergent form of "witch demonology" represents a synthesis of Pentecostal Christianity and traditional African religion (in which belief in witchcraft persists). The syncretism of traditional witchcraft and Christian demonism is also apparent here (though not openly expressed) and suggests that Pentecostalism may, as in other Asian and African contexts (Geshiere 1998), selectively retain or take up traditional conceptions of evil and malevolence. Significant nonwitchcraft-focused anthropological studies of evil as demonism and diabolism provide additional orientations. Examples include Kapferer's (1991) analysis of Sinhalese exorcism ritual, in which therapeutic efficacy is seen as arising out of a dramatized engagement with menacing but foolhardy and greedy demons, thereby containing and declawing them; Taussig's (1980) examination of the "devil pact" in South America; and Csordas's discussion of "demons and deliverance" among new Englander charismatic Catholics (1993:165-227). Csordas's analysis highlights Pentecostal deliverance from demons and the embodied metaphor of "casting out" former, sinful aspects of self and behavior in the process of being healed or reborn in the spirit. Employing a phenomenological approach to much the same effect as Kapferer (1991), Csordas's analysis suggests that the objectification and identification of "demons" (as emotion, sins, sinful tendencies) is a necessary step in the individual's "deliverance" from them. Although highly ritualistically and rhetorically elaborated for a time (with an apparent "peak" in the 1970s),

438 ETHOS

demonology, deliverance, and the rhetoric of evil have declined considerably in the New England Catholic Charismatic community (Csordas 1993). This, however, is not the case in Cleveland's Puerto Rican evangelical Christian Community in the late 1990s, the prolific language and symbolism of devils and evil was most common among active Pentecostal and Catholic Charismatic congregants in this study. Still, the language and symbolism of evil extended beyond these religious subcommunities, and it was commonly uttered by adherents of nearly all faiths and beliefs (Seventh Day Adventism, Catholicism, Mita Evangelism, Spiritism, and even Islam), not just Pentecostalism. Taussig's examination of devil pacts in South America (1995) is one of a number of primarily Latin American anthropological and socialhistorical explorations of popular accounts of diabolism and the devil pact. Evident in folktales, morality plays, and everyday narrative, notions of the devil pact have been documented throughout Middle and South America including Colombia (Friedman 1994; Taussig 1987), Peru (Cuentas 1986; Nugent 1996), Central America (Edelman 1994), Ecuador (Crain 1991; Miles 1994), and Mexico (Cervantes 1991, 1994). If, as Cervantes has argued persuasively for Mexico, diabolism throughout Latin America has its sources in the diffusion of European and Spanish Inquisition notions of evil and the devil (Cervantes 1994), and if, as argued in the more economically focused diabolical pact literature, diabolism is sustained by often extreme economic stratification, then we would also expect to see it in the Spanish Caribbean. Oddly, however, little has been written on diabolism and evil per se (as "devil pacts" or otherwise) in the Caribbean, although the concept of malevolence variously infuses the morally ambiguous protectoras, santos, loa, and orishd of African-Christian popular religious forms. While I could find no writings on Puerto Rican folklore of the devil or diabolism that would help explain its prominence among contemporary migrants, brief accounts of witchcraft (primarily directed at the above mentioned Catholic syncretic forms: Espiritismo, Santeria, etc.) are provided in several general ethnographic studies, among which Seda-Bonilla's (1973:chap. 4) is the most extensive (see also Buitrago 1973; Mintz 1974). As I intend to show, key dimensions of witchcraft as described in small-town Puerto Rico in the 1950s (Seda-Bonilla 1973) are retained among small-town migrants to the mainland inner city in the late 1990s, though these are generally couched in the more "religiously correct" language of idolatry and demonism. Although "retentions" of traditional conceptions of witchcraft and evil are suggested in the observations of Onyinah, Geshiere, and others in contemporary Christian Africa as well as in the ethnographic data here, these are not the kinds of religious or supernatural retentions, or typically highlighted, in accounts of Protestant sectarian movements in Latin America,

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 439

the Caribbean, and elsewhere.5 In Cox's (1995) world survey, as well as in the Puerto Rican ethnographic literature, Pentecostalism's retention of supernaturalistic dispositions and sensibilities occur in the service of deism, specifically monotheism. However, little mention is made of the fate of witchcraft and other conceptions of supernatural evil or malevolence. Agosto-Cintron's overview of early 20th-century Puerto Rican social and religious change, for example, acknowledges the condemnation of traditional religious practices, but it highlights Pentecostalism's strengthening of the traditional dependence on the supernatural to resolve problems.
Although traditional practices are condemned, particularly those associated with the Saints . . . what we are seeing [with the rise of Pentecostalism] is a strengthening of traditional religiosity whose fundamental premise is the absolute dependence on the supernatural to resolve problems and to deal with misfortune. Even though the diverse Catholic Saints and magical practices have been replaced by a single entity, God, the character of religion has not changed. Moreover, the distinct elements that accompany the Pentecostal religious experience, like speaking in tongues, prophesizing, and seeing visions are a perfect match for the ample ritualism of popular religion [1996:117-118, my translation]

In his classic, biographic account of the religious conversion experiences and healing of the Puerto Rican sugarcane worker Don Taso and his wife Elizabeth, Mintz (1960) has shown howthrough its emphasis on healingPentecostalism retains and builds upon an experiential core of traditional spirituality. As told to Mintz by Elizabeth, Taso's conversion experience is facilitated by her recognition of a spiritualistic or supernaturalistic disposition in him (following her and her daughter Carmen Iris's conversion):
His daughter Carmen Iris attends the services and returns with sensational stories. Then Eli [his wife] does the same; she makes the events she has seen directly relevant to Taso. Something motivates her to urge him to attempt to cure himself through a supernatural agency and she must suppose he may listen. He goes at her urging, and experiences a strange physical sensation and a cure, which he seems almost entirely incapable of describing as a personal experience. [Mintz 1960:248, emphasis added]

Like other accounts focused on the meaning of the holy in healing and Pentecostal conversion, Mintz's ethnography demonstrates the notion that a newly acquired religious affiliation and orientation builds on traditional experiential scaffolding of spirituality and religiosity. What is less fully addressed in Mintz's accountand in AgostoCintron's (1996)is the fate of traditional folk expressions of spirituality and ethnopsychology that are not positively sanctioned within Pentecostalism. These include certain spiritualistically interpreted premonitions, visions, trance-states, and dreams as well as traditional notions of witchcraft and accompanying moral frameworks (for example, "sin" as ambition, wrath, envy, evil eye, etc.) that occur outside the formal religious service and framework (and the Bible). As we will see, these spiritual

440 ETHOS

expressions are often rooted in concrete experiences of supernatural presence. What, if anything, becomes of these more mundane, or "profane," signs and experiences and to cultural expectancies to share and interpret them as spiritually meaningful? Can the diverse Catholic Saints and magical practices simply be "replaced by a single entity, God," as Agosto-Cintron (1996) suggests? If not, how, in symbolic, psychological, and embodied terms, is the more traditional, generalized disposition toward supernaturalism "pruned" to accommodate the strictly monotheistic religiosity of modern evangelical Protestantism? As suggested in Luis's ambivalence toward espiritismo, and in the phrase "Spirits? No. But evil [la maldad] exists," and in dozens of other examples from over sixty interviews, many traditional Puerto Rican idioms of the supernatural (espiritus, santos, protectoras, brujeria, mala influencia, celajes, presendas) and their experiential forms (dreams, visions, apparitions, celajes, presences) are recognized by newer, more conservative forms of evangelical Christianity as idolatrous and demonic. Also applied to the statues, altars, and other paraphernalia of cult are the saints of Catholicism; the labeling of such experiences as idolatrous or demonic is an important aspect of self-presentation, and it suggests that the ability to identify and name evils is a rhetorical skill thatechoing Csordas and Kapferermay also play a role in Pentecostal healing and deliverance. It also points out the more general spiritual importance (and contested nature) of altered states of consciousness in Puerto Rican folk religion and psychology, summed in the age-old religiocentric argument that "my God is holy, yours is a demon," or "my experiences are sacred, yours are demonic." Revealing a uniquely Puerto Rican cultural elaboration of the Pentecostal language and imagery of deliverance and a more generally elaborated cultural sense of supernatural evil, the symbolism of evil as explored here maintains a largely unspoken, but clear, relation to more traditional forms of witchcraft accusation and diabolical pacts. As we will see, it is also reinforced in the lived experience of demonic visions and nightmares, which themselves often suggest a posttraumatic or dissociative origin. In the discussion that follows, I begin with a brief, preliminary look at two ethnographically described spiritualistic traditions within Puerto Rican folk religion (cult of the saints Catholicism), namely brujeria (witchcraft/sorcery) and espiritismo (Spiritism), both of which historically have been targets and sources of evil-speak. Next, I briefly discuss the sampling and data collection methods used in this study and then provide an overview of the sample characteristics and a representative listing of the forms of evil-speak across religious and mental-health categories. In the heart of the analysis, I provide a more extended examination of participant viewpoints on the nature and meaning of "la maldad" across a religiousbiographical spectrum, from "traditionalist" amalgamations of Spiritism

Evil in Puerto Rican Folk Religion 441

and Catholicism to transitional or "modern" forms of conservative evangelical Christianity. Focusing on the powerful and generally overlooked role of conceptions of evil and malevolence in the selection and retention of traditional forms of spirituality, the analysis attempts to portray cultural-psychological significance of evil, and its mediating role, in the religious modernization of the migrant Puerto Rican.

As a colony of Spain for most of its modern history, Puerto Rico was and still is a largely Catholic society. However, as many have noted, throughout the Spanish colonial period, Spanish Catholic orthodoxy was primarily an upper-class, urban phenomenon, and to a great degree excluded or neglected the rural peasant and slave classes. In smaller towns and rural contexts (from which study participants mostly came), communal rites and rituals associated with folk Catholicism and the Cult of the Saints have long been maintained (Agosto-Cintron 1996; Fitzpatrick 1971; Mintz 1973). However, much of what occurs (and has historically occurred) under the rubric of rural "Catholic religiosity" focuses on domestically based rites, rituals, and alters, sometimes incorporating the beliefs and practices of former African slaves and their descendents in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean and perhaps even, as some have suggested (Rouse 1982), those of the original Taino inhabitants (who evidently also used domestic altars). In the context of this variegated and class-differentiated Puerto Rican folk Catholic landscape, witchcraft found its sources and sustenance. Rooted in medieval and early modern Christian theologies and sermons, in pre- and early Christian European/Mediterranean folk conceptions of witchcraft (the evil eye and other magical passions), and in the colonialists' fears of African and indigenous slave uprisings and concerns about the dissemination of African religions (considered "black magic" rather than "real" religions), witchcraft (especially the witchcraft accusation) has a longif constantly evolvingtenure in the Puerto Rican popular imagination. While for many of higher socioeconomic standing and urban middleclass culture witchcraft may today be innocuous or outdated "superstition," among the popular, or rural peasant, classes it appears to have been widely retained and conserved both in the language of brujeria/hcchicerid and, as we will see, in the more "contemporary" Christian evangelical language of devils, demons, and evil. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the Christian-spiritualist teachings of the French Spiritist Alan Kardec became popular among Puerto Rican urban intellectuals. By the middle of the 20th century, a Puerto Rican adaptation known as Mesa Blanca Espiritfsmo had centers and fallowings

442 ETHOS

in many towns throughout the island (see Harwood 1977; Ross 1980). By the time Puerto Rican and North American ethnographers began to document aspects of Puerto Rican folk religion in the mid-20th century (Mintz I960; Seda-Bonilla 1973; Steward 1956), it consisted of a complex mixture of Cult of the Saints Catholicism and locally articulated amalgamations of espiritismo, santeria, and santerismo. One key to understanding the complexity of evil symbolism in the interviews presented in this article is to appreciate how each of these religious subcultures is susceptible to witchcraft accusations from "outside," and especially from more orthodox and conservative forms of Christianity. The Spiritist-directed witchcraft accusation as described in SedaBonilla's (1973) ethnographic study of the pseudonymous rural Puerto Rican farm community Tipan in the 1950s is instructive. It points out the heterogeneity of religious beliefs and practices within a small community (as here), and it suggests the common use of the witchcraft idiom, one that implies the existence of "evil powers" and their accessibility by certain malevolent persons, or "witches."
Spiritists persistently denied and rejected witchcraft, [but] they were precisely the ones suspected of practicing it and were sought after to perform it. Their persistent negation confirmed to many Tipanecos that they were in fact witches, whereas affirmation by the Spiritists would have been seen as negation or disparagement of the evil powers. In other words, if someone in the community said that he could "cast spells," or that he was a sorcerer, his assertions were considered as so much hot air, since in making them he was presuming to have powers he did not have. [Seda-Bonilla 1973:104]

With the exception of an overlay of conservative Protestantism (vigorous and well rooted in Cleveland, but only incipient in Tipan 50 years earlier), Seda-Bonilla's description accurately represents many of the forms of "Catholic" religious differentiation, identification, and belief observed among Puerto Rican-born mainlanders interviewed here (i.e., non-Spiritist Catholics, Spiritist-Catholics, Spiritists, malevolent Spiritists, witches, charlatan-Spiritists). As we will see, building partly on the traditional foundation of orthodox and syncretic forms of folk Catholicism, spiritualism, and witchcraft, evangelical sectarian Protestantism has intensified and radicalized the rhetoric of malevolence. Although there is little mention of "evil-speak" in the religious rhetoric or folklore of earlier eras of rural Puerto Rican community life, SedaBonilla's ethnographic accounts of witchcraft and Spiritism in TipAn in the 1950s suggest that witchcraft accusations were central to conceptions of malevolence. To further appreciate the considerable range of cultural elaboration of evil, both semantic and metaphysical, it is helpful to examine briefly espiritista conceptions of evil as discussed in Kardec's The Book of the Spirits (1975). For analytic purposes here, these conceptions represent a significant metaphysical and symbolic departure from the punitive, radical evil suggested by both medieval and contemporary Christian

Evil In Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 443

notions of the Devil or Satan. Though Mesa Blanca Espiritismo has a fairly elaborate sense of mala influencia6 ("bad influences," the idea that wayward spirits haunt and harass the living) and a reputation for malevolence among some community members here (as in Luis's quote) and in Tipdn, formal espiritista doctrine explicitly rejects any notion of absolute evil, or of the devil as an eternally damned being. In The Book of the Spirits, Kardec writes:
in the belief of backward peoples there is an acceptance of malevolent gods and demons; but for anyone who accepts the benevolence of God, it is illogical and contradictory to suppose that he would be able to create eternally damned beings destined to acts of evil in perpetuity, for this would be the equivalent of negating his benevolence. [1975:90]

From its inception, Spiritism attempted to demystify and deradicalize evil, to take the fear and darkness out of medieval Christian thought. Thus Kardec's theodicy eliminates beings damned to evil and to acts of evil in perpetuity, essentially declawing the Christian devil. This less radical sense of supernatural malevolence in the espritista doctrine can be understood formally in terms of Kardec's conception of a hierarchy of spiritual levels against which all souls and spirits (including the self) can be morally measured. It also provides valuable insights into Puerto Rican interpretations of the supernatural and altered states of consciousness. In Kardeckian Spiritism, relative evil replaces radical evil (Satan, the Devil, eternal damnation) in the form of a band of morally retarded, but not inherently evil, spirits that "haunt" houses, souls, and relationships:
The Spirits pertain to different classes and they are not equal in power, intelligence, science or morality. The highest orders of spirits, the superior spirits are distinguished from the others by their perfection, knowledge, proximity to God, purity of sentiment and love of the good. These are the angels or pure spirits. The other classes are progressively less perfect, and belong to inferior grades attracted by our passions like hate, envy, jealousy, pride, etcetera, and they find pleasure in el mal. (1975:19)

Reifying Christian conceptions of spirit, and clearly retaining the moral thrust of medieval (Thomistic) Christian notions of sin (as in the Seven Deadly Sins: hate, envy, jealousy, pride, etc.), the message converts Satan, the eternally damned devil, into humanized spiritual beings (virtually "passions") who are "more embroiling/deceptive and rumor mongering than malicious . . . of little consequence and meanness. These are the goblins or ghosts, the wandering spirits" (1975:19). In the conception of "rumor-mongering spirits of little consequence," the image of the devil is replaced by a watered down notion of evil that is perhaps more characteristic of African and Native American cosmologies, as a trickster and mischievous, but rarely terrifying and awful.7 In the popular religious context of late-19th-century rural Puerto Rico, part of Spiritism's popularity was its ability to attenuate the supernatural terror associated with the medieval Christian devil.8

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Notions and expressions of evil embodied in witchcraft, devil pacts, and mischievous spirits can be seen as products of the unique historicalreligious conditions of colonial Puerto Rico, where a diffuse, rural, magicladen folk Catholicism (distinguished from the Catholic orthodoxy of the urban elite) exchanged beliefs and practices with African slaves (and their descendants) and, later, with the hierarchical, moral cosmology of Kardeckian Spiritism. As a social rhetorical phenomenon, this language of evil was partly evoked in the interviews by my queries about espritismo, and in this form, it reinforced a number of socially and spiritually alienating stereotypes. Using the spiritual-religious trajectory traveled and experienced by many of the participants (folk Catholicism conservative Protestantism) in their experiences of religious change, the following section begins by looking at the comments of one of the few acknowledged Espiritistas (the "starting point" of this trajectory), one who is also very aware of the perspective of conservative Christianity.

METHODS AND DATA COLLECTION

The broader study from which evil discourses are excerpted here attempted to elicit conceptions and perceptions of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and the supernatural in the context of one- to three-hour life-history interviews with 60 Puerto Rican participants in Cleveland, Ohio, between 1997 and 1999. The majority of participants (55/60) were referred through social recreation and social service agencies catering to Cleveland's Hispanic community. The recreation centers were located in a one- to two-square-mile area encompassing several near Westside, inner-city Cleveland neighborhoods with comparatively higher concentrations of "Hispanics" (according to 1990 U.S. Census data). A smaller number were recruited through door-to-door canvassing (N = 3) and opportunistically from public encounters in stores and on the street (n = 2). Twenty-two of the 60 participants were recruited through the local community mental-health system. With an ethnographic focus on altered states of consciousness, the inclusion of psychiatric patients was expected to diversify and enrich the findings. All of the 60 participants completed at least two interviews: One was guided by a structured sociodemographic data sheet and the other by a semistructured life-history checklist (adapted from the "Check-Sheet of Topics for Psychodynamic Interviews" in R. Levy's The Tahitians [1973]), Slightly abbreviated and modified to include a range of adequate probes on the topics of dreams, spirits, visions, and hallucinations, the life-history checklist broadly followed the life course of the individual from her/his earliest memories to his/her current living situation. Commonly beginning

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 445

with a question about the first home situation that the participant could remember (nearly all remembered "humble" one- to two-room homes in rural or small-town settings), it endedusually during a second meetingwith questions on Cleveland as a place to live and perceptions of the local Latino community or communities. The typical transcript from these interviews consisted of a little over 1,000 lines or around 25 single-spaced printed pages. Among the multiple domains covered in the interviews, sections on "religion and the spiritual" (where I commonly asked about espiritismo) and "morals/morality" (where I typically asked about sin, or pecado) evoked an extensive and highly differentiated vocabulary and folk psychology of evil and malevolence.9 As noted, these statements came from persons of all religious and socioeconomic backgrounds and ages, and from persons with and without treated psychiatric illness, although among persons with a history of treated psychiatric illness they were more common. To fully represent the rich elaboration of the language of evil in the transcripts is impossible here, but for the purposes of grasping the ranges of expressions of evil, I have organized a number of representative quotations from individuals of various religious and age groups (Table 1 below). These quotes are not meant to represent the concept of evil within a given religious tradition; nor since they are lifted from meaningful interview and narrative contexts should they be assumed to have any meaning other than the fact that they use language and concepts of evil. More extensive quotes are examined across a range of religious backgrounds in the analysis that follows.
Table 1 . Sample Averages of Selected Variables vs. Local Latino and Cleveland Populations

Sample Cleveland Latinos (N = 6) (n = 23,330, 8O96PR) Average age years % with less than 9th-grade education Per capita income (#) Poverty rate % (U.S. Census) 48 24

Cleveland City* (506,000)

United States (1998 estimates) -37

32

47 5,399 53

25 6,357 40

13 9,258 29

~6 -21,000 -7

Source: 1990 U.S. Census.

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Table 2. Selected Evil-Related Quotations from Participants Varying by Religious and Psychiatric Backgrounds
Description 32-year-old female 66-year-old male Religious Psychiatric Hx? Quotation (la maldad) "God is allpowerful in the universe, but evil exists." (satanas) "I think that there are evil spirits, because there are people condemned and they are evil spirits and Satan is the king of the evil spirits." (diablito) "I have strange dreams . . . I see myself fighting with little devils." (demonios) "Those people, the Pentecostals and them? They're possessed by the devil. . . when they speak in tongues, and you can't understand them? They're possessed by a demon." (la maldad) "Do you know about spiritism? I don't believe in witches but I know that evil exists." (brujeria) "He did witchcraft against a family that they hated, and this family responded by doing witchcraft against them." (espiritus malos) "When someone commits a good act, demons will leave him, and this makes Satan angry; but he'll always return with another evil spirit to tempt one again."

Mita Evangelism Yes

Pentecostal

No

53-year-old female 35-year-old male

Catholic

No

Seventh-Day Adventist

Yes

60-year-old female

Pentecostal

No

40-year-old male

Catholic

No

65-year-old female

Catholic

No

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 447

PARnWAKTCHARACTBUSnCS
The sample overall had a lower per capita income and higher poverty rates than Cleveland's economically disadvantaged Latino population in general. Largely as a result of selection methods and sites, the study sample (n = 60) was, on average, much older (x = 48) and less educated with lower per capita income and correspondingly higher poverty rates than local Latino (which is 80% Puerto Rican), Cleveland city, and U.S. metro-area populations (see Table 1 below). Among the half-dozen or so individuals whose recorded/transcribed commentaries on evil and the supernatural are quoted in this analysis, approximately half are male, half earn aboveaverage income, half are active members of Christian evangelical churches, and half have a history of treated psychiatric illness. As suggested above, within the wider sample there was considerable religious heterogeneity (intra-Christian), and within individual life histories, a considerable degree of religious change and experimentation was identified. A commonly heard comment, "it doesn't matter where you go, just go to church" summed up both the general sense of religious duty and the flexible piety of the subjects.10 Only one participant claimed to have no religious or church affiliation. Nominally, 34 (57%) identified themselves as Catholic, 16 (27%) as Pentecostal, and (12%) identified with other evangelical and fundamentalist sects (Seventh-Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mita, and others). Although there were similarly high levels of religious involvement among Catholics and non-Catholics (based on reported prayer, Bible reading, and church-related activities), among Catholics (who were significantly older than non-Catholics) some of this self-described involvement appeared to be an artifact of the frequent prayer and religious activities of the social group from which they were recruited.11 Religious change, particularly after coming to the mainland, was common. Among all participants, only 14 (25%) had remained within the same faith throughout their lives (had not reportedly "experimented with" or temporarily joined alternative religions). Of these, most were older Catholics, although there were also members of both Mita and Pentecostal sects who had maintained church involvement since childhood. About a third of the larger sample (n = 19) had converted or switched from Catholicism to (primarily Pentecostal) Protestantism as adults (most after arriving to the mainland). Although some who left Catholicism for Pentecostal ism, for example, had moved on to other ecumenical Protestant churches (Baptist and Methodist), and some had drifted back to Catholicism, none of the participants whose parents' religion was non-Catholic had converted to Catholicism. Although no participants identified Spiritism as their primary religion, the majority demonstrated knowledge of its practices and

448 ETHOS

beliefs, several acknowledged past involvement, and two reported ongoing involvement and participation. Thus, in the life-course of the sample as a whole, there was a net movement away from mostly informal Catholic and related traditional religious forms toward sectarian forms of Protestant religiosity. It is within this general content of religious change that the language and symbol of evil plays an important sociopsychological role.

EVIL-SPEAK: RHETORICAL DIMENSION OF THE TRANSITION FROM RURAL-TRADmONAL TO URBAN MAINLAND PROTESTANT CHRBTlAliTY
Among migrant working-class Puerto Ricans living in Cleveland in the late 1990s, there was a fairly widespread acquaintance with Spiritist beliefs and practices. However, practicing Espiritistas did not typically volunteer their beliefs, and religious non-Spiritists were quick to condemn or dismiss them as "idolatrous" and "superstitious." The resulting acute awareness among individuals of all religious persuasions of the stigmatized and demonized character of Spiritism put Spiritists (and their sympathizers) on the defensive, forcing them to carry out their activities underground (or out of town) and producing such "religiously correct" statements as "I don't believe in spirits, but I know that evil exists." Another example of this climate of religious modernism can be seen in the comments of 45-year-old Josefina M., a five-year resident of Cleveland and divorced mother of three with a history of domestic violence (as victim) and receiving treatment for symptoms of anxiety. Her elaboration and definition of her espiritista beliefs are carefully prefaced with a disclaimer of any involvement in witchcraft or sorcery, that is, brujeria. Because she provides insight into the unique contributions of formal Kardeckian espiritismo to the wider Puerto Rican lexicon of evil and misfortune, I quote her at length:
In my father's belief, they don't believe in witchcraft or sorcery. They believe that the spirit manifests itself through people to help them with problems in their lives, and to orient them, and to pray for that being and other undeveloped spirits that may approach that person. They [the Spiritists] help by means of prayer. They help [the wayward spirit] go through a spiritual schooling in the heavens. When a person dies, they enter a spiritual school where they will be prepared. But there are spirits that have been corrupted, or they are blind. They don't understand and they have not been able to find and follow that spiritual light.

Josefina's opening disclaimer demonstrates an aspect of the common, folk religious equivalence of espiritismo and brujeria, echoing observations made by Seda-Bonilla in Tipan (in the 1950s) where, as he noted, Spiritists "were precisely the ones thought to practice [brujeria]." However, despite her earlier Pentecostal experimentation, Josefina's statement hereand her expressions in generalshow little evidence of the more

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 449

"demonological" language of evangelical Christianity. In fact, they effectively communicate and justify explicitly nondiabolical notions of malevolence. In this sense, Josefina is adept at defending her Spiritist faith and her "self' or identity from accusations of malevolence and witchcraft. Thus while her well-articulated espiritista metaphysics may, in the wider community, be associated with witchcraft and evildoings, Josefina's own perspective on evil appears to normalize (as opposed to radicalize) the psychology and symbolism of evil. This normalization or humanization of evil is also fear abating, converting Satan and his demonic minions into "spirits that have been corrupted or [that] are blind. They don't understand and they have not been able to find and follow that spiritual light." Her suggestion that all spirits can find the light is, as we have seen, fully consistent with Kardeckian teachings (in, for example, the "Book of the Spirits"), and it expresses the potentially emotionally comforting idea that rather than fearing the corrupted or undeveloped spirits (Satan et al.), one should sympathize with and pray for them. In contrast, recall the statement of 48-year-old Luis who, when asked if he knew anything about espiritismo, suggested, basically, that if someone is fooling around with it to hurt somebody, he's evil, dangerous, and consorting with the devil. In light of Josefina's brujeria disclaimers and Seda-Bonilla's ethnographic accounts of witchcraft and espiritismo in Tipan, we can see more clearly how his statement recapitulates the form of the traditional witchcraft accusation and expresses a warning. The use of a perhaps more "religiously correct" notion of diabolical evil, consistent with fundamentalist, biblical Christianity, may represent a move away from the "superstitious" sounding witchcraft accusation, but his credulity and unease concerning the espiritista's diabolical pact also suggest a significant retention of traditional notions of the supernatural. Luis's terse statement therefore not only demonizes Spiritism, but it also indirectly legitimizes and reinforces it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the difference between Josefina's more traditional espiritista metaphysics of evil and those of Luis, an active and ardent Pentecostal church member, are differences that are apparently surmountable within a lifetime. Luis reports being raised in a household where his stepfather practiced espiritismo. Both Luis and his mother "converted" to Pentecostalism after coming to Cleveland in the early 1990s. But how is this change effected and maintained? How does the individual overcome the traditional dependence on santos, espiritus, and protectoras and replace this variegated supernaturalism with one focused on a single entity, God? As I have begun to suggest, it appears that the symbolism of an absolute, radical evil (as opposed to the more quotidian and morally ambiguous evil suggested by Josefina) provides a conceptual or psychological lever that facilitates this pruning and polarization process.

450 ETHOS

It also appears, from the statements like those of the following two participants, that a key part of acquiring this leverageand of navigating the space between superstition and proper Christian faithis the acquisition and use of the language of evil and the devil. In the following passage, in which a 46-year-old former Pentecostal sect member reflects on the Pentecostal rejection of both espiritismo and Catholicism, we also gain insight into the central, but at times confusing, role of demonism in processes of religious change:
Most Catholics believe in Espiritismo, and they use the figures of the Saints and they do whatever is done with those. Any espiritista you see is Catholic, but you don't see an espiritista that's Pentecostal. 'Cause when they come into Pentecostal [ism] they just put all that aside. I don't know, maybe that's why [longtime friend] Ramona says I've become an apdstata [apostate, impious]. I don't know, but she thinks in a different perspective. I believe that a person can have their don, like a gift, and not necessarily have to be Pentecostal, you know? They are people who see . . . but then if you're not Pentecostal they say, "then that's the devil telling you." And the thing is, they find in the scriptures verses to support that, you know? And it makes you to think, I mean, is this from God, or isn't it?

Echoing the aforementioned religious trajectory from SpiritistCatholicism to Pentecostalism (and beyond), Felipe's statement reveals the common association of espiritismo and its hierarchy of spirits with Catholicism and its hagiography of saints. Of greater interest, however, is the reference to the question of the "holy" or "nonholy" character of visions. Felipe's statements suggest the interchangeability of supernatural experiences between religions: The idea that, as before (for example, Catholic spiritualist), he will still expect to receive divine messages and visions; only now they will be called something else. Indeed, they reverse their moral polarity, and when Felipe later leaves the Pentecostal sect, they are again reversed. His statement clearly captures the sense of confusion and ambivalence felt by those traversing the symbolic and psychological space between the two traditions. Socialized to believe in and seek encounters with spirits and the supernatural in their traditional, popular religion, individuals who, like Felipe, later turn to forms of evangelical Christianity (perhaps due to the stresses accompanying migration) find that there is room for only one kind of legitimate vision: that inspired by the Holy Spirit. "Born again," they learn that outside the context and tutelage of the cu/to, their visions or other encounters with the supernatural are neither legitimate nor holy and therefore must be diabolical. And if they find themselves once more outside the legitimizing context of the church (as Felipe did, due to the reproach brought about by a recent divorce), such visions and experiences of the supernatural again revert to their diabolical character. But how can the same kind of visionary experience be both diabolical and

Evil In Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 451

divine? This is the contradiction voiced by Felipe, who sees inconsistencies in the Pentecostal interpretation of supernatural experience. In Felipe's musings on the legitimacy of religious visions, in Luis's cautions about the dangers of malevolent espiritismo, or even in Josefina's defense of her own espiritista belief, we see the use of a set of symbolic associations (blacks with black magic or witchcraft, witchcraft with Spiritism; Spiritism with Catholicism, Catholicism with idolatry, etc.) to demonize others' religious beliefs and experiences while also indirectly self-identifying as pious and Christian. The types and forms of accusations suggest that traditional idioms of brujeria (and other notions of the supernatural, spirits, santos, protectoras, etc.) are being replaced with a more religiously correct (evangelical Christian) language and imagery of the devil. How this language might be acquired in the process of taking on an evangelical Christian identity can be seen in an instructive example of the rhetorical uses of the language of evil (as accusation of diabolism). After recently arriving to Cleveland from Puerto Rico and taking up residence with his devoutly Pentecostal sister and her two young children, 55-year-old Miguel joined his sister's Pentecostal sect. It appeared this decision was made in part because of a lack of other social and spiritual supports and economic dependence on his very religiously involved sister. A self-described former espiritista and brujo,12 Miguel gives a primer on the dynamics of witchcraft while also unintentionally revealing part of the social-rhetorical processes by which the Christian language of the "devil" comes to replace the language of "saints" or "protectors" that are key images and entities in both Spiritism and folk Catholicism. In the following passage, which is part of a more extended discussion of the differences between Santeria and Espiritismo, Miguel describes the form and meaning of spiritualistic diagnosis (extrayendo causas).13 Notable here is the manner in which his language reveals an ambiguous religious standpoint, suggesting that he is straddling both espiritista and evangelical Christian (Pentecostal) perspectives or beliefs. Also key is the presence of Miguel's sister who interrupts occasionally to edit and explain some of his references to the supernatural.
JJ: ME: And how does one extract a cause? Well . . . it's like . . . a myth, because we would feel like we could move through the air, in a "trance" as they say. And then we would be possessed by demons. The demon would occupy our brains and then this demon would be able to say to another person, "look, you have this and this and this [problem), and so-and-so is doing this to you." And while this demon has possessed us, this so-called saint or protectionbecause they acquire n a m e s . . . . these demons acquire names of saints or protectors, and when . . . (interrupts to correct or clarify) he's calling the devil a "protection" or "saint"

Sister:

452 ETHOS

ME:

. . . he [the devil) takes advantage of our mental transition [to trance] and takes possession of our cerebros [lit. brains, used like "mind") . . . supposedly. So we go into trance, we leave this world as we say, like a person without a life, but then that's when the demon comes to have life inside of us, and that's when he can relate things to the other person. I mean, that demon, disguised as a protection or a santo, that demon, tells the other person, "you have this, you have that, they are doing this to you, and they are working with such and such [herb, magic, etc], and I am going to do a work or spell for you so that that person ends up prostrate in a bed, or so that that person has to use crutches, or so that that person spends the rest of his life in a wheelchair, or so that when he is walking along, he falls.

Miguel appears to struggle (even with the help of his sister) to replace traditional "protectora" notions of espiritus and santos (i.e., the supernatural) with as yet unassimilated notions of the Christian devil. Well aware of his sister's conservative Christian presence and her tendency to correct him, he hesitates at times, inserting disclaimers or other seeming indices of religious correctness ("it's . . . like a myth" or "it possesses our minds . . . supposedly," "the so-called saint or protection"). From the perspective of the outside observer, it appears that Miguel is still learning to apply the language of "devils" to the older sobriquet "protector spirits," for he cannot quite (yet) explain himself without the use of these terms. While he correctly (from his sister's vantage) suggests that the "demon would occupy our brains," he slips into an older usage when he adds, "these demons acquire the names of saints or protectors." And it is precisely here that his sister interrupts and corrects him, pointing out that "he's calling the devil [the "real" force or issue for her] a protection or saint." Evidently for Miguel, however, there is a lingering disposition to consider the "real" force or issue a protector or saint, and thus to unwittingly reveal himself as not yet convinced or at least not yet rhetorically capable as self-presenting as a Pentecostal Christian in belief and orientation. These examples illustrate a largely rhetorical aspect of religious transformation and expression, one that requires the acquisition of the language of the Christian devil to refer to traditional, multifarious conceptions of the supernatural. This language appears to play an important symbolic and psychological role by giving a name to, and explaining the power and potency of, many traditional expressions of spirituality (dreams, premonitions, hexes, etc.). By narrowing what can be thought of as a divine visionary (or other "legitimate" religious) experience, it also sanctions and discredits unauthorized visions. The pruning of a multifarious supematuralistic religiosity into a monotheism requires a substantial conceptual and symbolic reorganization and revaluation, and the symbol of evil, particularly radical diabolical evil, appears to facilitate this process. But since much of what we have considered here is rhetorical (i.e., talk about proper categories, beliefs, and values) and also somewhat abstract, it is still unclear whether a pruning and polarization of the traditional

Evil In Puerto Rican Folk Religion 453

religious imagination is, in fact, taking place. In some ways, it appears that there has simply been a renaming, rather than a restructuring, of this imagination (i.e., the disposition to believe in spirits remains strong). In effect, the belief in a set of mischievous malas influencias has been transformed into the belief in a more dangerous, radical idea of the devil. Forms of talking about spiritual encounters and even beliefs about spiritual encounters have been transformed, but a core supernaturalistic disposition remains.

OTHB AS DEMON: B B S AND UTBAUSM M DEMON POSSESSION JUO

In this section, I examine more literal accounts of diabolical or demonic contact in which individuals describe other's behaviors as demonically possessed, or a devil is described as a life-threatening aggressor in a realistic nightmare vision. These accounts come mostly from participants who are longer-term, enthusiastic members of their Christian sects. Particularly among those who integrate demonic imagery into nightmare narratives and visions, they suggest a fuller Christian evangelical orientation and literacy. In the following excerpt, 31-year-old David C , who, like Miguel, was a relatively recent mainland arrival and Pentecostal convert, we see the language of demons applied to the emotional attacks (ataques de grito) of David's aunt and grandmother. As previously seen, this language is evoked when questioned about espiritismo. In his response to being asked about his family's participation in espiritismo, David begins by reiterating the local conceptual association of espiritismo with brujeria, and goes on to describe the emotional/demon attacks.
DC: They told me that . . . yes, I knew something about that with my grandmother, and my aunt who would get these . . . they would both get these attacks, not convulsive attacks, but attacks of shouting [ataques de grito]. Sometimes my aunt and sometimes my grandmother would get these attacks, and 50 people couldn't hold her down. She was like a demon, like a being from another world, and her eyes would rotate back and all of this . . . it was really something, and the same thing with my aunt. She gets these attacks [se le peganj.

David continues by describing how this would typically happen during family fights and arguments, thus providing an unusual Christian-moral interpretation of a recognizable Puerto Rican idiom of distress known as ataques de nervios. Traditionally associated with nonreligious ideas of nervous stress and grief, the ataque is generally recognized as an appropriate cultural response to any of a cluster of culturaUy significant stressors almost always involving family (death, family conflict, violence, trauma, and so on) (Guarnaccia and Farias 1988; Guarnaccia et al. 1989,1996).

4 5 4 ETHOS

In David's account, ataques de grito occur under conditions (family fights and arguments) typical of the ataque de nervios idiom. However, they are also interpreted as demonic possession. The form of the ataque de grito as described by David is also reminiscent of accounts of demonios (or malo) encima (demonically afflicted) from the Pentecostal church services as described by other informants. For example, Isabel R., a longtime member of a stable Pentecostal congregation in the community, describes the involvement of the devil in a physical fit of screaming by a man during a Pentecostal culto (service) who went up to be prayed for and was then stricken. Suddenly, according to Isabel, "he got up and he started screaming and screaming and this man just flew, not flew, but corrid hastafuera [ran out of the church] like a bad spirit who did not want to be in church." Isabel similarly interpreted the behavior of a woman in a Pentecostal service who "was just sitting down and all of the sudden she started screaming and rolling in the floor, rollando asi . . . in the church." Ritualized episodes of demonios or malo encima are culturally distinguished from the ataque. However, in their trancelike behavior and their parallel, cathartic interpretations (one releases/expresses grief, the other sin), they share enough features to explain how, in David's account, a sympathetic ataque interpretation might be conceptually replaced by a demonic, alienating one. Another literalistic account of the experience of the demon in the form of the "possessed other" comes from 33-year-old Ana V., a lifelong member of the Mita Christian Church, who had recently moved to Cleveland from Puerto Rico following the death of a family member. Like David, she uses a demonic idiom to interpret the eye rolling and ugly contortions of her boyfriend. However, instead of an ataque de nervios or an episode of demonios encima, she describes a more extended (and evidently psychotic14) incident that supports her claim of his long-term diabolical involvement (in the form of a "pact"):
He had made a pact with the devil. He doesn't know what a church is. He doesn't know how to pray. He couldn't say an "Our Father." He doesn't know what a cross is. I mean he grew up from a very young age in evil/bad ways. His grandfather had a bad upbringing [se aclamaba a to malo], his mother had a bad upbringing. This is what he learned, evil/badness . . . and he had an attack, and his fingers stiffened, and bent back, and his eyes rolled in his head, and he was physically different, his color. What he did was he turned off the lights and told me not to come into his room, to leave him alone. And I said, "why are you doing this?"

Continuing, Ana describes her religious response to this fearful encounter with evil:
My faith In God has kept me standing, so .. ., my faith in God has never wavered. In fact I feel closer to him, because I'd say "Diocito you are white and the other is black. From the black, I derive nothing. With you who are white, I see light and clarity". .. . lie finally cumc out, and so far, it hasn't happened to him again. But it is awful to see

Evil In Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 455

a person, a human body, contort [doblar] . . . and when we had sex, I saw in his face a fury, and after that I didn't dare open my eyes. You're done? Ok. And to me it felt like it hadn't been him, it wasn't him.

As Ana reflects back on this impressive and frightening interpersonal experience, we can see her command of the language and symbolism of evil and with it her own Christian piety. The recognition and labeling of the demonic other provides a mechanism or idiom for expressing the Christian, holy self. But as with statements from other participants, this narrative also suggests the speaker's very strong belief in or acceptance of the idea of supernatural, diabolical evil. Ana's Christian religiosity is reflected in her concept of, and faith in, a strong and good God, but its highly polarized form also provides plenty of room for a threatening and opportunistic devil. Of course, Ana's narrative can also be read as a discourse on fear. In this reading, the extreme fear provoked by the bizarre behavior of her boyfriend can be seen as invoking in her a prayer response by which she is able to counter and/or neutralize that fear. Like the idiom of evil, prayer is a highly elaborated psychological dimension of evangelical Christian spirituality. As a set of diverse everyday practices, prayer is helpful not only for the amelioration of mundane stresses and tensions but also for coping with more terrifying encounters with evil. As it will become more evident in the final examples, acts of identifying, labeling, and renouncing the deviland thereby, perhaps, obtaining control over itare not unlike the ethnodiagnostic processes of Espiritismo (and Santeria as described by Felipe above) where "causes" are "extracted" (or named) and then "cleansings" are prescribed. As we will see, Ana's attempt to cope with her boyfriend's terrifying, demonic visage and behavior through evil-renouncing prayer reveals not only a kind of narrative template but also a behavioral schema for coping with the extreme fear invoked.

HYPNABOCaC DEMON ATTACKS

Having heard statements in which religious "others" (especially Espiritistas and Catholics) were demonized, and accounts in which another person was demonized (by labeling his behavior as "possessed"), we will now examine narratives in which a supernatural devil appears in realistic, nightmarelike visions. In one sense, the range of statements and images explored thus far has progressed along a continuum of increasing threat and fearfulness, from Josefina's almost reassuring Spiritist notions of a band of morally blind spirits, to Luis's quasifearful warnings about malevolent espiritismo, to the terrifying imagery of Ana's experience of her boyfriend's possession. Continuing this progression, each of the following

456 ETHOS

narratives involves a "vision" of the devil accompanied by intense and overwhelming fear and evoking a seemingly desperate, Christian prayer response. Of course, since the nightmare eventually comes to an end, the participant can always depict the prayer act as resolving the crisis and addressing the terror. Christian faith is affirmed, and the efficacy of prayer is substantiated. The following narratives also differ from those already seen in terms of the interview context. With the exception of Ana's narrative in response to questions about her boyfriend's unusual behavior, much of the language of evil and demons thus far arose in response to questions about Espiritismo. As questions of belief, they evoked statements or narratives of belief (for example, "I don't believe in spirits but I know that evil exists"). In this final section, we will see the language of evil expressed through the more literal, experiential narratives of realistic nightmare visions (as related by devout, evangelical Christians). Each of these narratives is structured by a fearful interpretation of whatfrom a more strictly psychological perspectiveappears to be hypnagogic sleep paralysis, and each roughly follows the narrative sequence seen in Ana's account above: growing fear, identification of evil, prayer, resolution. If, in exploring these diverse Puerto Rican expressions of evil we have been moving along a continuum of increasing fearfulness, then we are also moving in the direction of increased literalism. In their form of telling, these accounts are given as evidence for the reality of an individual's "beliefs": "this really happened to me, it's not merely belief (cf. Good 1994). Constituting, from the participant's perspective, a kind of "empirical" evidence, these more literalistic idioms of the belief in evil go beyond those seen earlier, and they suggest that among the more evangelically socialized Puerto Ricans interviewed here, supernaturalism persists in a highly polarized form and with a highly culturally elaborated symbolism of evil. In these narratives, we see how "cultural elaboration" includes the domain of experience. The first of the supernatural-demon-encounter narratives resembles what is popularly known as an "out of body" experience. It was related by 33-year-old Isabel R. (who described the church-based, demonios encima episodes above) in response to questions about waking dreams.
Isabel R.: Oh yep Have you? JJ: . . . uhuh, when I had my surgery in my legs, I don't know if I told you . . . IR: yea! Did you? JJ: . .. about the nail? IR. Ohhh JJ: . . . didn't I tell you about that? IR: You had stepped on a nail? JJ:

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 457

IR:

JJ: IR:

JJ: IR.

Exactly, and they had to operate on me. When I first got here they had to operate on me. And, it was about two weeks later, I went home. I was lying one night [whispering], y al [then loudly] I mean I was AWAKE, but my eyes were closed. I saw myself floating. I was going, then I was afraid that I was going to fall, and I could literally see my body in the bed. Right . . . and I didn't want to go nowhere, I just wanted to. . . . casi cerca del cieling and [loudly] "no I don't want to go nowhere!" and I would keep praying and praying and praying, y por favor and I was just, I thought it was the devil, dije porfavor reprende, and I came down. But I literally see myself in the bed . . . Wow . . . and I saw myself coming down and get into my body.

In the context of what she perceives as waking consciousness, Isabel looks down upon her own body, senses she has died, and fears that her soul or spirit is being stolen away by the devil. She begins to pray desperately to God "por favor reprende" and then descends back into her body. Although her own body is the primary object of her visual perception, the experience is infused with fear and with the idea that the devil has come, like the grim reaper, to steal her away. Isabel's account also strongly resembles the form of a hypnagogic dream (or nightmare, sleep paralysis with hypnagogic imagery). However, two qualities distinguish her experience from many others reported in the literature (Firestone 1985; Hufford 1982; Jones 1931; Kracke 1979; Tedlock 1992). The first is the interpretation of diabolical agency. Although thematically consistent with many other fear-laden interpretations of the hypnagogic nightmare (incubus, Old Hag, etc.), the devil is not commonly mentioned in hypnagogic nightmare accounts, and in this case, it is evidently a by-product of Isabel's religious orientation and cultural context. Also unique is her apparent ability to respond intentionally with prayer during the experience. In general, the literature on hypnagogic hallucinations describes the dreamer's largely passive relationship to the contents of consciousness, particularly in terms of physical response (indeed, the body is temporarily paralyzed), and few cases are described in which the subject is able to change the affective imagery or plot of the dream-event. Although perhaps intrinsically structured by the hypnagogic experience, Isabel's account recalls the demon narrative of Ana V., who responded to her boyfriend's demonic episode by naming and then "reprehending" el diablo. As noted, such a narrative structure suggests the importance of prayer as a tool for warding off evil (and fear) while also portraying the speaker as religious (or God fearing). In another example of what appears to be hypnagogic sleep onset possibly following bedtime prayers, 35-year-old Ruben E., a devout and very involved evangelical church member, reports a dreamlike experience in which he feels himself being suffocated by the devil:

458 ETHOS

Ruben E.: The dream was about. . . well I had several dreams. One was . . . I went to bed, and I don't know if I prayed that night or not but I went to bed. My oldest s o n . . . . I sleep all different ways but I was sleeping this one night on my stomach for whatever reason. And it felt like an evil presence putting my head into the pillow . . . JJ: pushing you down? RE: Uhuh, and I was suffocating in the pillow and in my dream . . . but it was so real, that it was happening JJ: Like you were awake? RE: Yea. So at that moment, all I said in my dream, in consciousness], 'cause I felt it happening, I said the name of Jesus seven times. Actually it was the seventh time I said Jesus' name, and the presence just lifted up off of me. JJ: And then you woke up? RE: Then I woke, and [he sighs deeply in relief].

Ruben's narrative takes the form of a literalistic experiential account. Having begun to fall asleep while praying, Ruben is suddenly, consciously aware of himself lying facedown in his own bed resisting a force to which he attributes a suffocating and deadly intention. Immobile and impotent, he fears for his life and begins to pray, "Jesus, Jesus, J e s u s . . . . " On the seventh prayer, the presence lifts up off of him. When asked to explain the experience, he begins with a notion of agency ("it could be somebody . . . ") as if to suggest either that a person came into his room, or that a spiritual agency had come (or been sent by somebody) to do this, perhaps through brujeria, or sorcery. But he pauses and returns to the idiom of the supernatural devil, "it could just mean the devil was trying to attack me." As in Isabel's account, the primary object or content of Ruben's awareness is fearful immobility in the felt presence of an unseen, malicious intentionality. Perhaps in the experience itself or in its retelling, fear condenses around the image of the devil. As in the fearful narratives of Ana and Isabel, the perceived existential threat evokes a desperate prayer to God. In the telling, prayer consciousness replaces fear consciousness, and evil is released. And as in both Ana's and Isabel's accounts, the narrative coheres as a testimony to the efficacy of prayer and Christian faith. We see not only the power of God but also the Christianity of the person. A final example involving a somewhat more "violent" and kinesthetically elaborated form of incapacity can be seen in Luchita M.'s description of a reported struggle (una lucha) in which she feels totally, physically overwhelmed and violently beaten by a large demon-man whom she calls the devil. This passage is not only unique in its violence but also in its literalism, for Luchita reports bruises and exhaustion upon awakening. When asked if she ever had nightmares, Luchita responded only, "yes." When asked if she recalled any nightmares at all in the last couple of years, she elaborated:

Evil In Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 459

Luchita:

No, no nightmares. I don't know, the only bad . . . I don't know if it was a nightmare, but there is something that I don't really like to talk about because it upsets me [me pone mal], but I had a dream about the devil, I had a dream that there was this terrible struggle, awful, something that I felt I couldn't win. He had closed the doors, the shutters and then he began to hit me and throw me against the walls, he would hit me so hard that I would fly through the air, and I was panic-stricken, terrified, and I wanted the dream to end but I couldn't end it and as I struggled I got weaker and weaker

and as a last resort [a lo ultimo empiezo a pedirle a dios] I began to pray

to God, and I say, "My God help me, God, I am here with you, You are here with me, help me. You can't let this (evil) overcome me." And then the struggle ended and he disappeared. And when I woke up the next day, I was bruised and my body ached terribly as if I had been in a fight And what does the devil look like? Well, not like he's depicted {no como lo pintan] where they say he has big horns and all that. He's a person, as I saw him he was huge [demasiado de grande], solid, and with a terrifying face. The face is really evil, like a person with a really evil look, not pretty at all. But yes, he is a man. He is a man, but not at all like they say, with horns and a long tail, no. But yes, he is a person who is . . . well, of very bad character. . . . And . . . in the morning I awaken as if I had been in a terrible battle.

JJ: L:

Luchita cannot decide what to call the experience. Its unpleasant emotional and somatic associations are evoked by my query about "nightmares" (pesadillas), but she is not satisfied with this term and suggests that her experience was both more "real" and more disturbing than a nightmare. As more real, it was also more fearful, and as in Ruben's and Isabel's accounts above, it inspires in the subject a desperate plea or prayer to God, "help me, don't let this evil overcome me." In contrast, while Ruben's and Isabel's accounts evolve in the context of sleep onset, and are largely confined in their imagery to the body, prone in bed, Luchita's narrative emphasizes the stage of waking ("and when I woke up the next day . . . , and in the morning"). It is also much more visually and kinesthetically elaborated. In Luchita's account we go beyond the recumbent body, and now see "doors," "shutters," and "walls," or the sense of "flying through the air," or of "feeling bruised" and "ach[ing] terribly." We also see the face of the devil, terrifying and evil, that of a "huge," "solid" "man" of "very bad character." These differences in elaboration especially the expression of exhaustion (as if waking up from very deep sleep)suggest a different kind of nightmare experience (perhaps hypnopompic (pre-waking) rather than hypnagogic).15 Though distinct in some ways, they invoke a literalistic and fearful narrative, and they follow precisely the plot sequences and structures of feeling (escalation of fear to a point of panic, followed by a show of faith) seen in earlier demon-paralysis narratives. In the wider context of Luchita's life history, it is evident that her nightmare also repeats and recapitulates prior violent experiences.

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DISCUSSION
The interpretive "problem of evil" in Puerto Rican folk religious language is not the same "problem of evil" posed by traditional Christian theodicy, which grapples with the question of how a benevolent and omnipotent God can be rationalized and believed in light of the existence of evil and suffering.16 For most Puerto Rican-born participants here, "evil exists" (la maldad existe), and in the form of malevolent witches, spirits, and demons, it has remained an important moral symbol within folklore and the popular religious imagination. In the analysis of life-history narratives here, the "problem of evil" is not theological but interpretive. Why was there so much talk about evil and malevolence? And how do we understand (and ethnographically-narratively represent) the highly elaborated symbolism of evil in Puerto Rican religious thought and language? A more specific question, based on earlier ethnographic reports of witchcraft and the tensions within folk Catholicism, concerns the nature of religious retention: How and why evil is retained in the transition from folk Catholicism(s) to conservative sectarian Christianity? To the question of "why so much evil-speak," it is crucial to stress that the subject matter of the participant interviews ("altered states of consciousness" and the "supernatural") was evil-evocative, per se. Though the life-history interview format was meant to provide a familiar or "naturalistic" narrative backdrop for examining and describing unusual dreams, visions, celajes, and so on, the interviewer's suggestion that a person might have had such an experience often brought the conversation into a morally charged and religiously contested arena. Responses from across a variety of religious groups mixed a cautious measure of fearful "belief in the supernatural with a "religiously correct" sense of the existence of evil (human, natural, supernatural) and the need to eradicate it. This complex amalgamation of belief, concern, and loathing is partly captured by the expression "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil," highlighting the idea that among participants here (and perhaps other low SES urban firstgeneration Puerto Rican migrants), to speak or ask of supernatural experiences can be an evil in itself. The preponderance of "evil-speak" here can thus be seen as "evoked." Because of this, it is difficult to assert that evilspeak is a common or frequent part of everyday discourse, or that it is, culturally, a "key symbol" or "root metaphor" (for example, in the sense used by S. Ortner [1973] or K. McCarthy-Brown [1971]). Nevertheless, in its diverse forms and contexts, evil-speak posed an obstacle for understanding the meaning and nature of altered states of consciousness, and it provided an unusual opportunity (a snapshot of the meanings of evil within and across religious affiliations) to examine the role and place of the symbolism of evil in processes of religious change and differentiation.

Evil in Puerto Rican Folk Religion 461

As we have seen, expressed through changing and contested lexicons of brujos, demonios, espiritus malos, and so on, the language of evil accomplishes several discernable types of social and psychocultural work. Among its social uses, it identifies kinds of persons (by labeling idolatrous Christians, witches, the possessed). Also, by labeling someone or something as demonic or evil, it indirectly self-identifies the speaker as religious and authoritative. Social labeling and identification of evil often also takes the form of a reprimand, redirection, or stigmatization, for example, of sinners, the apostate, and the interviewer. Reprimand may be self-referential as when a person is tempted by evil, or other-directed, as when some participants implied that the interview questions treaded dangerous, evil-evocative, ground. In social terms, the language of evil also warns of supernatural dangers and consequences for certain behaviors, even mere questions. These various social uses underline the strategic importance of the language of evil in contexts where traditional spiritualistic dispositions toward the supernatural encounter or begin to take on the "Holy Spirit"-ualism of evangelical Christianity. If a person fails to use the language in a "religiously correct" setting or sense, he or she risks various kinds of moral-religious stigmatization. Even among those not in the process of religious conversion, the acquisition of certain forms of fluency in the language of evil provides an important skill in negotiating identity and relations. In addition to its social roles, and entangled in them, the symbolism of evil appears to play a number of important psychocultural roles. By symbolically polarizing and radicalizing a more undifferentiated repertoire of traditional spiritual values and beliefs, evil provides important orientations and understandings to the converting Christian. Conceptually and ethnopsychologically, the acquisition of conservative Christian spirituality draws together the diverse folk categories of espiritus, protectoras, malas influencias, Santos, La virgin, Dios, and so forth, into a set of narrower, monotheistic idioms and expressions of the one Holy Spirit and the "evils" driven away by its presence. The result (at least initially) is a clearer sense of what is legitimately spiritual, believable, and sacred, and what is not. But if certain forms of magic and spiritualism are thereby stigmatized and silenced, their experiential forms have not been entirely squelched. In this sense, their forms are less "pruned" than polarized. Radical evil works to polarize not only the experiential and categorical domains of "spirituality" but also the social and behavioral domains of identity, or the relation between self and diverse others. In this sense, the symbolism of evil provides a point of leverage from which to push away from other moral orientations, either those belonging to other persons, or those belonging to a former self. Thus, by helping to define what one is not, evil can also be seen to play a facilitative role in processes of religious change. This suggests that "getting a new religion"

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is as much drawing oneself into something as it is pushing away from something else (past behavior/self, religion). The naming of a horrible, perhaps private or shameful experience as "evil" can also be seen as taking some meaningful control over it. As Kapferer (1991) describes for Sinhalese exorcism ritual and Gsordas (1993) for Christian Charismatic deliverance, naming and consciously identifying the demon or a devil is a key step in exorcising or delivering (releasing) it. To perceive or subsequently recount traumatic, nightmarish, or extremely fearful experiences as evil is also to place or understand them within a larger spiritual-symbolic arena where defensive or protective patterns of "faith" or "prayer" can be mobilized. As seen in the fearful demon accounts of Isabel and Ana, by labeling and explaining troubling experiences and behaviors as evil (nightmares, possession-ataques), they can mobilize a culturally learned psychological defense (prayer) which allows them to cope with, contain, and explain it. This analysis suggests that among religiously searching, lower-SES first-generation Puerto Rican migrants, the encounter with conservative monotheistic Christianity strengthens and expands an existing conceptual scaffolding and lexicon of evil and malevolence. While there is explicit and "religiously correct" condemnation and stigmatization of traditional notions of the supernatural and spirituality (including magic, witchcraft, and spiritualism) as "demonic," there is also a very strongly expressed literalistic sense of metaphysical evil. Statements of belief as well as descriptions of visions, dreams, and the sharing of these and other religious experiences among participants here all suggest the retention of a rich supernaturalism, one that depicts as "demonic" any significant trance, visionary, or "religious" experience occurring outside religiously sanctioned space. The parallel with the traditional witchcraft conception, which had explained both undeserved misfortune (tests of faith) and the ill-gotten fortunes of others (diabolical pacts), suggests that for migrant Puerto Ricans of limited means, sectarian Christian evangelization accommodates and builds on traditional witchcraft (especially the sense of malevolent agency), intensifying and polarizing it in the form of a fearful Christian diabolism. The customary aversion to greed, ambition, and envy embodied in the older, circum-Mediterranean witchcraft accusation is transformed into a stricter biblical morality, based less on the Seven Deadly Sins or passions than the biblical Ten Commandments (especially the First Commandment against the sin of idolatry). The attempt here to probe the spiritual and supernatural lives of inner-city mainland Puerto Rican migrants evoked a rich and refractory language of evil. In addition to explaining fearful experiences and unfortunate events, this language also represents a tool in efforts to distinguish self from idolatrous other and "new self' from "old self (as in the born-again religious identity).

Evil in Puerto Rican Folk Religion 463

What is less clear from this primarily descriptive analysis is whether poverty and material and emotional deprivations that often accompany poverty constitute necessary conditions for this fearful idiom. By describing the language of and belief in supernatural evil across a variety of religious, age, and mental-health status groups, I have suggested the generalized and contentioussense of supernatural evil in a working-class and disabled Puerto Rican community. Evil is tremendously symbolically and rhetorically elaborated, less as a critical "devil pact" and more as a combination or syncretism of Pentecostal demonology and traditional conceptions of witchcraft, as described, for example, in Africa (Geshiere 1998; Onyinah 2001). While explorations and descriptions of the uses of evil-speak in Puerto Rican discourse and ethnography have thus partly resolved key issues in the interpretive "problem of evil" as defined here, they have raised others. If, as suggested, so much of the rhetoric of evil is or can be "backed up" by experiential accountsby statements of the type, "Hey, this isn't just belief. This really happened to me," like those seen in the final section, then the question of the sources of such experiences is raised. Is it the learning of the rhetoric of evil, and the use of these categories of language and thought (as in testimonials, or witchcraft accusations), that leads participants here to "experience" unusual and unexpected states as supernaturalistically demonic? Or is there already something in the temporal or material conditions of the migrant Puerto Rican situation (as in parts of Africa) that supplies these experiences in their unpleasant altered forms? As Luchita's final, posttraumatic demon vision suggests, some supernatural "experiences of evil" were rooted in earlier traumatic events. Of course, this is a different "problem of evil." Labeling and objectifying evil, naming it and praying for its release, may defang and dilute it, but in this community it lingers stubbornly.

C. JEFFREY JACOBSON JR. is a research assistant professor in the departments of anthropology and family medicine and is a research fellow at the Institute for Health Policy and Health Services Research, all at the University of Cincinnati.

Acknowledgments. The research reported here was supported by NIMH grant #1 F31 MH1173-01. 1 would like to thank Rhoda Halperin and Linda Goldenhar for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1. All names are pseudonyms, some Protestant evangelical religious affiliations are altered due to small congregational sizes. 2. Conducted among members of both the general community (n = 38) and psychiatric outpatients (n = 22), the interviews had, for the purposes of recruitment, the aim of "better understanding the spiritual and psychological lives of Cleveland's Puerto Ricans." I was primarily interested in documenting and describing conceptions and reported experiences of altered states of consciousness (ASCs); see methods section below.

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3. JJ: Gonoce algo del espiritismo o alguien que lo pratique? Luis: Una persona que le hace dano a otra persona ha ido del diablo. Entiende? Y si esta bregando con el espiritismo pa' hacerle el mal, esta malo, esta con el diablo, es un peligro. All subsequent translations will not include the Spanish original. 4. Of course this "problem of evil" is not the same as that posed by Theodicywherein the "problem of evil" concerns how a presumably benevolent and omnipotent God can allow evil to exist (for example, famine, mass murder, plague, Satan). 5. Cox has reviewed much of this literature in his Fire from Heaven (1994). 6. Though not stressed by Kardec, Puerto Rican or Mesa Blanca espiritismo emphasizes healing, and thus the diagnosis of causes (causas). Among the causes, mala influencia, or bad spiritual influences, are common. These spirits are often thought to be those of individuals who have died a premature or inappropriate death (Harwood 1977; Seda-Bonilla 1973). 7. Trickster notions of evil appear to be the norm in the world's mythological and religious traditions, the primary exceptions being Judeo-Christian and Islamic religious traditions (where the concept of radical evil, as embodied in the devil, has been particularly influential; see Russell 1986). 8. A similar argument by Koss emphasizes Spiritism's absolution of original sin rather than its mitigation of evil: "Kardec's system, although it is abundantly Christian in its notion of good-evil force-fields that are directly relevant to all spirit endeavors, eliminates Original Sin and with it a notion of individual guilt. The resulting configuration is one where you must pay for the sins of a past incarnation, but you are essentially blameless and will eventually inevitably progress to a state of higher spiritual evolution" (1980:30). 9. This exact statement is quoted in Buitrago Ortiz's (1973) ethnography. It also echoes Wagenheim's well-known statement: "the Puerto Rican people are a religious people in search of a religion" (1970). 10. These participants were recruited through a program sponsored by Catholic Charities, which offered frequent religious services and prayer activities. 11. Calling his "old self' a "brujo" appeared to be part of his new Christian identity, for it would be disingenuous (as Seda-Bonilla has suggested) to call yourself a witch. 12. "Extracting" or "seeking causes" (extrayendo o buscando causas) refers to the processes used in Mesa Blanca Espiritismo to diagnose the spiritual causes of a supplicant's problems. Usually taking place in a Spiritist centra, spiritual diagnosis is accomplished by a medium who enters trance and allows the subject's protector spirit to speak through her and identify the causes (for example, wayward spirits) of an individual's problems. Felipe's brief description parallels that given by Harwood (1977:66-67, 84-94). 13. Elsewhere in the interview, Ana describes her boyfriend as having "esquizofrenia" (schizophrenia) and being treated for it. The withdrawal and isolation symptoms she describes here are not uncommon in schizophrenia, nor are the eye rolling and stiffness (or dystonia, which is a dangerous side effect of anit-psychotic medications). 14. Hypnagogia and hypnopompia refer to states of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep (going to sleep) and between sleep and wakefulness (waking up), respectfully. They are often characterized by the sense being awake, recumbent, in one's bed but with an accompanying sense of paralysis and often, and perhaps as a consequence, involving intense fear and imagery. 15. The existential and theological questions posed by "theodicy" and embodied in the "problem of evil" are not unlike those posed by the events of September 11, which have revived a clear and distinguishable language and "rhetoric" of evil. They may also signal the return of more literalistic conceptions of evil to the popular-religious imagination, revitaliiing the fearsome supernatural evil cast out or forgotten with the rise of scientism and industrialization in the last two centuries (on the loss of the sense of evil In modem life see DclBanco 1995; Jung 1928).

Evil in Puerto Rlcan Folk Religion 465

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