Abstract

MANSILLA AGUERO, Miguel Ángel. ANTROPOLOGÍA LITERARIA DE LA RELIGIÓN. RITOS Y CONVERSIÓN PENTECOSTAL INTRACARCELARIA EN LA NOVELA LA MUERTE TIENE OLOR A PACHULÍ DE HERNÁN RIVERA LETELIER. Soc. relig. [online]. 2023, vol.33, n.61, pp.1-1. ISSN 0326-9795.

This article analyzes two relevant themes in Hernán Rivera Letelier's novel La muerte tiene olor a pachulí: Pentecostal rites and prison conversion. Regarding the first point, the book deals with street preaching, daily devotionals and the use of the radio to transmit evangelical services. It highlights here the extension of rituals to everyday life, whose purpose is to confront and resist evil. The efficacy of the rituals is socialized and they are applied inside the prisons, despite the difficulties to confront the dreadfulness of confinement. Regarding the second point, the extra- and intra-prison rituals make it possible to conceive conversion as an always unfinished process: a new life and forgetting the past; dying to the past and living for the future. This conception is established thanks to the work carried out by the external evangelical groups when they come into contact with the ex-convicts and incorporate them into their nucleus once out of prison, in order to generate their real possibility of social integration, now becoming new evangelical brothers and sisters.

Keywords : rites; Pentecostalism; conversion; prison; novel; Rivera Letelier.