Abstract

DELGADO-MOLINA, Cecilia. “The culprit is…”: Evil and Violence among Catholic believers in Mexico. Soc. relig. [online]. 2020, vol.30, n.54, pp.208-229. ISSN 0326-9795.

Based on an investigation carried out in a Mexican province with high rates of violence associated with organized crime and drug trafficking, the interpretations of the experiences of violence of Catholic believers who participated in initiatives of the Catholic Church associated with the violence / peace binomial were analyzed. Theoretically, the research is grounded in the tradition of interpretive sociology and is interested in the dispositions with which certain people find religious answers and from there give meaning to their practices. Based on a methodology combined with ethnographic work carried out intensively between 2013 and 2017 and sporadically between 2018-2019, as well as interviews for habitus analysis; the article recovers the cases in which "evil" emerged as an interpretation of the causes of violence. The cases of members of lay movements associated with emotional Catholicism are presented, which signify evil as a supernatural force; and of lay movements of religious conservatism that associate evil as a structural and ideological force. For both cases, the logic of the interpretations is addressed, as well as the differentiated strategies that are deployed from them.

Keywords : Catholicism; Devil; Gender Ideology; Charismatic Renovation; Conservatism.