Crack cocaine and religion: inside Guatemala's Christian rehab centres

What happens when addiction is defined as a sin instead of a sickness? In Guatemala, it means snatching addicts off the streets and holding them against their will in "compulsory" Christian rehabilitation centres. In the hardscrabble reality of one of Central America's poorest and most populous nations, the response to an epidemic of crack cocaine use has seen more than 200 such centres set up in Guatemala City alone, many run by Pentecostal churches operating with little oversight or regulation. In the eyes of their captors, the estimated 6,000 internees in those rehab centres are sinners, not addicts, their problem a matter for religion, not science or medicine. It's precisely this entanglement that intrigues University of Toronto ethnographer Kevin Lewis O'Neill. "Democracy, security and drugs define Latin America today, and for me religion is a window into how people navigate these processes," said O'Neill, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's department for the study of religion. The author of several books on Christianity's influence in the region, O'Neill is working on a new book, For Christ's Sake, which looks at the concomitant rise of crack cocaine and Christian drug rehabilitation centers in Guatemala City. "If you ask why Guatemala is one of the most violent non-combat zones in the world, many Christians in Guatemala will say that this is a moral issue, people aren't being good enough Christians," said O'Neill, "In Guatemala, if you want to raise the issue of how does one deal with crack cocaine you don't turn to, for example, public health or a doctor, you turn towards the church, because the church is the dominant language of change.