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This book is not for the faint of heart. O’Neil takes us into the deep, soul-wrenching underbelly of Guatemala City, documenting the outreach efforts of a thriving Pentecostal-led rehabilitation industry aimed primarily at the thousands of deported gang members from the West Coast of the United States. This industry has grown exponentially in recent years, he argues, with funding in the billions of dollars coming from the United States Congress, the World Bank and various European Union countries as repressive measures adopted by the government have failed spectacularly to make a dent in drug- and gang-fuelled crime waves. In the wake of successive governments, riddled with corruption, cronyism and the usual adoption of pro-business panaceas for social problems, O’Neil opines, ‘Christianity … became a real political resource’ (p. 17). In effect, the Pentecostal Church has emerged as one of the few functioning social institutions in post-millennial Guatemala.

Thus, in one of the world’s most violent cities,1 O’Neil sets out to anthropologically map the struggle for survival by his gang member subjects all of whom face a host of deathly daily pressures. From the threats of other gangs to the violent suppression and abuse of the police to the prison hell holes where they are frequently incarcerated, the author exposes how well-financed systems of gang intervention and violence prevention based on Christian beliefs about individual redemption and spiritual conversion can have quite different outcomes to their supposed goals of societal integration and violence reduction.

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