THE POPULAR USE OF THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT IN CURACAO

In this article, the case of the recent growth of the Pentecostal move ment within the Catholic Church in Curacao is analysed The author appl ies the idea of ''the popular use'' of religion in Latin America and t he Caribbean in order to explain this religious phenomenon. This idea is shown to be a dynamic process of symbolic production, where the Afr o-Curacao people are developing an interpretation of the charismatic m ovement very different from the clerical version of the same movement. The author describes the events of 1987, when the charismatic movemen t expressed a synthesis between its own, Afro-Antillean religious conc ept of healing and its social protest against the local government of the time. The author concludes that the religious phenomenon in the Ca ribbean is going through a series of changes, which must be analysed i n each particular context.