Abstract
This paper examines the media uses of the figure of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hernández, a late 19th-century medical doctor, is a popular Venezuelan “saint,” venerated by Catholics as well as practitioners of spiritism in Latin America. Through the analysis of press conferences, social media publications, and official communiqués produced between 2020 and 2022, I show how the Venezuelan government and the Catholic Church assigned political connotations to the Blessed Doctor during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic ––which coincided with the Doctor’s official beatification. I highlight the dissemination of personal testimonies by government figures that inscribed the Doctor within the narrative of the Bolivarian Revolution, and compare these to the Catholic Church officials’ references to the Doctor as a politically conciliatory figure. I then contrast these institutional invocations to an archive of social media content allusive to the Doctor created and disseminated by users suffering from the disease. This multilateral approach allows me to examine how different actors mobilized the Blessed Doctor’s image to advance competing political, religious, and social narratives. By analyzing user-generated content alongside official discourses, I explore how digital/grassroots expressions of devotion either reinforced or subverted institutional representations, revealing the tensions between state power, religious authority, and popular religiosity in contemporary Venezuela. To close, I reflect on how this slippery figure ––always straddling the borders between “official” Catholicism and popular religiosity –– interpellates both conventional medicine and non-biomedical healing in the midst of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.
Presenters
Elvira BlancoAssociate Director of the Hispanic Institute, Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
Venezuela, Pandemic, Bolivarian, Devotion, Catholic, Beatification
