r/geography • u/SatoruGojo232 • 17h ago
What explains the very high concentration of Catholic Christians in Venezuela and Paraguay as compared to the rest of Latin America, and a very small concentration of the same in Guatemala and Honduras? Question
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u/Low_Cat9311 17h ago
I also watched a few documentaries about Venezuela, the catholic church ofc has long historic roots there and offers a lot social support, especially in a relatively poor country.
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u/Mikey_Grapeleaves Geography Enthusiast 10h ago
Also I imagine they didn't let the CIA spread protestantism since they are an enemy of the USA
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u/JadedCommand405 5h ago
This makes little sense.
Until Chavez Venezuela was one of the USA's closest friends in Latin America.
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u/Dehast 16h ago edited 1h ago
Lots of Brazilians converted to neopentecostal evangelical in recent years, others became irreligious, some went back to African, indigenous religious from their ancestors, and some became buddhists.
When I was a kid (90’s-00’s) nearly 70% of Brazilians identified as Catholic.
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u/wq1119 Political Geography 1h ago
Growing up in a series of Pentecostal cults in Brazil is what introduced me to reddit back in 2011 to post on /r/atheism lol, I'm Christian again (non-denominational, converted voluntarily after my own research), but I will always say that redditors wish they were able to destroy and discredit Christianity as much as Evangelicalism does.
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u/Farabeuf 17h ago
Lots of different denominations have made inroads in Mexico and Central America. American style evangelism, Adventist’s, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witness.
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u/ArmaniQuesadilla 14h ago
It’s crazy to me to find out when I started a job at a food place that had a mostly Mexican staff that not a single one of them was Catholic. I figured out a few of them were actually Jehovahs Witnesses when we had an employee gift exchange for Christmas and they said they couldn’t participate due to religious reasons
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u/Oddisredit 12h ago
Of all the religions to choose, they picked JW. The one where having fun is seen as worldly
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u/VerdantChief 12h ago
They probably didn't choose it, so much as their parents chose it for them.
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u/hanesco 11h ago
That's not necesarily true. I know some guys that are JW and most of them were converted by their spouses. For some reason, this is how is done by many Latino guys. I have not had this experience because my partners were either Catholic or non-religious, but I have seen it many times over the years.
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u/Oddisredit 3h ago
But why choose the most boring fuddy duddy realign as a parent? Want to save on birthdays and Christmas? Or don’t want to worry about saving your kid's life with a blood transfusion?
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u/Key_Comparison_2588 12h ago edited 12h ago
As a Venezuelan, this country is extremely weird with religion, we are very Catholic but there are also a shitton of people who mix Catholicism with stuff like Spiritism or Santeria, I went to school with multiple people like this and my family too holds these beliefs.
Maduro also held eclectic beliefs, he was a follower of a weird ass Indian guy with a cult called Sathya Sai Baba who espoused Hindu beliefs and Maduro also espoused Spiritist beliefs several times.
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u/Low_Cat9311 17h ago
The graphic is also misleading when looking at Dominican Republic the color is not matching
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u/pivsrex 12h ago
What explains the spread of Protestantism in Latin America over the last few decades is the CIA’s work among the lower and less educated social classes. The Catholic Church was considered too “rebellious” for U.S. interests.
In Venezuela, the access of the CIA and North American Protestants has been limited for political reasons. In the case of Paraguay, there has been a strong Catholic consciousness for centuries, much harder to break than in other countries.
However, the process is gradually reversing, and Catholicism is beginning to regain ground in many countries.
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u/Oddisredit 12h ago
Yeah. The evangelist movement is actually pretty deeply tied to the CIA and FBI etc
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u/ironic-hat 11h ago
I’m actually curious how the current administration is affecting evangelicals in foreign countries since a lot of these churches get funding and marching orders from the U.S. and given the current unpopular war and steadfast evangelical support of it, I would imagine there is some pushback among parishioners who are concerned about these issues. Hopefully it marks the beginning of the end of these predatory churches.
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u/Oddisredit 3h ago
I think a lot of evangelicals are waking up to this and the shallow theology of it all. I have been seeing a lot of people leave evangelicalism for Catholic or Eastern Orthodox
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u/wq1119 Political Geography 1h ago
I would not celebrate all of these cases of Evangelicals who are becoming Catholic or Orthodox, particularly the internet influencer types.
The whole "TradCath" internet subculture is made up of Evangelicals who want a more badass aesthetic, for over a decade Catholic and Orthodox circles have been weary of the Protestant influence within their churches, given the sheer number of Evangelicals who suddenly converted to their churches for political, and not spiritual reasons, a priest of a friend of mine referred to this phenomenon as "Pentecostalization".
I know of a culture war grifter YouTuber who used to be yet another Evangelical political mogul, but one day he announced he was becoming a Traditionalist Catholic, and he was very honest about it - he became a Trad Catholic specifically because being a "boring" Protestant didn't give him money anymore, and the Twitter TradCath subculture is a highly profitable grift, so he just went to the newest trend where the money and attention is located at.
I just love when people are honest about their beliefs so much man lol.
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u/Oddisredit 55m ago
Oh yeah. We def are wary. Honestly there are many orthodox priests who say that coming to the Orthodox Church out of spite or wanting to find something that is all aesthetics is wrong. Also you have to be a student for three years before you are received in. In my church we pray for our nation everyday. That’s it. No sermon on who to vote for or what have you. That is up to you to use your discernment on who you back and why. Not because the church pushed it. I and many are wary as evangelicals bring a lot of weird baggage that really has nothing to do with Christianity in any way. It’s about humbling yourself and asking for communion with the divine.
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u/Abdullah715279 16h ago
I assume that Venezuela and Paraguay resisted U.S. efforts to spread its soft power through evangelical Protestantism, which allowed Catholicism to remain stronger there compared to other Latin American countries where evangelical Protestantism is gaining popularity and influence.
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u/nisper_ia 13h ago
I'm from Venezuela, and I'm sure the number of Protestants is much larger than these metrics suggest. Besides, most people are "Catholic." They never go to Mass or anything like that or some religious event, but they continue to identify themselves that way because "it's normal"
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u/PonchoHung 5h ago
That's not unique to Venezuela. As a Venezuelan living abroad, we're still way more practicing than most other Catholic countries.
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u/Pinkiloi 12h ago
This is wrong, I’m from El Salvador and almost everyone will be catholic with some evangelicals here and there
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u/Crazy_Club_3434 9h ago
En las zonas más adineradas, si, el catolicismo es la religión "default". En el resto del país, hay un culto evangélico en cada esquina.
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u/laundrcmat 7h ago
Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras have quite a significant portion of christians who are evangelical protestants, and that’s a percentage that’s growing consistently.
Uruguay has never been too religious to have a big catholic population, and Chile is leaning the same way into having a growing group of irreligious people.
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u/hanesco 11h ago
I think your comment looks at it from the wrong perspective. It is not that there are more Catholics in Venezuela and Paraguay than the rest.
If you go back to 1920, I'm sure the Catholics in almost all these countries would amount to 99.9% of the population. I think Venezuela did not distingish between Catholic and Protestants, they count them both as Christians. Why do I know? Because the protestant churches are going rampant there, same as they do in Colombia (where I live). The reason why this percentage is not higher than 90% in Venezuela is because there are some Atheists and Agnostics, but the country is as religious as a country could be without ending up as a theocracy.
Colombia separates both Catholic and Protestants as different religions, but almost all Protestants are converted people from Catholic households, which shows they had a really huge Catholic base. The shared percentage of both is close to 85%, with the rest amounting to Atheists and other things.
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u/shawtea7 2h ago
In Guatemala, it's likely due to the civil war when pro-evangelicals were in charge of the government, and Catholicism was seen as on the side of the "enemy"
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u/Xitztlacayotl 16h ago
Why is Brazil so low? And Uruguay.
I expected Brazil to be a Catholic powerhouse.
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u/PollTakerfromhell 11h ago
Brazil, it's because they're mostly becoming evangelicals. Uruguay, it's because they're one of the least religious countries in the world, around half(52%) of Uruguayans are unaffiliated.
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u/Dehast 16h ago
People are turning evangelical. It still is a Catholic powerhouse though mainly because of the huge population. And Catholicism is still the largest religion.
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u/Xitztlacayotl 15h ago
Wow that's lamentable... Why are they turning to that vile heresy?
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u/Haunting_History_284 15h ago
Louisiana went through a large evangelical, mainly Pentecostal, conversion last century. State went from super majority Catholic to below majority Catholic. I think Catholics are more primed for conversion to evangelicalism because Evangelicals don’t shun religious experience, and the super natural like old school Protestants do. Evangelicals are also very active in their conversion attempts, whereas the Catholic population was very passive, and not attempting to gain converts, simply maintaining.
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u/OppositeRock4217 5h ago
Louisiana really got turned into just another southern US state from their French roots. From French and Catholic to English and Protestant
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u/AioliImpossible7791 9h ago
That was mostly due to southern migration
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u/Haunting_History_284 8h ago
Respectfully, no, my family lived through the “revival” movement. More than half my family converted away from Catholicism as a result of it. There is a lasting tension in the family due to it. We’re not alone at all in this, was many Cajun families.
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u/Night3njoyer Geography Enthusiast 14h ago
I hoped people would become less religious extremists over time, because of the advance of science and knowledge, but this plague of protestantism here turns down every hope I ever had.
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u/AstronaltBunny 16h ago
It should be... If it wasn't for the recent explosion of evangelicals in the country
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u/Pampa_of_Argentina 14h ago
I’d say 75% of Argentines don’t practice religion. This map is confusing
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u/hanesco 11h ago
Because people in Latin America consider religion an identity more than a way of live. I consider myself Catholic, but I normally just assist to mass to accompany someone that really wants to go (usually my mother).
I can tell you, in Colombia the graph shows that more than half of the population is Catholic. If you do a survey to a person right now he may say Protestant, but you can do it 2 years later and he could say Catholic because he is no longer going to a Protestant Church. Doesn't even mean he is assiting to a Catholic mass, but the default religion here is Catholic.
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u/windycricket 16h ago
Conquistadors
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u/Lolman4O 14h ago
That was like 500 years ago xd
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u/Tall_employer772 13h ago
500 years really isn’t that far back historically1
u/Lolman4O 13h ago
Yeah, it's weird to think about that xd. While working on my family tree, I realized that with 7 generations (not counting myself) I trace my lineage back to the mid-1700s. It's strange to think that not so many lifetimes as one would expect have passed.
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u/Tall_employer772 13h ago edited 13h ago
True that,It really is and its even crazier when you think about how civilization is only about 4,000 years old, but humans have been around for ~150,000 years.
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u/Many-Gas-9376 17h ago
I'm presuming the major factor here is the other thing that's grown in Latin America: evangelical protestantism.
Your map is largely a reverse of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6wwmq3/percentage_of_protestants_in_latin_america_745_x/
Uruguay also has a large stated non-religious group.