Religion in Latin America, Past, Present and Possible Futures

Delineating an accurate religious map of Latin America and the Caribbean is a challenging task. The region reflects numerous global encounters that have only intensified the diversity of its previously existing religious configurations. At the same time, one cannot understand Latin American and Caribbean history without taking religion into account. Indeed, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Paul Freston, and Stephen Dove (2016) have argued that it is useful to view the entire history of the region as a religious history.
Motivating the Iberian expansion in the New World, the alliance of ‘Cross and the Sword’ fuelled the colonial project (Oro & Ureta, 2007) and promoted the mass evangelisation of native and enslaved peoples to Catholicism. Indeed, the conquest of the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese can be defined as a ‘spiritual conquest’ in which colonisation was tied to the conversion to Catholicism. Latin American and Caribbean political history is therefore closely tied to the Catholic Church, whose authority was often more influential than the Crown itself during the colonial enterprise. Having a key socio-political role, Catholicism substantially contributed to the formation of nation-states, public administration and cultural identities across the region.