The Expansion of Protestantism in Mexico: An Anthropological View

Abstract

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, many people in Mexico and Central America turned to Protestantism as a new religion. The greatest increase has been in rural and Indians areas. This article shows that Protestantism in these areas is not a reaction against the Catholic Church as much as it is a reaction against traditional Indian cargo systems generating political and economic power. These people are farmers who live in tight-knitted, closed communities that dominate their lives. It has been difficult for scholars of religion to understand these cultures because the communities are closed to outsiders and many of the people speak Indian languages. Anthropologists have been more successful than historians at finding the data and discovering why the people are converting.

Religious Affiliation, Ethnicity, and Child Mortality in Chiapas, México

“…However, estimates of the period of reference for the probability of child mortality (Table 1) show that those deaths occurred on average in a recent period. When contrasting those dates with the conversion process in Chiapas (Dow 2005), we notice that most of the conversions were likely to occur before the timing of a majority of the deaths; 16 percent of the state population was already Protestant by 1990. The problem may be especially important for older mothers, but if “mis‐matching” were at play, such a limitation should lead us to underestimate the association between Protestantism and child survival.…”

“…In 2000, 32 percent of indigenous people in Chiapas were affiliated with Protestant religions, compared to 19 percent of the nonindigenous population (INEGI 2004a). Conversions to these religions have been from a Catholicism that is distinguished from Roman Catholicism by the influence of traditional pre‐Hispanic beliefs, weak ties to Catholic institutions, and little knowledge about papal ordinances (Casillas 2003; Dow 2005). The most popular Protestant churches in Chiapas have been the Presbyterian and Adventist, 3 followed by many other churches with Pentecostal and/or Evangelical roots (INEGI 2001).…”

Incompatible Worlds? Protestantism and "costumbre" in the Zapotec villages of Northern Oaxaca

“…According to the latest general census of 2010, 9.7 percent of the Mexican population professes a non-Catholic Biblical religion. A concise overview of the expansion of Protestantism in Mexico can be found in Dow (2005). 8 The figure is based on the data from Mexican general censuses.…”

Vivir en (dis)continuidad: reconfiguración de subjetividades religiosas en una comunidad ikojts de Oaxaca.

“…antropólogos (Annis, 1987;Dow, 2005;Dow y Sandstrom, 2001;Montes, 1995;Nutini, 2000) como la solución que un número creciente de actores sociales elige para salir de lógicas tradicionales y comunitarias que no permiten la entrada en la modernización y en la lógica capitalista. El espíritu individualista promovido por las iglesias y sectas protestantes estaría más en consonancia con el orden hegemónico basado en el capitalismo tardío y en la sociedad de consumo.…”