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Reactionary Tide: How the CIA Spread Evangelical Protestantism Across Latin America to Crush Socialism
Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections last weekend, thanks in large part due to the country’s enormous evangelical Protestant bloc. Just decades ago, US-style evangelicalism was barely known in Latin America. But, thanks to a massive orchestrated campaign from Washington - one which included training death squads to assassinate Catholic clergy - evangelical Protestantism is now the number one religion in much of the region.
In the 1970s, Liberation Theology was a major strain of Christianity in Latin America.
It said that Christians should take seriously Jesus’ teachings and focus on eliminating poverty and misery, and challenge the rich and powerful.
Liberation Theology inspired tens of millions across Latin America, including political movements like Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution.
To fight Liberation Theology, Washington paid for thousands of conservative protestant missionaries to travel to Latin America to preach personal salvation rather than collective action.
The US government paid for linguists to translate Christian texts into Spanish and indigenous languages, infusing them with explicitly anti-Communist messages.
The US also trained death squads who massacred priests across the region.
The School of the Americas, where Washington trained Latin American army officers, boasts that it helped to defeat Communism and Liberation Theology.
Oscar Romero, Bishop of San Salvador, who was murdered by a CIA-trained death squad in 1980 stated: “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”
Today, Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism is the dominant religion across much of Latin America.
Like US megachurches, congregations are often highly conservative.
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