Background Of the population of Latin America, now well in excess of 300 million, over 90\% acknowledge allegiance to the Catholic Church. Consequently, over a third of the world's Catholics inhabit the ‘Latin’ countries of South, Central and North America. For most of the history of post-colonial Latin America, religious rights have been regularly violated, and even now, tensions and conflict in the area of religion remain. Religious human rights, in the sense of freedom to exercise and practice one's religion, are almost universally guaranteed in the laws and constitutions of Latin America today, although they are not universally observed in practice. Moreover, it has taken Latin America much longer than other parts of the West to adopt religious freedom in theory and in practice, and the habit of respect for those rights is only gradually being developed.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% The slowness to embrace religious freedom in Latin America is related to its colonial heritage and to its post-colonial history. The Aztec and the Inca both made substantial use of religion to support their authority and power. This pre-existing role of religion in pre-Columbian culture made it relatively easy for the Spanish conquistadors to replace native religious structures with those of a Catholicism that was closely linked to the Spanish throne. The subsequent Spanish colonization of the Americas resulted in the conversion of the native population in some cases and the elimination of their pagan religion.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% The various countries that make up Latin America today won political independence during the 19th century. The basic anticlericalism of the republican movements led to a temporary alienation between church and state, but the 20th century has seen political powers seek to harness the continuing popular influence of the church in support of authoritarian regimes, including military dictatorships. Jesuits By the 18th century, the intellectual standards, economic power and social influence of the Jesuits was unmatched. Their economic power derived from enormous plantations in the central valley of Chile, ranches in the River Plate region and large urban and rural estates in Peru and Mexico . There were Jesuit-owned workshops in Paraguay, Peru and Ecuador, and mining interests in the Chaco area of New Granada, now Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% 19th century Anti-clericalism was an integral feature of 19th-century liberalism in Latin America. This anti-clericalism was based on the idea that the clergy (especially the prelates who ran the administrative offices of the Church) were hindering social progress in areas such as public education and economic development. The Catholic Church was one of the largest land owning groups in most of Latin America's countries. As a result, the Church tended to be rather conservative politically. Beginning in the 1820s, a succession of liberal regimes came to power in Latin America.Stacy, Mexico and the United States (2003), p. 139 Some members of these liberal regimes sought to imitate the Spain of the 1830s (and revolutionary France of a half-century earlier) in expropriating the wealth of the Catholic Church, and in imitating the 18th-century benevolent despots in restricting or prohibiting the religious orders. As a result, a number of these liberal regimes expropriated Church property and tried to bring education, marriage and burial under secular authority. The confiscation of Church properties and changes in the scope of religious liberties (in general, increasing the rights of non-Catholics and non-observant Catholics, while licensing or prohibiting the orders) generally accompanied secularist, and later, Marxist-leaning, governmental reforms.Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 167–72%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Mexico The Mexican Constitution of 1824 had required the Republic to prohibit the exercise of any religion other the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith.Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States (1824) Article 3. Ecuador The tension between civilian and clerical authority dominated Ecuador's history for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This issue was one of the bases for the lasting dispute between Conservatives, who represented primarily the interests of the land owners of the central highlandscentral highlands and the church, and the Liberals, who represented the interest of the urban elites and merchant class of the Costa and anticlericalism. During the Liberal rule period from 1895 to 1925 two constitutions were issued, those of 1897 and 1906. The first, promulgated by General José Eloy Alfaro Delgado, banned religious orders (including cloisters), abolished certain privileges of the Catholic Church, and reduced voting age to eighteen (vote was a men right only). The constitution of 1925 provided unprecedented protection of civil and political rights and guarantees, including abolition of the death penalty, individual freedoms, and prohibited imprisonment for debts. It also established the separation of the church and state. Colombia La Violencia is considered to have begun with the 9 April 1948 assassination of the popular politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Liberal Party presidential candidate for the election in November 1949. His murder provoked the Bogotazo rioting that lasted for ten hours and killed some 5,000 people. An alternative historiography proposes as the start the Conservatives' return to power following the election of 1946. Rural town police and political leaders encouraged Conservative-supporting peasants to seize the agricultural lands of Liberal-supporting peasants, which provoked peasant-to-peasant violence throughout Colombia. Argentina The original Argentine Constitution of 1853 provided that all Argentine presidents must be Catholic and stated that the duty of the Argentine congress was to convert the Indians to Catholicism. All of these provisions have been eliminated with the exception of the mandate to "sustain" Catholicism. Liberal anti-clericalists of the 1880s established a new pattern of church-state relations in which the official constitutional status of the Church was preserved while the state assumed control of many functions formerly the province of the Church. Conservative Catholics, asserting their role as definers of national values and morality, responded in part by joining in the rightist religio-political movement known as Catholic Nationalism which formed successive opposition parties. This began a prolonged period of conflict between church and state that persisted until the 1940s when the Church enjoyed a restoration of its former status under the presidency of Colonel Juan Perón. Perón claimed that Peronism was the "true embodiment of Catholic social teaching" - indeed, more the embodiment of Catholicism than the Catholic Church itself.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 1954, Perón reversed the fortunes of the church by threatening total disestablishment and retracting critical functions, including the teaching of religious education in public schools. As a result, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions.Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 167–8 The renewed rupture in church-state relations was completed when Perón was excommunicated. However, in 1955, overthrown by a military general who was a leading member of the Catholic Nationalist movement.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 1983, the civilian president, Raúl Alfonsín, attempted to restore a liberal democratic state. Alfonsín's opposition to the church-military alliance, conjoined with his strongly secular emphasis contravening traditional Catholic positions, incited opposition that served to curtail his agenda. Venezuela In Venezuela, the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco virtually crushed the institutional life of the church, even attempting to legalize the marriage of priests. These anticlerical policies remained in force for decades afterward.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Cuba Cuba, under atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party. The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.Chadwick, A History of Christianity (1995), p. 266
 %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Mexico The Mexican Constitution of 1824 had required the Republic to prohibit the exercise of any religion other the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith.Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States (1824) Article 3. Colombia La Violencia is considered to have begun with the 9 April 1948 assassination of the popular politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Liberal Party presidential candidate for the election in November 1949. His murder provoked the Bogotazo rioting that lasted for ten hours and killed some 5,000 people. An alternative historiography proposes as the start the Conservatives' return to power following the election of 1946. Rural town police and political leaders encouraged Conservative-supporting peasants to seize the agricultural lands of Liberal-supporting peasants, which provoked peasant-to-peasant violence throughout Colombia. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% 
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Background Of the population of Latin America, now well in excess of 300 million, over 90\% acknowledge allegiance to the Catholic Church. Consequently, over a third of the world's Catholics inhabit the ‘Latin’ countries of South, Central and North America.
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For most of the history of post-colonial Latin America, religious rights have been regularly violated, and even now, tensions and conflict in the area of religion remain. Religious human rights, in the sense of freedom to exercise and practice one's religion, are almost universally guaranteed in the laws and constitutions of Latin America today, although they are not universally observed in practice. Moreover, it has taken Latin America much longer than other parts of the West to adopt religious freedom in theory and in practice, and the habit of respect for those rights is only gradually being developed.
D
The slowness to embrace religious freedom in Latin America is related to its colonial heritage and to its post-colonial history. The Aztec and the Inca both made substantial use of religion to support their authority and power. This pre-existing role of religion in pre-Columbian culture made it relatively easy for the Spanish conquistadors to replace native religious structures with those of a Catholicism that was closely linked to the Spanish throne.
D
The subsequent Spanish colonization of the Americas resulted in the conversion of the native population in some cases and the elimination of their pagan religion.
D
The various countries that make up Latin America today won political independence during the 19th century. The basic anticlericalism of the republican movements led to a temporary alienation between church and state, but the 20th century has seen political powers seek to harness the continuing popular influence of the church in support of authoritarian regimes, including military dictatorships.
D
Jesuits By the 18th century, the intellectual standards, economic power and social influence of the Jesuits was unmatched. Their economic power derived from enormous plantations in the central valley of Chile, ranches in the River Plate region and large urban and rural estates in Peru and Mexico . There were Jesuit-owned workshops in Paraguay, Peru and Ecuador, and mining interests in the Chaco area of New Granada, now Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama.
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19th century Anti-clericalism was an integral feature of 19th-century liberalism in Latin America. This anti-clericalism was based on the idea that the clergy (especially the prelates who ran the administrative offices of the Church) were hindering social progress in areas such as public education and economic development. The Catholic Church was one of the largest land owning groups in most of Latin America's countries. As a result, the Church tended to be rather conservative politically.
D
Beginning in the 1820s, a succession of liberal regimes came to power in Latin America.Stacy, Mexico and the United States (2003), p. 139 Some members of these liberal regimes sought to imitate the Spain of the 1830s (and revolutionary France of a half-century earlier) in expropriating the wealth of the Catholic Church, and in imitating the 18th-century benevolent despots in restricting or prohibiting the religious orders. As a result, a number of these liberal regimes expropriated Church property and tried to bring education, marriage and burial under secular authority. The confiscation of Church properties and changes in the scope of religious liberties (in general, increasing the rights of non-Catholics and non-observant Catholics, while licensing or prohibiting the orders) generally accompanied secularist, and later, Marxist-leaning, governmental reforms.Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 167–72
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Mexico The
Mexico The
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Ecuador The tension between civilian and clerical authority dominated Ecuador's history for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This issue was one of the bases for the lasting dispute between Conservatives, who represented primarily the interests of the land owners of the central highlandscentral highlands and the church, and the Liberals, who represented the interest of the urban elites and merchant class of the Costa and anticlericalism.
D
During the Liberal rule period from 1895 to 1925 two constitutions were issued, those of 1897 and 1906. The first, promulgated by General José Eloy Alfaro Delgado, banned religious orders (including cloisters), abolished certain privileges of the Catholic Church, and reduced voting age to eighteen (vote was a men right only). The constitution of 1925 provided unprecedented protection of civil and political rights and guarantees, including abolition of the death penalty, individual freedoms, and prohibited imprisonment for debts. It also established the separation of the church and state.
D
Argentina The original Argentine Constitution of 1853 provided that all Argentine presidents must be Catholic and stated that the duty of the Argentine congress was to convert the Indians to Catholicism. All of these provisions have been eliminated with the exception of the mandate to "sustain" Catholicism.
D
Liberal anti-clericalists of the 1880s established a new pattern of church-state relations in which the official constitutional status of the Church was preserved while the state assumed control of many functions formerly the province of the Church. Conservative Catholics, asserting their role as definers of national values and morality, responded in part by joining in the rightist religio-political movement known as Catholic Nationalism which formed successive opposition parties. This began a prolonged period of conflict between church and state that persisted until the 1940s when the Church enjoyed a restoration of its former status under the presidency of Colonel Juan Perón. Perón claimed that Peronism was the "true embodiment of Catholic social teaching" - indeed, more the embodiment of Catholicism than the Catholic Church itself.
D
In 1954, Perón reversed the fortunes of the church by threatening total disestablishment and retracting critical functions, including the teaching of religious education in public schools. As a result, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions.Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 167–8
D
The renewed rupture in church-state relations was completed when Perón was excommunicated. However, in 1955, overthrown by a military general who was a leading member of the Catholic Nationalist movement.
D
In 1983, the civilian president, Raúl Alfonsín, attempted to restore a liberal democratic state. Alfonsín's opposition to the church-military alliance, conjoined with his strongly secular emphasis contravening traditional Catholic positions, incited opposition that served to curtail his agenda.
D
Venezuela In Venezuela, the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco virtually crushed the institutional life of the church, even attempting to legalize the marriage of priests. These anticlerical policies remained in force for decades afterward.
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Cuba
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Cuba, under atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party. The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.Chadwick, A History of Christianity (1995), p. 266