“La Invasión de Las Sectas”: Progressive Catholicism and Protestant Competition in Southern Mexico

Throughout the 1980s, the Southern Pacific Regional Episcopacy advocated for collective rights of indigenous peoples in Oaxaca and Chiapas, even as the national Mexican episcopacy and the Vatican clamped down on the progressive church in Latin America. However, the institutional Church and the grassroots church agreed on one critical point: Protestant growth was a threat to the vitality of the Church in what was arguably the most Catholic region of the world. The Southern Episcopacy claimed that sectas weakened indigenous communities at a time when they needed to use collective rights to unite against state violence. Influenced by the repression of Mayans during Guatemala’s civil war and seeing similar social, political, and economic inequalities in Mexico, the Southern Pacific Regional Episcopacy sought to expose violations of indigenous rights. The Bishops saw clear divisions in indigenous communities overwhelmed by Protestantism and were particularly concerned that Mexico could soon be following the same road to Protestantism as Guatemala. Indigenous collective rights were now at the forefront of the progressive Church’s agenda in southern Mexico.  

This paper examines the reaction of the Southern Episcopacy to Protestant growth in native communities of Oaxaca during the 1980s. The Oaxaca archdiocese expressed particular concern about Protestant groups dividing native communities and causing bloodshed between native people who were “easy prey for the Protestant sects.” The growth of fringe Protestant churches and liberation theology in Oaxaca exacerbated friction between usos y costumbres governance and the reach of the Mexican state.  Indigenous leaders argued sectas threatened not only traditions, but also indigenous solidarity in the face of increasing state repression throughout Latin America. Under assault from modernization, migration, and religious fragmentation, Oaxacan Catholics emphasized how leaving the Catholic Church was not just an act of religious dissension, but also an attack against indigenous and communal identity.