18.10.2025, Aleksandrovskoye.
There should be no communism in Latin America, and if the Catholic Church spreads communist influence, we must fight it.
The United States had to make significant effort to keep Latin America as its “backyard” in the second half of the 20th century. There was to be no communism in Latin America. And if communist ideas were being spread by the Catholic Church, then it was necessary to fight it too.
To eliminate those who had already fallen under the influence of communist ideas, the US installed dictatorial fascist regimes in a number of countries in the region. This was achieved through Operation Condor, overseen by the CIA and Henry Kissinger. These regimes physically eliminated left-leaning intellectuals and communist activists.
But the US would not have succeeded if it had not destroyed the soil from which this activism grew – Liberation Theology. Since the fusion of Catholicism with Marxism had given birth to Liberation Theology, it was necessary to replace Catholicism with something else. Instead of the Catholic religion, the peoples of Latin America were given a surrogate of Christianity – evangelical Protestantism, which preaches personal earthly well-being and personal salvation.
How this happened is described in the article “The CIA used evangelical Protestantism as a tool against Catholicism in Latin America” by Mexican international journalist Dina Dunder, published on August 8 on the Milenio (Mexico) website. Rossa Primavera News Agency publishes a translation of this article with minor abridgments.
Religion is one of the fundamental elements of world culture. <…> Latin America is no exception. According to religion researcher Andrew Chesnut, the largest number of Catholics live in Latin America – almost 39% (emphasis by the author throughout). Catholic doctrine is based on the idea of protecting the population and, above all, on collectivity. Therefore, throughout the 20th century, participants in armed uprisings in Latin America appealed to Catholicism, saying they were defending the people. The US government saw this situation during the Cold War. With the help of the CIA, it sought a way to calm down the “uprisings” that defended the Catholic faith.
What is the connection between religion and politics?
Some argue that “religion and politics are incompatible.” However, to understand the history of Latin America, religion and politics must be viewed as inextricably linked elements. It is worth recalling, for example, the Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas¹, who traveled through the New World in the 16th century and defended the indigenous communities of Latin America enslaved by European conquerors.
All Latin American countries were formed by gaining independence from colonial powers, and centuries later, they had to wage civil wars to free themselves from dictatorships. In this struggle, faith was the driving force behind the resistance to the regimes, especially in the 1960s, when many countries of the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency) were under totalitarian political regimes.
What is “Liberation Theology”?
It is in this context that Liberation Theology must be viewed – a theology that united social movements and the Catholic religion during the rise of dictatorships in the region. Liberation Theology interprets the Gospel through the prism of the experience of oppressed people. Social movements relied on Marxist theory, considering Jesus Christ as the “liberator” of the poor.
According to the US Catholic organization, Liberation Theology demands the reorganization of social, political, and economic structures so that marginalized communities are brought “to the fullness of human flourishing” through the Catholic Church.
This led to the appearance in 1971 of the text “A Theology of Liberation” by the Dominican priest Gustavo Gutiérrez. In a 2003 BBC World interview, Gutiérrez explained that this liberation theology “emerged in the second half of the 1960s. It was the time of the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico (the shooting of a student demonstration on October 2, 1968 – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency), the military dictatorship in Brazil, and the military government of Onganía in Argentina.“
Plan “Condor”: A Comprehensive Strategy
The 1960s were complex for Latin America. To counter the fascist governments, believers used Liberation Theology: Jesus Christ and Marxist theory, as taught by Gustavo Gutiérrez. However, the United States was clearly aware of this situation. Therefore, while waging the Cold War, they spread evangelical Protestantism in Latin America.
Evangelical Protestantism is an apolitical teaching focused on individual salvation. It was in this context that “Plan Condor” was developed – a system of repression and control over Latin American territory, based on the National Security Doctrine. This was the US foreign policy strategy during the Cold War, aimed at destroying subversive and opposition activities opposing the regimes (the fascist dictatorships of Latin America – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency) in all spheres of society, as well as containing the spread of communism. This is stated by the data from the University of Oxford’s “Plan Condor” [research] project.
This position, which assumed a confrontation between the West and communism, was perceived by the leaders of Latin America’s authoritarian governments as a necessary geopolitical strategy to ensure the security of the Western region, to which they morally and geographically belonged. The United States proposed a containment strategy, within which they viewed all actions of the Soviet Union as military actions, and, according to the “Truman Doctrine,” supported countries that sought to resist communism, as follows from information from the Argentine Attorney General’s Office. Among the presidential records of John F. Kennedy, collected by the University of Virginia, there is a record of his telephone conversation from July 30, 1962, in which he expressed his dissatisfaction with the situation in Brazil and spoke about the need to strengthen military control in the region.
Conversation between Kennedy and Lincoln Gordon, ambassador to Argentina.
“Gordon: …I think one of our important j obs is to strengthen the spine of the
military. To make it clear, discreetly, that we a re not necessa rily hostile
to any kind of military action whatsoever if it’s clear that the reason for
the military action is…President Kennedy: Against the Left.
Gordon: …he’s giving the damn country away to the…
President Kennedy: Communists. “
Operation Condor began in Paraguay in 1953, Brazil joined in 1964. Subsequently, there were coups d’état in Bolivia in 1971, in Uruguay and Chile in 1973, and finally in Argentina in 1976. During this process, crimes against humanity of all kinds were committed: extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, forced disappearances, torture, child theft, and sexual violence. Furthermore, efforts were made to combat all opposition groups, such as the Montoneros in Argentina or Liberation Theology.
US and CIA Intervention in Religion
Latin America was considered part of the “Western and Christian” world, and to maintain it as such, various covert methods were developed, such as military aid programs or economic cooperation with institutions like the church. The United States was determined to make the American territory a zone free from Soviet influence and geopolitically aligned with US interests, explains Argentine researcher Camilo Curi Antun.
In 1969, Nelson Rockefeller (at that time the governor of New York – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency) toured Latin America accompanied by then US Vice President Richard Nixon. Faced with the enormous influence of Liberation Theology, Rockefeller recommended resorting to state and private funding of Protestant pastors, especially of North American origin, and thus containing the influence of the Catholic Church and its communist influence, according to information from the Argentine publication Canal Abierto. Therefore, a bet was placed on pastors. Any good speaker, even without education, could get his own church if he was willing to take up this cause. By tithing, all the people’s calamities would be resolved.
“No politics, no communication with others to, based on common problems, change reality for a more just world. All that was required was to kneel, pray and wait for a miracle,” writes Canal Abierto.
According to the Secretariat of International Relations of Argentina, the CIA, together with the intelligence services of Korea, Taiwan, and the French counterintelligence in Algeria, worked to detect and eliminate targets.
This activity was funded by NATO members, as well as some anti-communist religious organizations, such as the Evangelical Protestant Church, the Unification Church, and the Propaganda Due (P2) lodge.
The Unification Church, for example, is an organization founded in South Korea in 1954, which quickly allied itself with the USA and moved to the West in the late 1950s. By 1970, its founder Sun Myung Moon was already living in the USA, and by 1980, according to the BBC, the church had spread widely throughout Latin America, especially in Brazil. Furthermore, Moon visited Argentina several times to meet with prominent politicians, such as former President Carlos Menem.
In Japan, a number of lawsuits were filed against the Unification Church in connection with its fundraising mechanism. A former church parishioner told the British newspaper The Telegraph about the mechanism that forced believers to make donations, increasing the amount.
“In the organization, there is a concept that your spiritual state directly depends on the amount of donations. In the US, you are expected to give 10% of your pre-tax income every month. In Japan – 30%. But that’s just the beginning,” explained the former church member.
In 1982, Moon was imprisoned in an American prison for tax evasion. At the time of his death in 2012, the BBC estimated his fortune at around $900 million.
Meanwhile, the Italian lodge of the Propaganda Due (P2), headed by Licio Gelli, was another religious organization that began operating in Latin America. According to Swissinfo, Gelli was a friend of Juan Domingo Perón and advocated for his candidacy in the USA, arguing that his election would be the best option to fight the communist ideas spread among the population. Furthermore, he was closely linked to the military dictatorship and worked as a diplomat and representative of Argentina in Italy.
The Decline of Catholicism Compared to Other Christian Denominations
Mass evangelization campaigns continued for years, having a strong impact on the number of converts, and this trend continues to this day. Obviously, after the events of the 1960s, there was a massive outflow of former Catholic parishioners to Protestant evangelical churches. Chesnut explains that in 1970, 92% of believers in Latin America were Catholic. However, after the decline of Catholicism that occurred in the last century, the believers of the region, who represent 39% of the 1.3 billion believers worldwide, will “most likely cease to be Catholic” by 2030.
In a study conducted jointly with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CIALC) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Chesnut found: “Currently, 70% of all Latin American evangelicals are Pentecostals, their numbers have increased so much that in eight countries the Catholic population has ceased to be predominant. Honduras became the first country where Protestants (39% of the population) outnumber Catholics (37%).” He also clarified that the Protestant population increased almost fivefold from 1970 to 2017: “70% of evangelical Christians are Pentecostals (parishioners, for example, of churches such as the Assemblies of God or the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, known in Mexico as ‘Let’s Stop the Suffering’).“
Leaders Practicing Christianity
Although it cannot be unequivocally stated that there are internal reasons for the decline of Catholicism, yielding to other branches of Christianity, in the current era, presidents of some countries continue to use “messianic Christianity” as a political strategy to strengthen their positions, and in some cases, the US announces its support for them, as in the case of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Donald Trump.
Bukele, who, like Trump, professes Christianity, stated that he was “sent by God” to create a government “led by divinity.” The President of El Salvador built his political discourse by appealing to religion, he used faith as an argument when introducing repressive measures such as the Territorial Control Plan (a plan to fight gangs – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency). Researcher Luis Aguilar spoke about this at the Latin American and Caribbean Social Sciences Conference (CLACSO) this year.
When on February 9, 2020, Bukele brought soldiers into the parliament (the opposition parliament was delaying the approval of a financial loan – note by Rossa Primavera News Agency), he stated that “God spoke to him and asked him to be patient.” Thus, Bukele used his religious experience to legitimize a political decision.
Furthermore, he designated days of prayer and used religious symbols, justifying government decisions. Thus, it can be seen that today religion continues to be a means used to support political ideals both for the good of society and against it.
“God guides our plans,” Bukele wrote in September 2024 on social network X.
¹ Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) – Spanish Dominican priest, author of the monumental work “History of the Indies,” among others. Known for defending the interests of Native Americans, whose culture he describes in detail in his works. His works formed the basis of the “Black Legend” about the atrocities of the Spanish conquistadors.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
