FFCL Exploits: Latin American missions

Exploits 2003: Missions and Missionaries in
LATIN AMERICA

There are a total of 1,233 people groups within Latin America. Racial intermingling has been on such a scale that a breakdown of ethnic groups is only approximate. There is more class-consciousness than color consciousness in most countries, but there are wide differences in composition between the countries.

One of the major trends in the 90’s in Latin America was the democratization of Latin America which gathered pace in the ‘80s; by 1993 most countries had freely elected democratic governments. Mexico recently elected Vince Fox, a conservative former Coca-Cola executive. Fox was elected president on July 2, 2000, in an unprecedented defeat for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), ending 70 years of rule. Also in July, Alberto Fujimori had won an unprecedented third five-year term as president in Peru - in an election strongly criticized by the opposition and by international observers. Besieged by a bribery scandal surrounding a top aide, Fujimori announced in a nationwide television address recently that he was calling new elections and that he would not be a candidate.

In 1900, almost the entire population was considered Catholic. The changes since then have been dramatic - from a narrow traditionalism, with strong opposition to Protestant missionary activity to freedom of religion and a rapid growth of Evangelicals. This has been one of the greatest evangelical missionary successes of the 20th Century. Evangelicals have grown from an estimated 250,000 in 1900 to 21 million in 1980 and close to 50 million by 2000. Brazil has twice as many Evangelicals as there are in all of Europe! In addition there has been a rapid growth and maturation of missions vision in Latin America especially in Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina and Mexico.