Abstract

This paper examines how religious competition reshapes identity, community dynamics, and power structures by influencing whether religious elites offer symbolic or substantive protection to Indigenous communities. Drawing on the religious economy model, social capital theory, and religious syncretism, it argues that rising competition from Protestant and Pentecostal groups has incentivised the Catholic Church to reconfigure its relationship with Indigenous communities to be more inclusive and empowering. The paper employs a most similar comparative case design of Mexico and Bolivia to show that elite incentives and religious competition reshape identity-based communities. These cases are selected because they contain the largest Indigenous populations in Latin America, with Mexico the largest in absolute terms and Bolivia proportionally, and share a history of Spanish colonial Catholic dominance. In Mexico, competition motivated organisational and political forms of substantive protection through liberation theology and grassroots mobilisation. In Bolivia, competition intersected with the revival of Indigenous political pride, leading to cultural forms of substantive protection through religious syncretism. This research contributes to broader debates on identity, community, and power by illustrating how Indigenous communities are moving from symbolic recognition toward substantive inclusion within religious institutions.

Introduction

The Latin American region contains the largest number of people who identify as Catholic in absolute terms globally, accounting for nearly 40% of the global Catholic population (Pew Research Centre, 2014). This religious dominance dates back to Spanish colonisation in the fifteenth century, during which Spanish colonists imposed Catholicism to establish their superiority over Indigenous pagan beliefs. While some bishops and priests protested the severe oppression of Indigenous people under the encomienda system, which forced Indigenous communities into unpaid labour, Catholicism as a whole contradicted Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices (Gumucio, 2002). This fundamental tension limited the Church’s willingness to recognise Indigenous autonomy or land claims. As a result, the Church offered little symbolic or substantive protection, leaving Indigenous communities uniquely vulnerable as a minority group. However, modern-day Latin American states are secularising from Catholicism, as religious diversification coincides with greater public affirmation of Indigenous identity (Gumucio, 2002). This essay uses the religious economy model, which views religious institutions competing for followers in a religious marketplace, to argue that the rise in religious competition has aided the substantive protection of Indigenous communities. In response to rising Protestant and Pentecostal competition, the Catholic Church has increasingly invested in Indigenous outreach, advocacy, and syncretic practice. However, while this competitive pressure has deepened the Church’s substantive engagement, its extent differs across Latin America due to differing histories and church-state dynamics. This essay first outlines the key theoretical frameworks, then applies these theories to Mexico and Bolivia in a comparative case study to examine how religious competition has shaped the Catholic strategy with Indigenous communities in each context. A final section synthesises the two cases to assess the broader applicability of this argument across Latin America. Beyond explaining variation in religious protection, this paper contributes to debates on identity, community, and power by showing how religious competition reconfigures moral authority and political power away from religious elites and toward Indigenous actors.

Key Theories

This argument draws on three interconnected theoretical frameworks: the religious economy model, the social capital theory, and religious syncretism. Together, these frameworks explain how religious competition shapes whether religious elites offer symbolic or substantive protection to Indigenous communities.

Stark and Iannaccone (1994) formalised the religious economy model to illustrate how religious institutions behave strategically in a competitive market. In this model, religions are conceptualised as suppliers of spiritual and social goods operating in response to societal demand. When one religion dominates the supply side, as Catholicism historically has in Latin America, it faces little incentive to alter its exclusionary practices toward marginalised groups. However, unaddressed social, cultural, or political grievances can push individuals away from the dominant church and toward alternative religions. The emergence of credible alternatives then increases religious competition, forcing dominant institutions to adapt their strategies to retain followers. Isaacs (2017) applies the religious economy model to ethnic conflict, arguing that religious fragmentation heightens religious salience as it incentivises elites to compete for followers, while religious unification reduces such incentives. As religious elites adapt their strategies, they redefine who belongs, whose culture is recognised, and which identities are politically legitimate.

Putnam and Campbell (2012) outline the social capital theory, which distinguishes between bonding and bridging capital. Bonding capital refers to the strong ties built within a homogeneous religious community, reinforcing a shared social identity with mutual support. By contrast, bridging capital describes relationships between members of different religious or social groups. While bonding capital can provide social cohesion in a religious community, excessive inward identification may create social isolation, out-group prejudice, and the exclusion of minorities. This dynamic can deepen hierarchical religious structures and generate grievances among those with alternative beliefs. On the other hand, bridging capital, described by Arikan et al. (2015) as the “compassion hypothesis”, facilitates cooperation and positive relationships between people across religious groups, promoting more inclusive and progressive social and political attitudes. When one religion dominates and fails to develop bridging capital, this runs the risk of excluding minority groups, producing grievances, and possibly leading to conflict.

Finally, the theoretical framework of religious syncretism illustrates how Catholicism has engaged with Indigenous culture and belief systems in Latin America both historically and contemporarily. Gumucio (2002) shows that early Catholic syncretism was largely symbolic, initially equating “Christianisation” with “civilisation”, and later incorporating Indigenous practices only superficially. This reinforced a hierarchical relationship between Catholic and Indigenous worldviews and reflected a broader dynamic of institutional exclusion. Acemoglu et al. (2001) demonstrate how extractive colonial institutions generated path-dependent trajectories that limited post-colonial political and economic development. In Latin America, these legacies normalised the symbolic rather than substantive inclusion of Indigenous identity within national frameworks shaped by Catholic dominance. However, this relationship has shifted as democratic norms strengthen, Indigenous movements expand, and religious competition increases. In response, Catholic elites have increasingly moved beyond symbolic recognition toward more substantive engagement with Indigenous communities. This shift is closely aligned with the rise of liberation theology, which emphasises social justice and explicitly supports Indigenous rights, territorial claims, and cultural recognition (Norget, 1997). By reframing Catholic practice around equality and inclusion, liberation theology has enabled a more nuanced form of religious syncretism, in which individuals increasingly identify as both Catholic and Indigenous, reflecting the emergence of a more integrated contemporary religious landscape in Latin America.

Mexico: Substantive Organisational Protection

According to the 2020 census, 78% of Mexico’s population identifies as Catholic, 11% as Protestant, and a growing 8% is non-religious (Humanists International, 2021). Mexico also contains the largest absolute number of Indigenous people in Latin America, with nearly 8% of its population identifying as Indigenous (Trejo, 2009). While Catholicism remains highly dominant among the population, the Mexican state has historically mitigated its influence. The 1917 Constitution revoked legal recognition from all churches, prohibiting religious institutions from owning property for 75 years (Ross et al., 2022). Only in 1992, with the legalisation of “religious association”, could churches legally operate again (p. 179). Despite this prolonged, restrictive legal environment, Catholicism remained deeply embedded in Mexican culture and political identity.

Trejo (2009) characterises the Mexican Catholic Church as a “lazy monopoly”, a dominant religious supplier with little incentive to substantively protect marginalised groups (p. 326). Due to the Catholic Church’s primary financial base being derived from elite and wealthy Catholics, as opposed to the largely poor and disadvantaged Indigenous population, the institution focused its resources on elite interests and offered only symbolic engagement with Indigenous communities, whose cultural practices and political demands were often dismissed. However, the rapid rise of Protestantism beginning in the 1940s has fundamentally altered this dynamic (Ross et al., 2022). Protestant organisations gained mass support due to their more inclusive religious approach by making the Bible accessible in Indigenous languages, training Indigenous clergy, and providing welfare and community services. Their inclusive outreach increased religious competition and decreased the demand for Catholicism (Ross et al. 2022; Trejo, 2009). As the religious economy model predicts, this competitive pressure forced the Catholic Church to adapt its strategy. To maintain its power and influence, Catholic elites began providing substantive rather than solely symbolic protection to Indigenous communities by investing in grassroots organising, supporting Indigenous mobilisation, and developing a new religious contract that embraces liberation theology (Norget, 1997; Trejo, 2009). Therefore, religious competition reshaped Indigenous identity by transforming Catholicism from a symbolic national religion into a mode of community-based political mobilisation.

Liberation theology in Mexico focused on bridging social capital, which allowed priests and bishops to recognise Indigenous identities and territorial claims as legitimate components of Catholic social action. However, this shift did not occur without some tension. Norget (1997) documents cases, such as in Oaxaca, where Indigenous groups criticised liberation theology as paternalistic and gender-hierarchical. This reveals limits to the Church’s fast-acting strategic approach to dominate religious competition. Nevertheless, competitive pressures enabled deeper forms of religious syncretism that went beyond symbolic inclusion, as Indigenous individuals increasingly served as clergy while maintaining strong communal identities, even as residual hierarchies persisted. A national symbol of this syncretism is the Virgin of Guadaloupe, whose significance integrates Catholic and Indigenous history and demonstrates cultural substantive protection (Ross et al., 2022). Overall, the Mexican case demonstrates that religious competition was central to shifting Catholic elites from symbolic recognition of Indigenous communities to organisational substantive protection, consistent with the predictions of the religious economy model.

Bolivia: Substantive Cultural Protection

Bolivia is an Andean state of South America with a significant Indigenous population, with 41% identifying as of Indigenous heritage, and nearly 62% speaking an Indigenous language, making it a particularly relevant case for examining how religious competition reshapes Indigenous identity and power (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2014; Postero, 2010). 78% of the population identifies as Catholic and 16% as Protestant, with only 3% reporting no religious affiliation, indicating a slower pace of secularisation than in Mexico (Association of Religion Data Archives, n.d.). In Bolivia, religious competition intersected with a state-led Indigenous political revival, producing a different pathway of identity integration within Catholic communities. Historically, Catholicism held official status within the Bolivian state from independence in 1825 until the 20th-century (Ross et al., 2022). Under the religious economy model, the Church thus operated as a dominant supplier with state support and little competitive pressure. However, as more immigration diversified religious practices, religious tolerance increased, resulting in the 1938 constitutional principle of “freedom of worship” (Ross et al., 2022). Although Catholicism continued to represent 98% of the population during much of the 20th-century, the loss of state support left the Church exposed, making it increasingly vulnerable to emerging religious competition (Ross et al., 2022).

Bolivia differs from Mexico in its political relationship to Indigenous communities. The election of Evo Morales in 2006, the country’s first Indigenous president, marked a transformative moment in state-Indigenous relations. Morales aimed to build a plurinational state that formalised the presence of multiple Indigenous nations, expanded their autonomy, and restructured political authority to reflect Bolivia’s Indigenous majority. Article 4 in The 2009 Plurinational Constitution formalised religious freedom as a part of this new plurinational state by writing that “the State is independent of religion” (Ross et al., 2022, p. 83). However, while Morales promoted Indigenous rights and symbolic inclusion, critics argue that his dedication to plurinationalism was instrumental in enhancing his political legitimacy while governing through centralised power and undemocratic means (Postero, 2010). This indicates that, on the part of the state, some protections offered to Indigenous communities were largely symbolic, aimed at consolidating political support rather than deepening democratic representation.

Despite these political tensions, Bolivia’s religious landscape changed significantly after 2009. With no state-supported religion and a growing national pride in Indigenous heritage, the Catholic Church has faced increasing competition from Protestant and Pentecostal groups, while also confronting the rise of Indigenous identity brought through the plurinational framework (Ross et al., 2022). This transformation heightened Catholic exposure and reduced the relative dominance it previously held. In response, Catholic elites adopted a new strategy consistent with the religious economy model: they implemented practices that promoted bridging social capital and forms of religious syncretism that aligned Catholic practices with Indigenous identities to preserve their membership base. Ross et al. (2022) show that many Bolivians now hold dual religious identities, where those identifying culturally as Indigenous remain formally Catholic. This dual affiliation demonstrates substantive protection, as it normalises Indigenous values within Catholic practice and empowers Indigenous identity as a legitimate part of Bolivia’s religious sphere. The Bolivian case, therefore, demonstrates that Catholic elites, when confronted with rising competition and weakened state support, shifted from offering historically symbolic engagement with Indigenous culture to adopting more substantive forms of protection that recognise Indigenous identity within Catholic life.

Comparative Synthesis

Although the contexts of Mexico and Bolivia differ in their church-state relations, forms of state recognition, and Indigenous political histories, the Catholic Church’s shift from symbolic to substantive protection consistently corresponds to the rise of religious competition. In Mexico, the rise of Protestantism and Pentecostalism directly threatened Catholic dominance among lower socioeconomic and Indigenous communities. This competitive pressure incentivised Catholic elites to adopt liberation theology, expand pastoral outreach, and materially support Indigenous mobilisation in poorer communities, demonstrating a transition from symbolic gestures to substantive protection (Norget, 1997). By contrast, Bolivia exhibits a different pathway toward substantive protection. Catholicism faced competition not only from Protestantism but also from the cultural and political revival of Indigenous identity under the plurinational state. Due to political mobilisation for Indigenous rights being largely state-led rather than Church-led, Catholic adaptation took a cultural form. Rather than investing in organisational and political advocacy, Catholic elites implemented syncretic religious practices and increased recognition of Indigenous values. This represents substantive cultural protection, differing from the institutional advocacy seen in Mexico. These cases demonstrate that religious competition does not produce a uniform response. When competing religious suppliers attract members through social services and mobilisation, Catholicism responds organisationally. When the competitor is a culturally empowered Indigenous identity, the Church responds by integrating and elevating Indigenous culture and values.

Alternative Explanation

Some may argue that the increased protection for Indigenous peoples stems from broader political changes, such as constitutional reforms, Indigenous mobilisation, and evolving national identities, rather than from religious competition (Postero, 2010). From this perspective, Catholic elites adapted because state institutions and social movements demanded it, not because Protestant or Pentecostal growth threatened their dominance in Mexico or Bolivia (Trejo, 2009). Despite this argument, the timing, intensity, and form of Catholic engagement correspond more directly with the rise of religious competition under the religious economy model. Political reforms may encourage symbolic inclusion, but they do not account for the organisational investments, such as training Indigenous clergy, funding social services, and adopting liberation theology that emerged specifically in highly competitive religious environments. Where Pentecostal and Protestant groups gained members among Indigenous communities, the Catholic Church committed to investing in lower socioeconomic Indigenous communities through legal advocacy, community-based pastoral engagement, and culturally integrated religious practice, demonstrating substantive rather than symbolic protection (Trejo, 2009). In Mexico, substantive Catholic engagement intensified most sharply in regions experiencing the highest Protestant and Pentecostal growth, rather than following constitutional reform alone (Trejo, 2009). Similarly, in Bolivia, Indigenous recognition preceded Catholic adaptation, but substantive cultural integration only occurred after the Church faced heightened religious competition. This pattern therefore supports the religious economy model, where an increase in competitive pressure reshapes incentives and pushes religious elites to shift from symbolic gestures to substantive protection to maintain salience and membership.

Conclusion

Across both comparative cases, Mexico and Bolivia, this paper has shown that rising religious competition reshapes how religious elites engage with Indigenous communities, altering not only organisational strategies but also the distribution of symbolic, substantive, and moral power. In Mexico, Protestant and Pentecostal competition incentivised the Catholic Church to adopt organisational and political forms of substantive protection through liberation theology and grassroots mobilisation. In Bolivia, competition intersected with the revival of Indigenous political identity, producing cultural forms of substantive protection through religious syncretism. These findings demonstrate how Indigenous communities evolved from being marginalised recipients of recognition to legitimised actors influencing Latin America’s religious and political identity, renegotiating power within historically hierarchical institutions. This research contributes to broader debates on identity, community, and power by demonstrating that identity-based protection is not solely a result of state reform or social movements, but can emerge from competitive pressures within religious institutions. By showing how religious competition reshapes Indigenous identity and community dynamics, it challenges traditional understandings of both religious dominance and Indigenous marginalisation. More broadly, it highlights how communities formed around identity are active agents capable of negotiating power within dominant institutional structures.

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