Ecuador

Ecuador, a country of approximately 13.9 million inhabitants, straddles the equator (for which it is named) on the Pacific coast of South America, bordered on the north by Colombia and on the south and southeast by Peru. The country is split, geographically and culturally, into three distinct regions. The lowlands along the Pacific coast have a Spanish-speaking, mainly mestizo (mixed indigenous and European heritage) population. The Andean highlands that constitute the central region of Ecuador are home to a population of predominantly indigenous descent, many members of which speak Kechwa, a dialect of the Incan imperial language Quechua, either exclusively or in addition to Spanish. In the Amazonian basin in the east, the site of much of Ecuador's sizable petroleum reserves, a number of small indigenous groups, such as the Huaorani, continue to live a traditional lifestyle despite the incursions of settlers from outside the region. Estimates of the religious demography of Ecuador suggest that 90%–95% of the population identifies as Catholic, with the bulk of the remainder comprising members of various Protestant denominations, including many who are Pentecostal believers. Church attendance among Catholics is relatively low, but personal devotions and sacramental rituals thrive in many areas.

The roots of Ecuador's modern religious landscape lie—as they do for much of Latin America—in the collision of European and indigenous cultures during the Spanish invasion and conquest of the 16th century. When the first Spanish expedition, accompanied by a Dominican friar and a [Page 328]priest, arrived in Ecuador in 1532, they encountered the northernmost expanses of the vast Inca Empire, which had occupied the area in the waning decades of the 15th century. The popular, or folk, Catholicism that many Ecuadorians practice today, characterized by sacramentalism and veneration of a variety of saints, developed out of the semisuccessful efforts of European Catholic missionaries to convert the population of the Spanish colony. A dearth of religious education in local languages and the lack of an indigenous clergy left room for substantial devotional diversity and innovation.

From Ecuador's independence in 1830 until the latter half of the 20th century, the Catholic Church allied itself primarily with conservative political groups in opposition to liberals, such as Eloy Alfaro, who invited Protestant missionaries to Ecuador in 1895. The global ecclesial reforms of the Second Vatican Council and the progressive sentiments of the 1968 Episcopal Conference in Medellín did, however, take root in Ecuador. Many clergy, notably Bishop Leonidas Proaño, adopted tenets from the emerging liberation theology. Proaño, along with 17 other bishops, was arrested by the Ecuadorian military government in 1976 on charges of “subversion.”

The growth of Protestant churches that began during Alfaro's presidency expanded rapidly in the second half of the 20th century but has not yet reached the level in other Latin American countries, such as Chile and Guatemala. It remains to be seen whether Protestant growth will continue and to what extent Catholicism will remain the dominant religious influence in Ecuador's future.