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[The following are just excerpts from the first 5 sections of an extensive very revealing multifaceted 2014 Pew Research survey. My focus is mainly on the Protestant and Catholic views. Complete Report PDF] Religion in Latin AmericaWidespread Change in a Historically Catholic RegionLatin America is home to more than 425 million Catholics – nearly 40% of the world’s total Catholic population – and the Roman Catholic Church now has a Latin American pope for the first time in its history. Yet identification with Catholicism has declined throughout the region, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey that...

​Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced new plans to create a subsidized food program for school teachers and other workers in the education sector. Maduro explained that the new program would benefit as many as 700,000 families of education workers, including the children of teachers and professors. The president added that his government is committed to ensuring all teachers are provided with a living wage. Earlier this week, Maduro approved a 50 percent increase in teacher salaries.

Venezuela’s socialist government is struggling to put food on the shelves amid runaway inflation. Brazil’s president is facing calls for impeachment. And even Cuba’s communist government, an iconic touchstone for generations of leftists, is embracing closer ties with the U.S. Whether it’s because of corruption scandals or stagnant growth, the popularity of the crop of leftist Latin American governments that have been running the region since the start of the millennium appears to be waning. Voters that embraced what became known as the pink tide that swept away the pro-Washington, free-market policies dominant in the 1990s are increasingly tuning hostile...

President Obama officially closed a chapter in U.S. history that has guided presidents since nearly beginning, indicating the United States will no longer act to resist overseas influence in the Hemisphere. Obama, who spoke Friday during a “civil society” forum in Panama City, Panama, disparaged past efforts by the United States to forestall the spread of Communism in Latin America and suggested similar missions would no longer be undertaken. “The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past,” Obama said.Let’s think about what Obama means...

Those interested in reviving Catholicism’s saliency in everyday life in Latin America should consider how they can make Christ front-and-center of their social outreach People hold crosses while standing behind a statue of Christ during a re-enactment of the Crucifixion April 18 near Monterrey, Mexico. (CNS photo/Daniel Becerril, Reuters) It’s hardly surprising that the election of Latin America’s Pope Francis has focused more attention on Latin American Catholicism since the debates about liberation theology which shook global Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s. The sad irony, however, is that this renewed attention is highlighting something long known to many Catholics...

Paulina Abramovich, AFP December 2, 2014Santiago (AFP) - Latin America's economies, hit by falling investment, will grow just 1.1 percent in 2014 -- their lowest level in five years, a UN commission on the region said Tuesday. The poor performance of several of Latin America's biggest economies dragged down growth across the region, found the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Argentina's economy will contract by 0.2 percent this year and Venezuela's by 3.0 percent, it said. Regional giant Brazil's will grow just 0.2 percent. The figures are the latest confirmation of the end of...

(Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images) Tens of millions of Latin Americans have left the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades and embraced Pentecostal Christianity, according to a new Pew Research Center survey on religion in 18 Latin American countries and Puerto Rico. Indeed, nearly one-in-five Latin Americans now describe themselves as Protestant, and across the countries surveyed majorities of them self-identify as Pentecostal or belong to a Pentecostal denomination. Pentecostals share many beliefs with other evangelical Protestants, but they put more emphasis on the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as speaking in tongues, faith healing and prophesying.With...

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration announced on Friday a plan to create a new refugee/parole program for children in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras whose parents are legal residents of the United States. “This program will allow certain parents who are lawfully present in the United States to request access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for their children still in one of these three countries,” the State Department said in a news release. The department added that “[c]hildren who are found ineligible for refugee admission but still at risk of harm may be considered for parole on a case-by-case...

A new Pew survey found that Latin American Catholics are increasingly leaving the Catholic Church, either to join evangelical Protestant churches or are abandoning religion altogether. The survey participants cited a search for a personal connection with God as the biggest reason for their shift. The wide-ranging survey, released on Thursday, reported that although 69 percent of adults across the region identify as Catholic, in almost every country surveyed there was a reported net loss of Catholics in terms of people raised Catholic and currently Catholic. Overall for Latin America as a whole, 84 percent of the population was raised...

In light of the recent "Child" immigration show brought on by Obama, it is interesting to look at what has been happening in Latin America under Obama's watch. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are over their heads with gangs and cartels in the drug trafficking trade that Obama helped install --------------------------------- 2010-Resurgent Communism in Latin America Many Cuban refugees risked everything to escape the murderous regime of Fidel Castro. Oftentimes they made treacherous voyages aboard rickety rafts, hoping only to reach the free shores of Florida with their lives. Many died along the way. But communist rule was vicious and...

What does the triumph of FMLN candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, in the March 9 presidential elections in El Salvador represent for Latin America? I see his victory as very significant because it not only further strengthens the progressive current expanding through Latin America since the 1998 triumph of Chavez in Venezuela, but because he is the first president since Chile's Salvador Allende to reach the presidency by putting forward a project that he had no qualms in calling socialist. At the same time, he has explained socialism as a democratic, participatory project that is not decreed from above. This idea...

Officially this money is supposed to discourage illegal immigration, in reality it sends the message that if a lot of illegal aliens from your country come and create a crisis, the United States will send you huge piles of money.It encourages the very behavior that it claims to be discouraging. The White House announced $254.6 million in new aid for Central American countries today.The money will go toward returning unaccompanied minors who travel to the U.S. illegally to their families and fostering youth centered programs in their home countries, the White House said this afternoon.The assistance to the governments of...

MEXICO CITY—Latin America is the world's most violent region, accounting for nearly one in three global homicides, according to data from a new study by the United Nations. Latin America racked up some 134,519 homicides in 2012, about 31% of the total for that year, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime's Global Study on Homicide, its first since 2011. Yet the region's 574 million people comprise just 8% of the global population, according to U.N. figures. As a whole, Latin America's per capita homicide rate is 23.4 per 100,000...

Managua (AFP) - Nicaragua's president Saturday defended his country's right to strengthen its military with Russian help, seemingly backtracking on statements earlier in the week shrugging off suggestions of increased cooperation. Daniel Ortega said Nicaragua was "committed to further strengthening and modernizing the army" with the help of any country willing to provide aid, especially in respect to the Central American nation's fight against drug trafficking. In remarks during a military exercise closed to press but broadcast on a local channel, Ortega said Russia has in recent years granted "extraordinary" and "sustained" cooperation "without putting a single condition." He did...

While everyone is focused on the Ukraine and eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin has also been projecting Russian power into our own backyard: Away from the conflict in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is quietly seeking a foothold in Latin America, military officials warn.To the alarm of lawmakers and Pentagon officials, Putin has begun sending navy ships and long-range bombers to the region for the first time in years.Russia’s defense minister says the country is planning bases in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and just last week, Putin’s national security team met to discuss increasing military ties in the region.“They’re on the...

Away from the conflict in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is quietly seeking a foothold in Latin America, military officials warn. To the alarm of lawmakers and Pentagon officials, Putin has begun sending navy ships and long-range bombers to the region for the first time in years. Russian’s defense minister says the country is planning bases in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and just last week, Putin’s national security team met to discuss increasing military ties in the region. “They’re on the march,” Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) said at a Senate hearing earlier this month. “They’re working the scenes where we...

Latin America, long considered off-limits for Russian military outposts because of its proximity to Washington, is rapidly becoming the latest region targeted for Moscow’s expanding reach. As the Kremlin was secretly planning its invasion of Ukraine in late February, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Moscow’s plan to establish a permanent military presence in Latin America, including naval visits to ports in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Russia is also asking those countries to allow long-range bombers to refuel at their air bases.

At the same time that Russia was denying having blockaded Ukrainian naval facilities in Crimea, little-noticed reports came out of Moscow saying that Vladimir Putin’s government had ongoing conversations with eight foreign countries with the objective of building overseas military facilities, including in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. “We need bases for refueling near the equator and in other places,” Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, was quoted as saying by news agency ITAR-Tass. […] Attempts to reach spokespeople at the U.S. State and Defense Departments went unanswered Monday due to weather concerns, but analysts were split about how ominously to take...

Globalists and Gangs Back Marxist Mass-murderer in El Salvador 07 March 2014 "Former" communist-terrorist "commander" Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Obama administration-subsidized FMLN appears set to win the presidency in El Salvador's upcoming runoff election this weekend.

Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Iran’s Support for Terrorism Worldwide Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 2172 House Rayburn Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Mar 4, 2014 10:00am