Religious Discrimination as Martyrdom and Erasure: Unveiling Christian Victimhood and Invisible Others in Mexico’s National Survey Data

In Latin America, growing religious diversity has prompted calls to reform secular governance and rethink the status of minorities. Yet narratives celebrating pluralism rarely interrogate the category of “religion” itself. In Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country, this produces a paradox: while evangelical Christians are framed as vulnerable minorities, other non-Christian groups remain invisible, especially those outside the world religions framework. This paper examines how religious discrimination as a discursive regime is operationalized in Mexico’s 2022 National Survey on Discrimination (ENADIS). Drawing on a recoding of the survey’s religious identity variable and a multidimensional measure of discrimination, we compare patterns of exclusion across religious and non-religious groups. Contrary to prevailing diagnoses, Evangelical-Protestants don’t show higher discrimination than the national average, while secular individuals and subaltern spiritualities report significantly higher levels. These findings challenge prevailing understandings of religious diversity and call for renewed scrutiny of how religion is manufactured, measured, and governed.