Protestantizing Mexican Secularism: Local Dynamics of Religious Policy Under López Obrador

As part of broader anti-violence efforts, in 2019, the López Obrador administration launched Creamos Paz (Let’s Create/Believe in Peace) through the Office of Religious Affairs. This initiative promotes peacebuilding by collaborating with officials, scholars, and interfaith actors, challenging Mexico’s secular tradition. This paper examines how Mexico’s new religious policy is implemented and negotiated locally. Using a mixed-methods approach—including multivariate analysis, participant observation, interviews, and archival research—I identify two trends: while the Catholic-majority Bajío region remains less engaged, southeastern states, with higher Indigenous and non-Catholic Christian populations, show greater interest. Evangelical actors have strategically leveraged religious affairs offices to strengthen governmental ties. Despite its pluralistic rhetoric, Creamos Paz may advance Evangelical expansion while offering limited engagement—and veiled exclusion—to non-Christian minorities that misfit world religions frameworks. I argue that these developments reflect a broader shift toward Protestant-inflected secularism in Latin America, where religious freedom discourses reshape religious power within secular regimes.