This week, thousands and thousands of Latin Americans are attending worship services observing Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.
In Uruguay, they’re going to the rodeo.
While their Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking neighbors mark the death and resurrection of Christ, locals from the country of three.3 million are celebrating Semana Criolla (“Creole Week”), a series of festivals honoring the country’s gaucho heritage. Many come to look at Uruguay’s national sport, jineteada, where riders try to stay on the back of untamed horses. Few of the activities, which also include traditional music and dancing, acknowledge the Christianity calendar, except on the subject of eating asado criollo.
Vendors sell the country’s local barbeque throughout the week, except on Thursday and Friday, a nod to the country’s Catholic heritage.
“It’s certainly one of our many idiosyncrasies,” said Karina T., an anthropologist from Montevideo. (CT is barely identifying her by her last initial due to sensitivity concerns about her ministry to Muslims.) “If you ask any individual why they eat fish on those days, they may probably say that it’s something their grandparents did. Only just a few will say something about religion. They don’t even know.”
This ignorance is somewhat intentional.
Uruguay was certainly one of the primary countries within the Western Hemisphere to constitutionally separate church and state, and nowhere is secularism more apparent than within the nation’s rebrand of Christian holidays. In 1919, the federal government legally modified December 25 to the Fiesta de la Familia and Holy Week to the Semana del Turismo (“Tourism Week”), during which era the capital city holds Semana Criolla.
January 6, known elsewhere as Día de Reyes (Epiphany), became Día de los Niños (“Children’s Day”), and December 8, when Catholics have fun the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, became Día de las Playas (“Beach Day”).
The Uruguayan legislators’ intent was to “absorb” Christian holidays and take Christ out of the celebrations. With the exception of Christmas, when Christians organize open-air events and check out to evangelize more directly with non-believers, the federal government has largely succeeded, says Marcelo Piriz, pastor of Comunidad Vida Nueva in Montevideo, calling the vacation “D-day for churches.”
In contrast, many churches struggle with Easter and Holy Week. While some congregations may organize special programs, their outreach is restricted, often as a result of size.
“Average church membership is around 50 people. A congregation of 100 can be a small church in other parts of Latin America, however it’s big here,” said Facundo Luzardo, Baptist pastor of Iglesia Bautista Adulam in Las Piedras and a professor at Seminario Biblico del Uruguay.
These numbers can shrink further when people heed the decision of tourism week.
“Even within the church, some members prefer other activities,” said Piriz. “They may go to the countryside, or fathers may go teach their sons learn how to fish, for instance.”
Uruguay’s loose attachment to Christianity goes way back.
Until the tip of the 1800s, the country was sparsely populated. “Even the indigenous people, the charruas, didn’t have a belief system,” said Pedro Lapadjian, pastor of Esperanza en la Ciudad in Montevideo and writer of two books concerning the history of evangelicals in Uruguay.
The presence of Roman Catholics, seemingly ubiquitous throughout Latin America, arrived later within the region. The first bishop was installed in 1878—greater than 250 years after a bishop was installed in neighboring Buenos Aires, Argentina.
While many Uruguayans come from countries with a powerful Catholic presence, including Spain, Italy, and France, “most of the immigrants we received within the country didn’t hold strong beliefs, or they were influenced by the liberal or Masonic trends of Nineteenth-century Europe, including most of the Protestants,” said Lapadjian. “Intellectuals found inspiration in revolutionary France.”
Over time, the federal government began taking religious symbols out of public life. The state took over cemeteries previously managed by the Catholic church and removed crosses from schools and hospitals.
In 1907, Uruguay was the primary country in Latin America to legalize divorce. The country legalized euthanasia in 2009, and same-sex marriage and the production and selling of cannabis in 2013. It first decriminalized abortion within the Thirties for a transient period after which legalized it in 2012.
Protestantism showed up in Uruguay to start with of the 1800s due to the Anglicans, though they primarily focused their ministry on British families living in Montevideo. Then got here the missionaries—first the Methodists in 1835, then the Lutherans in 1846 and the Presbyterians in 1849. New groups landed within the second half of the 1800s, but their arrival coincided with the growing secularization of the newly sovereign country (Uruguay became independent in 1825).
Currently, evangelicals make up 8.1 percent of the population, in keeping with a 2021 Latinobarómetro survey, up from 4.6 percent in 2019. But 38 percent of Uruguayans define themselves as atheists or agnostics.
These demographic realities shape how evangelical leaders preach and reach out to their communities. When Lapadjian travels to talk in Chile, Bolivia, or Colombia, he often jokes, “I’m going to Latin America.”
“When you preach in Latin America, you might have an audience that already has a knowledge of God, Christ. There’s a standard ground,” he said. “When you’re preaching in a secular country, first you might have to fight to prove that God exists.”
Luzardo defines his homeland as “an agnostic country.” He says there’s some public curiosity about religions like Hinduism or Buddhism, but most are apathetic on the subject of Christianity.
“An Uruguayan will likely be very polite and can hearken to you, but will show no interest,” said Karina T.
While Uruguayan Christians participate in most of the Semana Criolla festivities, in addition they find ways to have fun Holy Week.
At Comunidad Vida Nueva, Piriz organizes a youth group church sleepover on Palm Sunday and takes the young people camping. Guest preachers teach at special services on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Children who receive meals on the community cafeteria will likely be given Easter eggs. Each gathering is predicted to have around 120 people, twice the same old attendance at regular services. “In these celebrations, the challenge is to surpass who we’re,” said Piriz, hoping services would have more non-members than members.
At Esperanza en la Ciudad, Lapadjian’s preaching leading as much as Holy Week called his congregation to embrace the motto “¡Vamos por Más!” (“Let’s Go for More!”) and to serve their community. The initiative included a call to donate to the national blood bank, which lost a few of its supply in January when its constructing was partially destroyed by fire.
“Easter is about donating blood, since the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for the forgiveness of our sins,” he said.
