Protestants in Latin America, despite their small numbers when compared with the Catholic majority, have enjoyed a tremendous increase in adherents in recent years. The Pentecostal sects have proliferated the most and now comprise over 60 percent of the total Protestant membership.

The Church Committee found that the CIA had used religious leaders and groups in covert activities in Latin America. It stated that 'religious leaders and groups were used by the CIA' and that 'the number of American clergy or missionaries used by the CIA has been small.'

This scholarly chapter argues that U.S. officials treated evangelical Protestantism as a useful counterweight to Catholic liberation theology in Latin America. It discusses diplomatic and intelligence-linked support for Protestant networks as part of anti-left strategy.

Across Latin America, the Christian conservative movement joined forces with the imperialist offensive against liberation theology. The dossier states that the CIA emphasized the need to take this battle onto the field of subjectivity and shape the way people constructed meaning in their lives.

It was at the height of the Cold War that the CIA and the American government began subsidizing Protestant missions, mostly of Pentecostal denomination, with the intent of diluting Catholic presence and preventing the spread of Marxist ideals through religion. The article says declassified CIA documents, State Department memoranda, and USAID contracts indicate that, between the 1950s and 1980s, the United States used Protestant missions as part of a counterinsurgency strategy.

Wikipedia summarizes a commonly cited historical interpretation: evangelical missionary groups were introduced deliberately as a Washington strategy to reduce the influence of left-leaning Catholic movements such as liberation theology. It is a tertiary source and should be treated cautiously.

This opinion-style article claims evangelical Christianity was used as an imperial tool to blunt liberation theology and cites a 1969 CIA memorandum and a 1975 Christianity Today article. It is advocacy-oriented rather than academic, but it points to documentary leads relevant to the claim.

The article recounts that liberation theology "was perceived as a threat to US dominance in the region by leaders in the CIA and even the White House" and describes a regional plan known as the "Banzer Plan" in which Bolivian intelligence "joined by the CIA and by the intelligence services of ten other Latin American countries" compiled dossiers on liberation theologians, planted Communist literature in churches, shut down progressive publications, and arrested and expelled foreign priests and nuns supporting liberation theology. It further notes that U.S. policy documents prepared under Ronald Reagan argued that priests affiliated with liberation theology "use the church as a political arm against private property and productive capitalism" and that the U.S. government should strengthen ties with the Catholic hierarchy to "crush liberation theology," while many Catholics "drifted off towards evangelical churches—many of them financed by US evangelical projects."

The scholarly article notes that an "influx of Protestant missionaries from the United States into Latin America" coincided with "an increasingly aggressive US foreign policy in the region" during the Cold War. It analyzes how "US evangelicals" interpreted anti-Protestant violence in Colombia and suggests that the imagined Latin American religious and political landscape provided American evangelicals with "tools to shape the world in their image," linking missionary initiatives to broader U.S. geopolitical concerns.

This overview defines Latin American liberation theology as a synthesis of Christian theology and Marxian socio-economic analysis that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." It explains that liberation theologians used "Marxist analysis" to critique capitalist structures and that the movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s among Catholic clergy in Latin America, gaining significant influence in the region’s church and politics, which led to strong opposition from conservative governments and sectors aligned with U.S. interests.

How Pentecostalism’s prosperity gospel replaced Catholic liberation theology in Latin American life. The essay explains that Pentecostal and evangelical movements, many with roots in the United States, offered an apolitical, individualistic faith that contrasted with the collective, justice-oriented message of liberation theology, contributing to its decline. While it discusses geopolitical and cultural factors, it notes that US-backed evangelical missions and media helped create a religious alternative more aligned with conservative economic and political agendas.

The video caption claims that "behind the missionary boom in Latin America is a long record of U.S. support for evangelical and Pentecostal movements used to blunt liberation theology, a Christian movement that helped the poor challenge capitalism and imperialism." It implies that the explosion of Protestant missionaries and Pentecostal revivals in South America was linked to a CIA psychological operation aimed at stopping Catholic liberation theology.

This blog-style post asserts that CIA spy-ops funded conservative alternatives to liberation theology and that Washington turned to evangelical churches to counter the movement. It is a secondary, non-scholarly source with limited editorial rigor.

A user comments that the CIA helped the rise of Protestantism in Latin America because of Marxist influence in the Catholic Church and says they recall recently declassified CIA documents suggesting financial backing for these groups was intended to counter communist influence. This is an anecdotal, non-verifiable claim from a forum post and is low reliability.