[elkfersupper]

So, first they abandoned Catholicism for protestantism and now abandoning protestantism for Islam? Color me skeptical. Chiapas has population of five million — maybe a few thousand Muslims out of that? They’ve got a long way to go to unseat the Christians and Christian/Indian-religion hybrids. These people are not secular unlike Europeans.

You forgot the first step, where they were coerced into Catholicism by conquering armies of frenchmen and spaniards.

[steve86]

I thought that was implied by the inclusion of the religion-hybrid phrase.

[Mrs. Don-o]

As I understand it (and I'm no scholar), the invading army of ther Spanish conquistadores did have a big effect in suppressing the Aztec religion and pulling down its bloody sanctuaries and its walls of skulls; but they had very little effect in converting Aztecs to Catholicism, which is quite a different proposition.

The armies as such had very little interest in that, and the Aztecs even less.

By 1531, after several decades of Spanish domination there were very few -- perhaps a hundred or less -- indigenous Catholic converts in Mexico. But by 20 years after that, they numbered in the millions.

What made the difference? Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.