Latin America – FoRB in Full

‘God will not get you out of here’: A pastor’s experience of detention in Venezuela

Posted on 06/07/2026 by cswpress in Latin America, Venezuela

In May 2026, evangelical pastor Armando Montero* received a summons from the country’s security agency.

The pastor, who has a second job as a software developer had been asked give evidence in a case against a former client of his, for whom he had designed a piece of software to manage sales for a digital raffle business offering vehicles and apartments as prizes.

The model had become increasingly popular. Numerous influencers replicated it, and some later came under investigation for alleged links to money-laundering operations. When authorities launched raids against those involved in these raffle schemes, Armando’s former client left the country, despite his business apparently operating legally, holding the necessary permits and meeting its tax obligations.

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Sacred Sites, Silenced Voices: Indigenous Pluralism is Under Threat in Colombia’s Black Line

Posted on 08/06/2026 by cswpress in Colombia, Latin America

The Black Line (Línea Negra), known by the indigenous people who live there as Sé shizha, is the system of sacred spaces that delineates the ancestral territory of the Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogui and Wiwa peoples in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in Northern Colombia.

For these peoples, it constitutes not merely a geographical boundary, but a spiritual network comprising ceremonial sites, places for ritual offerings or pagamentos, ancestral connection, and the maintenance of global equilibrium in accordance with the Law of Origin – a set of spiritual, cultural and normative principles that, indigenous peoples believe guide the relationship between individuals, nature, the land and communal life.

Recently however, concerns have arisen regarding the rights of these communities to have a say in the governance of these sites, with traditional authorities in Aracataca, Ciénaga and Santa Marta in Magdalena Department asserting that they were never convened or genuinely and effectively involved in decision-making processes related to the protection of the Black Line.

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As hard as it may be to hold the Nicaraguan government to account, the world has not forgotten Pastor Efren Antonio Vílchez López

Posted on 26/05/2026 by cswpress in Latin America, Nicaragua

‘They closed the embassy around three or four years ago but didn’t really tell anyone.’

I think I actually laughed when I heard it. I was standing in the reception of a building I was just then discovering was the former site of the Nicaraguan Embassy in London, having made an hour and a half journey to Kensington to deliver a letter calling for the release of Protestant Pastor Efren Antonio Vílchez López.

From the way the receptionist explained it I got the sense that this sort of thing had happened before, which lessened but did not entirely eliminate the embarrassment on my part. Some frantic Googling revealed that while, yes, there were some mentions of the closure online – particularly if you added ‘closed’ to your search terms – most results listed the address as the building I was now standing disgruntledly outside, with the panel that pops up when you search for these things still listing its opening hours as 11am-4pm Monday to Friday.

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A generation determined: How Cuba’s Christian influencers have caught the regime off-guard

Posted on 06/05/202607/05/2026 by cswpress in Cuba, Latin America

It is no secret that for 67 years the Cuban people have been oppressed under a deceptive discourse of victory and prosperity, which with each decade has only drifted further from the dream, revealing the true nightmare of the failure and misery of their so-called revolution.

While many in earlier generations accepted the illusory utopia to survive, today’s generation has awakened to the advance of technology, connectivity and the cyber world in a way that not even a dictatorship can contain. And, although failure has been tolerated and its reality evaded for almost seven decades, in just eight years young Cubans have become the protagonists of a new revolution on the island; their only weapons the truth and a mobile phone.

This snowball effect became internationally visible with the San Isidro Movement (MSI), which emerged in September 2018 in response to Decree 349, a law requiring artists to obtain prior permission for public and private exhibitions and performances, meant to control artistic expression. Many of the most prominent critics of that law – such as performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and rapper Maykel Castillo Pérez, better known as Maykel Osorbo – unknowingly paved the way for their future arrests.

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Claims of freedom of religion or belief in Nicaragua are greatly exaggerated

Posted on 23/04/2026 by cswpress in Latin America, Nicaragua

On 2 April, during a Maundy Thursday Chrism Mass, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes addressed hundreds of Roman Catholic Church leaders who had filled the Metropolitan Cathedral in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. He delivered a full sermon, but one particular quote of his was seized upon by Sputnik World, a Russian state-owned news agency:

‘People have been able to approach their churches with complete generosity, with complete freedom, and are living their faith. I believe that is the most important thing.’

The next day – Good Friday – the state-controlled media outlet Canal 4 Nicaragua shared a photo of the cardinal leading a procession outside a church on its Facebook page. The post generated 248 comments, among which the following stood out, each receiving dozens of likes:

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