Bolivia
POPULATION 8,445,134
ROMAN CATHOLIC 79.3 percent
PROTESTANT 10.1 percent
NONRELIGIOUS 9.4 percent
OTHER 1.2 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of Bolivia, located in South America, is a remote and landlocked country. It is bordered by Brazil to the northeast, as well as by Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay. Once a part of the Inca empire (twelfth to sixteenth centuries C.E.), Bolivia has about one-third of its territory in the high Andes mountains, while about two-thirds lie in the tropical lowlands of the Amazon drainage. Its population has the highest percentage of Indians of any nation in Latin America. Despite more than 500 years of Spanish control, indigenous languages continue to be widely spoken there. A strong and vital Indian movement developed in Bolivia during the twentieth century, causing a rethinking of the relationship of ethnicity to Bolivian life.
The highlands were the site of major pre-Columbian populations that formed the Inca province of Kollasuyo, and the population centers of the colonial period were also in the highlands. Upon arriving in what is now Bolivia in the early sixteenth century C.E., the Spanish began to impose Roman Catholicism. The effort involved the secular system of governance as well as the various Catholic orders.
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