4. CASE STUDY: HONDURAS
4.3 The Religion Institution in Honduras and LAC
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In order to reach the optimal 100% of electrical coverage in the country, the report estimates that a total of USD $1,466,100,651.95 should be invested.
The “Encuesta de Demografia y Salud 2005-2006” translated to English by the Researcher as:
Demography and Health Survey from 2005 and 2006 showed that the rural area has a larger birth rate than the urban area. It also shows that the biggest percentage of teenage pregnancies are in the rural areas. Most importantly it showed that education does make a difference, because the biggest percentage of teenage pregnancies were also in the rural areas, where girls had less education.
Could it also be that the lack of access to electricity that impedes even having a television contribute to high birth rate indexes? Further study on this area is of importance.
4.3 The Religion Institution in Honduras and LAC
In Latin America, a region so marked and influenced by religion would be thought to have less inequality due to the fundamentals of religion specially those of its most dominant religion:
Catholicism. Nevertheless, the inequality levels stay high. In Honduras, religions are divided as follows Roman Catholic 46%, Protestant 41%, atheist 1%, other 2%, none 9% (2014 est.).
A study from Latinobarometro (2014), shows that Honduras is also one out of two Latin American countries (the other being its neighbor Nicaragua), in which the auto-classification of being a
“Catholic” has declined in the period from 1995 to 2013 by 29 percentile points. Protestantism has increased its numbers in 4 countries of the Latin American region, reaching over 30 percentile points in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The Agnostics appear to be growing in percentage in Chile and Uruguay, and in the rest of the Latin American Region Catholicism remains dominant. Therefore, it can be concluded that this is only about a change from one religion to another. Not about secularization.
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The same study from Latinobarometro (2014), points at Honduras as the most emblematic case of change in religious beliefs in Latin America. Catholicism has lost 58 percentile points that it had as an advantage to Protestantism, and a total of 29 per centile points of Catholics as mentioned before. This result compared to Honduras in 1996, when it had a 76% of Catholics and a 12% of Protestants. There was no other religion able to compete with Catholicism in Honduras. Now, both Catholicism and Protestantism have almost the same power.
Religion as an Institution has a high trust percentage in most Latin American countries. Based on the Latinobarometro (2014) report, we can see that Honduras shares first place with Uruguay with an 87% of trust in the Church Institution. A very interesting fact provided by the report shows that the number of Catholics rise as the person’s level of education also rises from 64% in basic education to 72% in superior education. Protestant numbers decline 22% to 20% and the people that have no religion are not related to the person’s education.
But judging from a country where as said before is divided by 46% Roman Catholic and 41 % Protestant, two religions which dictate high morality and mandate women to have children only when they are married, it is interesting to see if followers really practice what they are taught.
Marital status of the mother by department:
This section will show tables portraying what was the mother’s marital status in relation to the births recorded in the year 2015. The data was retrieved from CEPAL and tables were elaborated through the webpage of the “Instituto Nacional de Estadística” (INE), translated to the English language as the National Statistics Institute in Honduras. The objective of including these tables regarding the current marital status of the mothers can give us a clearer view regarding the practice of religion in Honduras. In a country where religion appears to be so important it is interesting to
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see the number of mothers who were married when they gave birth taking into consideration that 87% of the population is Christian.
Before analyzing the tables it’s important to clarify the meaning of two of the classifications found in the tables: Fact Union or “union de hecho” in Spanish and Free Union or “union libre” in Spanish. The term fact union refers to a union that has not led to civil matrimony due to customs or economic reasons that forbid the couple to celebrate a legal matrimony, but has the same legality and force as a civil marriage. On the other hand, the term free union refers to the cohabitation of a couple, without any legal binding between them as marriage or a fact union.
Table 5.5 Marital status for mothers of children born in 2015 in 18 departments of Honduras Departmen
t 01 Atlántida Departmen
t 02 Colón
status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
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status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
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status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
t 13 Lempira Departmen
t 14 Ocotepeque M marital
status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
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status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
status Cases % Accumulate
d % M marital
status Cases % Accumulate d %
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status Cases % Accumulate d %
From the previous tables we can see that only 30,211 cases out of 162,704 cases belong to women who gave birth while being married during 2,015. It is true that almost 90% of the Honduran population is Christian, yet these results show that religion will not serve as an effective behavior moderator. At least not concerning an idea of morality such as conceiving children until marriage has been concreted. Why then, are religious institutions and groups constantly fighting against the teachings of sexual education and the implementation of different anticonceptive methods?
It is important to know that the Honduran Constitution as well as the electoral legislation separates the functions of politics and religion. Between some examples we find in the Electoral law and political organizations, in its article 72, numeral 3 “Prohibitions”: Maintain dependence or subordination with political parties, foreign natural or juridical persons, international organizations or entities and of cult minister of any religion or sect. It is of great importance to maintain a division between church and state in Honduras. The dependence of these two Institutions make it impossible to find a balance towards the finding of policies that can help the interaction of high birth rate and income inequality.
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In this section, I will show some tables divided by departments on the following data:
• Type of birth by department.
• Studies done by the mother by department.
• Studies done by the father by department.
• Literacy of the mother and father by department.
All of the information for this analysis was extracted from the “Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE)” translated to English by the researcher as the Honduran National Institute of Statistics. The data used by the institution for the creation of these tables is from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and is from the year 2015.
Type of birth by department:
In the following tables we can observe a clear description of the type of births registered by department in Honduras during the year 2015. After the 18 tables each representing one Honduran department a summary table containing a recompilation of all the data from the 18 departments can be found.
Table 4.6 Type of birth of the children born in 2015 in 18 departments of Honduras Department
01 Atlántida Department
02 Colón