JP Dukes's Blogs
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Guatemala Notebook
I have been living in a small town in Guatemala’s Highlands for the last few months, and fireworks at night are common. Yet around noon last Wednesday, I heard loud explosions and saw the tell-tale hanging smoke cloud indicating somebody was setting off rockets. As I walked to the center of town for lunch, I could hear the church bells ringing, and I wondered if there was some kind of emergency. Finally, the local family with whom I eat lunch told me we have a new Pope. My friend, Maria, beamed at the news. She told me all the Catholics were happy. An hour later, I was at a café. Just to make conversation, I remarked to the young Guatemalan woman behind the counter that there was a new Pope. I was proud to be a bearer of big news. She...
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Miracle Town?
The town of Almolonga in the Western Highlands of Guatemala used to be known as “San Pedro Almolonga.” In the 1970s, many people in the town converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. In the process, many locals dropped the “San Pedro”; they no longer wanted to be associated with a Catholic saint. Almolonga is now held up by Evangelical groups around the world as a miracle town, a place that has received miraculous blessings since a majority of the population converted. Estimates vary on the percentage of Evangelicals residing in the town, ranging from 55 percent by the local Catholic priest to 90 percent by some Evangelical literature; 65 to 70 percent seems like a good guess. Guatemala has one of Latin America's highest percentages of Protestants, and Almolonga is significantly more Protestant than most of the nation. Since the boom in...
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