Colombia held on to confessional establishment longer than almost any of its neighbours. The constitution of 1886 and the concordat that followed in 1887 made Catholicism the religion of the nation, put the church in charge of public education, gave it civil registration and made its teaching the standard against which textbooks were measured. That settlement was not a formality. It was one of the axes along which Conservatives and Liberals fought, and the mid century violence known simply as La Violencia had a religious dimension throughout, with Protestant congregations attacked and clergy involved on both sides.
Disestablishment came with the constitution of 1991, which declared freedom of worship and no official religion. The change was rapid in its effects. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, already growing, moved into public life directly, forming their own parties and winning parliamentary seats, and the constituent assembly that wrote the 1991 text itself included evangelical delegates.
The devotions that define popular Catholicism here are regional. The sanctuary of Las Lajas in Narino is built across a gorge on the site of an apparition, with the image said to be imprinted on the rock face of the canyon wall itself. The Holy Week processions of Popayan, carried through the streets on wooden pasos since the sixteenth century, are inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage.
Indigenous practice continues in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where the Kogi, Arhuaco and Wiwa maintain a religious order under their mamos, and in the Amazon, where yage is used ceremonially by taitas of several peoples.