If Latin American women are now free to purchase religious products that respond to
their spiritual and material needs, it is due to the region's historic transformation from a
monopolistic religious economy to an unregulated one in which faith-based organizations,
like commercial firms, compete for religious consumers.4 In the new free market of faith,
Latin Americans are at liberty to choose among the hundreds of religious products that best
suit their spiritual and material needs. After four centuries of religious monopoly in which
the only choice for the popular classes was either to consume the Catholic product or not
consume at all, impoverished believers, and indeed all Latin Americans, can now select
from among a dizzying array of religious options that range from the African-Brazilian religion
of Umbanda to the New Age group known as the Vegetable Union (Unido do Vegetal
in Portuguese).