There are approximately 19,800 Friends in the nation of Guatemala. Missions from California and Oregon YM early in the 20th century led to the founding of Central America Yearly Meeting, with headquarters at Chiquimula. Due to the closing of borders because of war conditions, and because of theological distinctions, the Chiquimula Yearly Meeting formed daughter Yearly Meetings: ''Iglesia Nacional 'Los Amigos' de Guatemala
(National Evangelical Friends Church of Guatemala), the official successor, Iglesia Evangélica Embajadores Amigos
(Friends Ambassadors Evangelical Church) (a Monthly Meeting with several preparative meetings that functions as a Yearly Meeting), and '' (Holiness Friends Yearly Meeting). There is also Guatemala Monthly Meeting, a small unprogrammed meeting affiliated with Pacific Yearly Meeting (meetings alternating between Guatemala capital and Guatemala Antigua), which operates PROGRESA (formerly Guatemala Friends Scholarship Program), an educational program at the high school and university level serving primarily highlands indigenous communities. (This last was laid down in 2018.)
Honduras Yearly Meeting of the Friends Church was formed from the eastern missions of CA YM. In the 1950s an agreement among North American missionaries abandoned Tegucigalpa and nearby meetings and is concentrated around San Pedro Sula, Santa Rosa de Copán and San Marcos Ocotepeque, where there is a school/seminary. Tegucigalpa Friends Church has returned to the YM. In
El Salvador there are about 550 Friends, members of '''' (Friends Evangelical Church YM in El Salvador). They have a number of congregations and YM offices in Soyopango, a suburb of San Salvador. Recently the YM has taken on the project of promoting "Proyecto Alternativas a la Violencia" PAV (AVP - the
Alternatives to Violence Project) There are also about 90 Friends in
Costa Rica, divided between 3 meetings. Monteverde Monthly Meeting was founded as a colony by a group of young Conservative Friends families in 1952, trying to find a place that was not militaristic. Many of the men in the group had been incarcerated in the United States as conscientious objectors and they were attracted when Costa Rica abolished its army. El Centro de Los Amigos para la Paz, with a small hostel, was founded as a community center and a home for San José Quakers' unprogrammed silent worship in the 1980s.
Mexico has about 1,250 Friends in three
Yearly Meetings—the
Asociación Religiosa de las Iglesias Evangélicas de los Amigos (the yearly meeting of the Religious Association of the Friends Evangelical Churches
EFCI) and the
Reunion General de los Amigos en México (General Meeting of Friends in Mexico), comprising several churches around Ciudad Victoria monthly meeting (founded by missions from FUM), and Mexico City Monthly Meeting, affiliated with Pacific Yearly Meeting, an open worship, liberal meeting in the Mexican capital. They manage the Casa de Los Amigos in Mexico DF, which has numerous programs, including refugee support. There are similar groups in Sonora as well. A new evangelical mission is forming as . There are about 900 Friends in
Cuba. They are members of Cuba Yearly Meeting (""), which is affiliated with
Friends United Meeting. The first MMs in Banes and Gibara were begun in 1904. All but one of the 11 monthly meetings are in former Oriente province, around Holguín. Also in Cuba there was a small unprogrammed group in Havana starting in 1994, which spread silent worship across the Island; there were unprogrammed groups in Holguin for two years, one in Santiago de Cuba and in Santi Spiritus for a while, but all have been laid down. Looking at their missionary heritage and developing their Quaker roots while seeking to develop a Cuban Quakerism in the rapidly changing national environment, the YM founded the Cuban Quaker Peace Institute, "Instituto Cuáquero Cubano de Paz" in Gibara in 2013, with courses promoting the Quaker Testimonies and peace-building. After the Conference of Friends in the Americas in 1977, Latino Friends got to know each other and FWCC began an effort to help them organize. This led to the founding of CoAL in Mexico City in 1982. EFCI also began trying to bring all the Evangelical mission church YMs of the region into a region of their denomination, as well as other programmed Quakers. Today pastoral and Evangelical Friends in Latin America are in regular contact, but they are only slowly constructing links to one another. There have been unprogrammed worship meetings and groups in Latin America for several years, the oldest and most permanent in Costa Rica and Mexico; the majority of the others are expatriates' worship groups plus around 10 in
Colombia's Bogotá Monthly Meeting. Unprogrammed Friends in Latin America had their first meeting in November 2006 in Monteverde, Costa Rica. ==References==