Divorce Rates in Latin America

For those curious about finding love in Latin America…

One thing you should be considering is the divorce rate but also divorce and family law in different Latin countries.

Now divorce and family law by each Latin country is obviously quite a more complex topic than simply just listing out there different divorce rates.

So I will save that topic for another day because I don’t have the time to write about it in the exact moment.

But in the future I will!

So in this article, we will simply break down the following things:

• Divorce rates per country in Latin America
• Which provinces or states in each Latin American country have the most divorces

The last topic I was not able to find briefly in every Latin American country. The ones I had most difficulty finding info for were the following:

• El Salvador
• Cuba
• Costa Rica
• Paraguay
• Uruguay
• Venezuela

Anyway, enjoy the data you can find here and leave any suggestions in the comments for any other relevant data you think would be important when considering divorce rates.

Divorce Rates Across Latin America

So, from a basic Google search, this seems to be the more authoritative map on the subject of divorce rates in each country around the world.

As you can see here below.

And as you can see, there’s a few countries that they don’t seem to have data on – Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Honduras.

The map taken above is from Business Insider.

Now I will try to spill the beans on more specific information regarding divorce trends in different Latin countries.

Divorce in Mexico

In Mexico, the states with the most divorces are:

• Campeche
• Nuevo Leon
• Aguascalientes
• Chihuahua
• CDMX

The places with the least amount of divorces are:

• Puebla
• San Luis Potosi
• Guerrero
• Chiapas
• Tlaxcala
• Jalisco
• Oaxaca

Source for that is here.

Divorce in the Dominican Republic

In the Dominican Republic, the areas with the most divorces are: 

• Distrito Nacional of Santo Domingo
• Santiago
• Santo Domingo
• La Vega

Source for that is here.

Divorce in Puerto Rico

As to no surprise to anyone…

The place with the most divorces in Puerto Rico is San Juan.

As seen here.

Divorce in Guatemala

In Guatemala, the places with the most divorces are:

• Guatemala    
• Quetzaltenango   
• Jutiapa   
• Izabal   
• Suchitepéquez   
• Escuintla   
• Alta Verapaz   
• Huehuetenango   
• Retalhuleu   
• Zacapa   
• Petén   
• Chiquimula   
• San Marcos   

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Honduras

In Honduras, the 9 cities with the most divorces are:

• Tegucigalpa
• San Pedro Sula
• La Ceiba
• Choloma
• El Progreso (not very progressive to have so many divorces, eh?!)
• Danli
• Tela
• La Lima
• Juticalpa

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Nicaragua

As should be obvious, the city with the most divorces is Managua in Nicaragua.

Couldn’t find any info yet on other cities in Nicaragua.

Source for that is here.

Divorce in Panama

In Panama, the provinces with the most divorces are:

• Panama
• Chiriqui

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Colombia

In Colombia, the cities with the most divorces are:

• Bogota
• Cali
• Medellin
• Pereira
• Bucaramanga

And the cities with the least amount of divorces are:

• Yopal
• Riohacha
• San Jose del Guaviare
• San Andres
• Quibdo

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Peru

The places in Peru with the most divorces are:

• Lima
• Arequipa
• La Libertad
• Lambayeque
• Piura
• Junin
• Loreto
• Ica
• Cusco
• Ancash
• Cajamarca
• San Martin
• Tacna
• Ayacucho
• Puno
• Tumbes
• Huanuco
• Ucayali
• Amazonas

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Ecuador

The places in Ecuador with the highest divorce rates are:

• Galapagos
• Cañar
• Tungurahua

The province with the lowest divorce rate is Santa Elena.

Keep in mind that while it might seem surprising that the province of Galapagos is #1 on this list and not say the province where Quito is..

From what I understand, the statistics reported in the news article I found for Ecuador were a little bit different in that they instead looked at it at a per capita basis and not by a total amount of divorces.

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Bolivia

The places in Bolivia with the most divorces are:

• La Paz
• Santa Cruz
• Cochabamba

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Chile

In Chile, the article I found is similar to the one from Ecuador in that it looks at divorces on a per capita basis from what I understand. So the regions of Chile with the most divorces are:

• Magallanes
• Arica y Parinacota
• Maule
• Atacama
• Región Metropolitana
• Biobio

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Brazil

To be fair, my Portuguese is pretty bad.

So for this one, I still used some Brazilian news sources.

And with the help of Google Translate for divorce in Brazil, I found an article that goes over which Brazilian cities have the most marriages that don’t even last a year.

In order (as a percentage):

• Rondônia
• Roraima
• Goiás
• Tocantins
• Mato Grosso do Sul
• Acre
• Mato Grosso
• Distrito Federal
• São Paulo
• Paraná
• Maranhão
• Santa Catarina
• Sergipe
• Amazonas
• Minas Gerais
• Paraíba
• Ceará
• Rio Grande do Sul
• Espírito Santo
• Pernambuco
• Piauí
• Alagoas
• Pará
• Rio Grande do Norte
• Rio de Janeiro
• Amapá
• Bahia

The source for that is here.

Divorce in Argentina

It was difficult to find any information on which areas have the most divorces in Argentina – similar to Uruguay and Paraguay also as you might have noticed.

From what I could find was in this article which seemed helpful here.

Some of the points I found more interesting myself from it were:

• In the year 2017, Buenos Aires showed a lower amount of divorces when compared to the year prior but divorces grew by 41% in 2018.
• Mendoza has seen less people getting married.
• In Rio Negros, the amount of people still getting married was about the same.
• In Entre Rios, there are more divorces than what the official statistics show.

 Anyway, there seems to be a lack of information about divorce in Argentina.

As well for some other countries…

I at least included some information about Argentina here since I find it more interesting personally than other countries.

But similar to other places like Cuba or El Salvador, information is harder to find.

In the reflection section below, I will present to you a way to get around that perhaps.

Reflection on the Data

So there you have it!

For this article, I only dug through all the news articles I could find in Spanish or Portuguese on this topic.

For the countries I couldn’t find information on….

If I had to guess, you could probably find information on divorce rates by simply typing in “divorcios en x region of a country”

And then you can just compare the numbers of divorces in different regions or cities of a country like Argentina to get a better sense of which areas are doing better or worse.

That would be time consuming but it is possible probably assuming enough online local newspapers from those areas have covered the information.

In the future, I will probably someday revisit this article to improve the statistics – especially in terms of actually finding the government data that the news agencies got their numbers from.

Because in my opinion, it would be better to get more divorce on a per capita basis numbers by area than the total divorce numbers by area.

As that is more revealing – like what we saw in the Brazil section where some of the biggest cities like Rio de Janeiro were nowhere near the top.

A bit interesting anyway when I am sure there are people who look at cities like Brasilia or Rio de Janeiro and think “oh, well, those big city girls, a marriage with them wouldn’t work! It would be better to get married in the most rural area possible!”

Maybe…

Maybe not…

But either way, there were other rural areas like Amazonas that did well that in that Brazilian section.

Also, keep in mind too that a lot of the articles I saw (all of them I think) were indicating that divorce is skyrocketing in all of these countries.

From Guatemala to everywhere else.

Granted, I did read specific pockets of certain countries like in Argentina were not doing so bad.

But I suspect those numbers will probably continue to increase in the future for just about every Latin American country.

If I had to guess anyway – they have been in countries like the US, Canada and those in Europe…

And have been so far in Latin America..

So if you were to marry someone down here because “oh well, lower divorce rate...”

Keep in mind that you don’t know how that will play out in 20 years in whatever Latin country you get married in...

Be it Nicaragua to Argentina.

I say that because you think about how much lower divorce rates might have been in the 1960s for example.

People get married then and then you get a heavier crash of divorces decades later.

Here’s an interesting article by the Wall Street Journal that you can read here – title is “The Divorce Rate is at a 40-Year Low, Unless You’re 55 or Older.”

So I’ll leave it at that – just as a warning – I wouldn’t move to some random Latin American country just on the prospect of finding someone to marry in a lower divorce rate environment.

As you don’t know how that will really play out in the next few decades or so..

And you may end up hating that country and have no other reason to live there..

And she might cheat on you as Latina women are not all these special faithful women you might think they are as I wrote about here, here and here.

Regardless, if you have any interesting insight or have a request for how I could improve this article (in terms of any specific related data that I should get), then let me know in the comment section.

And follow my Twitter here.

Thanks!

Best regards,

Matt

Interested in dating Latina women? Check out more articles HERE.