How religious are Latin Americans?

A couple of years ago, our family decided to get our roof re-shingled after a particularly devastating hailstorm. The workers of the company were from Mexico, I believe, who came up to work in America and send money back to their families. However, my brother spoke in Spanish with them to practice, and he told me that although many of them used to be quite religious back home, in America they had yet to go to church once. In fact, my brother said with some amusement, they were planning to go to strip clubs that weekend or something to that effect.

So I am wondering if Catholicism is more of a culturally imposed practice more than any sort of real belief in Latin America, and if this is true, wouldn't this belief limit the flexibility of Latin America as it tries to industrialize, deal with diseases and whatnot?