This paper critically examines secularization not as a neutral or universal marker of modernity, but as a historically contingent and colonial technology of power. Drawing on decolonial theory and Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo's Theory of Encrypted Power, I argue that secularism in the Hispanic Caribbean has functioned as a grammar of governance that simultaneously marginalizes certain religious expressions while mobilizing others to legitimate political authority and social hierarchies. Against classical secularization narratives that presuppose the progressive decline of religion in public life, this paper situates the Caribbean as a paradigmatic case in which secularizing and desecularizing forces coexist and interact within the conditions of colonial modernity. Far from signaling a return to pre-modern religiosity, contemporary religious resurgence reveals how secularism itself encrypts theological assumptions that continue to shape political legitimacy, national belonging, and inequality. Focusing on the Hispanic Caribbean as a colonial and postcolonial site, the paper introduces the concept of sacramental legitimation to describe the process by which political actors, institutions, and neoliberal governance are endowed with moral and quasi-sacred authority through religious discourse. This dynamic exposes how religion can operate ambivalently—at times contesting injustice and exclusion, while at others reinforcing racialized, economic, and moral hierarchies within a formally secular public sphere. By decrypting secularization as a colonial discourse rather than an inevitable social process, this paper contributes to broader global debates on religion, nation, and inequality. It calls for moving beyond simplistic binaries of secular versus religious in order to better understand how power, sovereignty, and inequality are produced and contested in diverse postcolonial contexts.