Lawless roads still

...They are proud descendants of the once powerful Maya civilization...

...When I pressed him on the matter he shrugged his shoulders: "They are exaggerations...

...But now everyone has a CB, so I have encouraged our priests and pastoral agents to install them in their cars and jeeps...

...Bishop Reynoso Cervantes of Cuemavaca, spokesman for the Mexican Bishops' Conference, corroborated Prigione's account...

...Some believe the cardinal was killed because he planned to issue a pastoral letter condemning the growing Guadalaj ara-based narcotics industry...

...The assassination plot, traced to a handful of landowners, was foiled by the bishop's supporters, committed like him to defending the human rights of the indigenous peoples who make up 80 percent of the diocese...

...We will be judged on what we did with those whom God entrusted to our care...

...Surprised and confused, the bishop asked the nuncio for an explanation, but Prigione refuse d to give particulars...

...In an irony Greene would have appreciated, the Salinas government then appointed Gonzalez Garrido minister of the interior, a post that endows him with considerable power over the Mexican police...

...There are conflicting accounts of Posadas Ocampo' s death...

...The event has nurtured a popular string of conspiracy theories implying complicity, hypocrisy, and corruption at very high levels...

...Along with other Mexican bishops, he helped promulgate the 1984 episcopal statement, "On the Situation of the Refugees...

...Chiapanecos wait to see what vengeance the new minister may exercise against the church and the poor in San Crist6bal and elsewhere...

...Time and again, in ordination ceremonies, he has reiterated, "The indigenous people with whom you work will evangelize you, and not the other way round...

...Don Samuel remains vigilant...

...If theologians put a label on what is done, that is speculation...

...It may be that Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Guadalajara, killed last May in a volley of bullets fired at close range, is the most recent...

...But life in Chiapas is laardly idyllic...

...I talked with four Tzotzils and Tzeltals-a Catholic, a Presbyterian, an Evangelical, and a freethinker...

...If that makes him a "Red," it is not because of ideology but because he follows in the long line of Catholics who have risked martyrdom in Mexico...

...they say the purpose is to keep the chancery informed of his whereabouts as a means of ALBERTO HUERTA, S.J., is an associate professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of San Francisco...

...Asked to elaborate, Don Samuel turned sober, even ponderous...

...At first Prigione did not wish to carry out this disagreeable mission, but was told that Pope John Paul II had already approved the document...

...Interestingly," he said, "that is one area where there is general agreement...

...the author, like some prankster on the telephone, is speaking in an assumed voice--high or deep, hollow or falsetto, but in any case not his own...

...Though the police were given the names of the conspirators, Don Samuel did not file charges...

...A co-worker, Sister Lucy Jimenez, who is responsible for more than 40,000 Guatemalan refugees housed in the many refugee camps in the diocese, smiled when she said, "Someone would be gunning down Don Samuel, and he would most likely apologize to the assassin for something or other...

...They have wanted to put on notice those who think as Don Samuel does...

...At the same time he detected a Kafkaesque darkness in the continuing struggle between faith and ideology, which included the destruction of churches and the burning of statues in neighboring Villahermosa under the ruthless Garrido Canabal...

...I asked Don Samuel whether he was concerned that his ecumenical spirit might lead to defections...

...Later he met with the indignant women privately to educate them in the church's respect for the indio...

...But in the early 1980s, when Guatemalan-based helicopters harassed the refugee camps in Chiapas and Guatemalan soldiers crossed the border in search of political prisoners, he demanded that the Mexican government protect the refugees and grant them temporary asylum...

...Close associates of Don Samuel point out that, despite his easy dismissal of the threats, for years he has had a CB radio in his car (which he drives himself...

...They are calumnies, he says, attempts to defame his character and undermine his option for the poor...

...But such name-calling, said the diocesan vicar general, the Reverend Gonzalo Ituarte, O.P., is expected...

...Prigione had nothing to do with the Vatican's decision to remove Bishop Ruiz Garcfa...

...The bishop is less casual about labels pinned on him by elements of the local press and government calling him a "Communist" and a "Red...

...I learned from an American working in Chiapas of a priest who followed in the Las Casas spirit when he refused the Eucharist to several wealthy women as they approached for Communion...

...All spoke of the bishop with affection and with gratitude for his defense of their human rights...

...The bishop explains the matter more prosaically: "Some years ago I realized that we work generally in the jungle and that priests, religious, and catechists were very isolated from each other...

...The governor--Patrocino Gonzalez Garrido, a descendant of the infamous Garrido Canabal--had approved the arrest...

...The law stayed on the books until the early 1980s...

...So I thought that CB radios might help to break this isolation...

...We are not doing theology in the European sense where you move through a deductive process, going from the universal to the particular...

...I was the bishop of all Chiapas," he says...

...The pope affirmed this special role of the church in his addresses recently in the Yucatan...

...And what will Don Samuel do now...

...Reaction in Mexico and elsewhere has not been muted...

...He was ordered by Cardinal Bernardin Gantin to personally give Don Samuel the letter...

...If the evangelical spirit of love and compassion in the diocese reflects Bishop Ruiz Garcfa's commitment to Vatican II, it is also something of a throwback to earlier times...

...They themselves are the autochthonous church of hope that Gaudium et spes eloquently affirmed when referring to the poor and those who suffer...

...He is like that, always careful not to offend a person's dignity...

...Beginning with Vatican II, the subsequent various bishops' conferences in Latin America, and the meeting in Santo Domingo last year with the pope, the church has recognized the particular spiritual richness inherent in the expression of faith found among the indigenous peoples of the Americas...

...SCREEN STUNTS 'REMAINS' & 'CARLITO'S WAY' ary McCarthy once wrote that some of the best novelists of her time used first-person narration in such a way that their books became "impersonations, ventriloquial acts...

...Joel was released...

...Greene also discovered an interesting syncretism of magic and dogma, and encountered an emotional depth of faith he had not previously known...

...Some members of Don Samuel's flock say he has received thirty or so death threats since he was consecrated bishop by Pope John XXIII at age thirty-five in 1960...

...As an afterthought, the nuncio added that he did not know whether the Mexican government had requested Don Samuel's removal...

...Five years after Don Samuel became head of the once powerful diocese of Chiapas, the Vatican divided it into three dio12:17 December 1993 Commonwealceses...

...We are not disturbed with other evangelical efforts, so long as they address the real needs of the people, who often are being deprived of their own lands and harassed indiscriminately by the landowners and the law enforcement authorities...

...But without Rome's apparent support, Don Samuel will need more than a CB radio in his car to prevent him from one day joining the long and growing line of Mexican Catholic martyrs...

...With eighty-eight priests, many religious women and men, and committed lay workers, he has been generous in delegating authority among a vicar general with seven associates, a chancellor, pastoral agents, and teams of catechists...

...hough Don Samuel may be spared a physical martyrdom, he and his diocese are suddenly experiencing a state of siege from a different quarter...

...When Prigione was challenged by the diocesan commission on these matters, the nuncio responded, "It is not about what Don Samuel says in his diocese, but about what he affirms in lectures and meetings, especially abroad...

...Such pastoral courage seems common in the diocese...

...I put it off, however, because I did not want the government, or the local press, to say we were abetting any kind of guerrilla or insurgent groups, either from Guatemala or here in Chiapas...

...A source close to Don Samuel, who wished to remain anonymous, told me that "for some time now, people in important positions in Mexico and Rome have wanted [Don Samuel] and his diocese to rectify and change their positions favoring the poor, the indigenous peoples, and the refugees...

...Prigione ended his vacation in Italy in October and stopped by Rome...

...Bishop Ruiz Garcfa is a product of the Second Vatican Council, and his diocese reflects its spirit...

...On October 25, the Vatican's apostolic delegate to Mexico, Archbishop Girolamo Prigione--the man credited a year ago with reestablishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Mexico after a hiatus of sixty-five years--informed Don Samuel that the Congregation for Bishops was requesting his "retirement," a euphemism for his removal...

...Don Samuel looked annoyed when I said I thought I was hearing echoes of liberation theology, a sometime target of criticism from the Vatican...

...The Catholic church and the mainline Protestant denominations are discovering their option for the poor by working with them...

...It was there he was given the letter requesting Bishop Ruiz Garcfa's retirement...

...We find ourselves with many pastoral particulars--the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, those who suffer injustice...

...Thinking the delicate matter an inhouse affair to be resolved privately, Don Samuel decided to remain silent...

...Without spelling out particulars, the document stated that the Vatican was very concerned for Don Samuel's doctrinal and pastoral errors and his difficulties with the Mexican government that "went against the church and offended the Holy Father...

...Finally, when more than 4,000 indios marched on Tuxtla Guti6rrez, Fr...

...Our concern is pastoral...

...He recently commented on these teams with childlike enthusiasm: "We have 7,000 indigenous catechists---Ch' ols, Tzotzils, and Tzeltals--working in these communities...

...Yet it is in the heirs of the Mayas that Don Samuel has invested his fullest confidence...

...When it was divided into three dioceses, that of Tuxtla Guti6rrez (the capital of the state) and Tapachula on the Pacific Coast, I was left landlocked between the two...

...The church has found itself in the enviable position of fostering this discovery of a God incarnating himself daily in the lives of the poor and oppressed...

...But the matter ceased to be private when Jesfis Aranda of La Jornada (October 26) obtained and publicized a document from a meeting between the nuncio and a diocesan commission concerned about Don Samuel's future...

...the reader] senses the author, cramped inside the character like a contortionist in a 14:17 December 1993 Commonweal...

...Las Casas defended the indios against colonial oppression, not only in his well-known protests to the Spanish court but also on the scene--at times excommunicating ladinos and coletos who mistreated the indigenous people...

...the diocesan human rights commission carefully documents every instance of abuse...

...You are confusing two different things," he said...

...When Prigione arrived in Mexico, he bad to call Don Samuel in Brazil, where he was attending a meeting in S~o Paulo...

...The rest is not my affair...

...The Mexican hierarchy is divided over the matter, and civil rights activists, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberto Menchu, have publicly protested the Vatican's action...

...hat outlook is hardly universal in Chiapas, where the wounds of the conquest still fester in memory...

...lessening the possibility of his being martyred like San Salvador's Oscar Romero, or of becoming un desaparecido...

...The conquest was an imposition of faith, yet every day we see the Incarnation of Christ in the Americas...

...On judgment day we will not be asked about our theological speculation...

...LAWLESS ROADS STILL THE 'RED' BISHOP OF CHIAPAS ALBERTO HUERTA L ess than a year ago, the name of a Catholic bishopDon Samuel Ruiz Garcfa of San Crist6bal de las Casas, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas-appeared on a hit list...

...The pastor was accused of inciting the indios to repossess land to which they claimed title...

...The first bishop of Chiapas was the legendary Dominican Bartolome de las Casas, who came here in 1545, and whose presence still permeates like the dense fog that fills the valleys around San Crist6bal at night...

...This action by Rome seems to be their way [of doing this...

...It was characteristic of him, as I later learned, that he forgave the perpetrators and did not wish to "embarrass" those involved...

...Do not forget that it was the African bishops at the Second Vatican Council who demanded recognition for the cultural expression of their faith as a valid interpretation of Christianity...

...Don Samuel's respect and concern for the indios extends beyond his own flock...

...When Graham Greene trekked here on a mule in the spring of 1938, he was investigating the state of Catholicism ten years after the blood bath of priests and nuns that resulted from the Mexican government' s persecution of the church, an experience that gave birth to The Lawless Roads and The Power and the Glory...

...The night before at a fiesta he had overheard them speaking about recruiting their Indian maids to initiate their sons in sexual adventure...

...While the Vatican and Mexican authorities agreed that it was a matter of mistaken identity, a forensics expert stated on a Guadalajara newscast that the close range of the gunshots pointed to an assassination...

...Rebroadcast of the segment was later blacked out...

...At the same time, however, mindful of pastoral implications, the diocese let it be known that the attempt constituted grave sin...

...As late as September 1991, the conflict flared again when a pastor, Father Joel Padron of Simojovel, was arrested without a warrant and detained in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutidrrez...

...His latest pastoral letter, "In this Hour of Grace," was issued in August to mark the visit of Pope John Paul II to Mexico's indigenous peoples...

...A colonial-era law in the city of San Crist6bal required an indio to step off the sidewalk into the street on encountering either a ladino (one of the original Spanish heirs of the conquest) or a coleto (a descendant of the conquerors...

...Still other sources in Mexico speculate that Rome's decision had less to do with doctrinal matters than with threats to Don Samuel's life...

...In an interview with Rodrigo Veto in Proceso (November 8), Prigione tried to vindicate his actions by saying he had only carried out the Vatican's request: "I limited myself to forwarding to Don Samuel the letter that the pope has sent him through the Congregation of Bishops...

...But the assassination plot was genuine, and many believe that serious threats against the bishop are routine...

...Anyone who is concerned for the poor, and especially the indigenous peoples, is labeled a 'Red.' You have to get used to that idea, if you are going to work here...

...He is still waiting to hear what the alleged charges are all about, but he has decided to conduct a self-evaluation in his diocese with the leaders and the faithful before deciding whether or not to resign...

...Immediately Don Samuel, his vicar Commonweal 17 December 1993:13general, and the diocesan human rights commission denounced the arrest as a flagrant act of oppression directed against the church...

...At sixty-nine, Don Samuel does not like to aggravate or sensationalize the tense political and religious situations in his diocese...