Exploiting Religion in Chiapas

...Hi s efforts to renew them, he said, had been repeatedly rebuffed since July 1995...

...and most Leftwing parties have sported a scarlet "M" (for Marxist) as discernible as Hester Prynne's "A...

...Asked why he abandoned Protestant fundamentalism, Lopez replied that the evangelical congregations were run by Mexico's powerful Interior Ministry...

...A Catholic spokesman described the evangelicals as "gringos with Indian bodies and faces...

...and intolerant," he says they are given to passing around leaflets containing some of the Koran's more inflammatory passages, such as one recommending that opponents of Islam be subjected to punishments like exile, amputation of body parts and even crucifixion...

...As family members wept, the pastors prayed...

...Describing them as "radical, fundamentalist...

...Three months earlier, on the same program, several young women had charged that they were sexually attacked by Joaquin...

...Fearing the publicity that would attend such an act, the authorities let him goBut the PRI's manipulation of religious sects is not limited to Chiapas...

...The visitors obviously believed the prisoners' protestations of innocence...

...Both Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the liberal Catholic Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, capital of Chiapas, and the Zapatista leadership have made clear their dismay over bitter religious bickering among downtrodden Indians whose cause they have adopted as their own...

...Peace and Justice, probably the most murderous of Mexico's paramilitary outfits, is about equally composed of Catholics and evangelicals...

...Its performance has been even more brilliant when dealing with religious organizations...

...During the past 32 years the parish's priest had been a Frenchman, Michel Henri Jean Chanteau...

...The visit ended with the clergymen leaving a case of Bibles in the Tzotzil language and $360 to buy corn...

...this isn't a religious war but a political one...

...the Sinarquista movement of the '30s and '40s reeked of fascism...

...They also bore false witness against Christ," he said...

...So one hand washes the other: Peace and Justice evangelicals are happy to close down any Catholic church, while Catholic paramilitaries believe they are striking a blow against foes of traditionalism...

...He was expelled from Mexico in February for criticizing the government and for not having his immigration papers in order...

...Proceso, a pro-Ruiz Mexico City weekly, noted that the PRI civil authorities in Chiapas have seized 40 churches...

...Farela promised full assistance from his group...

...Mijangos maintains that Ruiz is principally responsible for the proliferation of evangelical groups because he neglected his religious duties to play politics...

...Denying Vera's charge that evangelical paramilitaries forcibly closed down 20 Catholic churches, Tovilla insists "those churches were shut down by Catholics who don't like don Samuel [Ruiz...

...In 1971 he formed a group in Hermosa Provincia called the National Federation of Colonists, through which he was able to negotiate an agreement allowing him to stake out an evangelical theocracy in a city that is 95 per cent Catholic...

...In August 1997, the national TV program Detras del la Noticia ("Behind the News") aired the story of a miniskirted Catholic girl who was assaulted in the street and later had dead animals thrown into her house...

...An ex-PRD deputy and former evangelical pastor, Lopez is a Muslim convert...

...Though Lopez would not say exactly how many Muslims there are in Chiapas, he predicted "vertiginous" growth...

...Singling out Abdias Tovilla and Esdras Alonso for particularly harsh criticism, he said their only interest was in exploiting the Indian...

...Its gunmen attempted to assassinate Ruiz last November, and have closed down or profaned 31 Catholic churches that reject the traditionalist line...

...Nobody takes Lopez lightly...

...It is Ruiz' view that what seems like sectarian violence is no such thing...

...Since Chiapas is about 40 per cent evangelical, Protestants are not—as they are in other parts of Mexico—an insignificant minority...

...The child is growing—let's leave it at that," was his final word...

...They would have to pass through San Juan Chamula, a hotbed of traditional Catholicism, and feared an ambush if they traveled at night...

...This religious conflict is artificial," says Father Oscar Salinas, pastoral vicar of San Cristobal and leading spokesman for the Bishop...

...It will support and arm any group, Protestant or Catholic, that opposes three hated enemies: the Zapatistas, the pro-Ruiz Catholics and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Mexico's leading Left-wing party...

...The sect was founded by a Mexican named Aaron Joaquin Gonzalez, and is today run by his son, Samuel Joaquin Flores...

...He served as mediator in the stalled peace talks between the government and the Zapatistas until he stepped down on June 7, citing official aggression directed at his diocese...

...While the PRI no longer runs Guadalajara's city government, the party obviously retains sufficient clout to make sure that such a favored organization does not suffer any legal sanctions...

...In August 1997, a 32-year-old man named Moises Padilla declared on a nationally televised newsmagazine program that when he was a teenager Joaquin molested him...

...Its strategy is as ingeniously simple as it is Machiavellian...

...No alcohol or tobacco is sold in stores owned by sect members...

...When Catholic fanatics expelled Protestants from their lands, the latter were welcomed into the capital by Bishop Ruiz...

...well, that goes with the territory...

...Recently Tovilla visited the families of evangelical prisoners being held in the Cerro Hueco detention center for alleged participation in the horrifying December 22,1997, massacre of 46 Indian men, women and children near the village of Acteal...

...Skeletons dance behind the facade of austerity, however: Light of the World leaders have been accused of both financial and sexual shenanigans recalling the heyday of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker...

...In Guadalajara, Mexico's second city, the party has long had a cozy relationship with the sinister Light of the World cult...

...The main target of the sexual misconduct charges is Samuel Joaquin...

...Peter the Apostle...

...Women are required to wear long dresses and cover their heads with shawls...

...There is a Catholic minority whose lot is not always a happy one...

...On its left and right flanks it adroitly fields front groups like the Party of the Workers or the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution, an aggregation of secular conservatives...

...He claims that Coadjutor Bishop Raul Vera, a Ruiz ally, threatened him with excommunication and recommended that he receive treatment at a mental rehabilitation facility...

...A rebellious Mijangos shot back that he had been nominated by the "people and its authorities," and that "the voice of the people is the voice of God...

...He charged that there was "a direct manipulation of religion to benefit the PRI and the Federal government...

...Although religious passions certainly exist, this is one time they cannot be blamed on meddling by the clerical hierarchy...

...Here you have religious groups operating as tools of government power...

...Heriberto Cruz Vera, one of the deposed parish priests, told a Proceso reporter that his church had been given to the Army and converted into "a barracks and a center of prostitution...

...This past March, Bishops Ruiz and Vera were forced to cancel a mass they had planned in Chanal...

...Angered that Mijangos married a number of coleto couples, Salinas declared the "authentic" Catholics schismatics— canonically in violation of Church discipline...

...The vicar specifically targeted the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which holds the presidency and power in 27 of Mexico's 32 states, including Chiapas...

...If the PRI's Protestant and Catholic clients sometimes get carried away and start shooting at each other...

...In December Peace and Justice prevented Justo Mullor, the papal nuncio, from celebrating mass in El Limar...

...Last month, Mijangos finally got his parish—but the diocese had nothing to do with it...

...Pedro Arias Perez, the PRI Mayor of Chenalhó, named him to take over the parish church of St...

...He accuses Ruiz of carrying on "psychological warfare against priests who don't share his ideas," and observes that when Ruiz came to the diocese in the early '70s, Chiapas was 90 per cent Catholic...

...Speaking for the diocese, Vicar General Felipe Toussaint said Mijangos was acting "100 per cent in violation of ecclesiastical legislation...

...The leader of the self-styled "authentic" Catholics is Father Luis Mijangos Molina, reportedly embittered because he has been a priest for 25 years and Ruiz never gave him a parish...

...Though Guadalajara is now run by the moderate Right-wing National Action Party (PAN), Hermosa Provincial diligent precinct workers, all cult members, managed to bring in a 90 per cent PRI vote in the 1991 Federal elections...

...That was when a band of militant Catholic Indians, retaliating for the Protestant kidnapping earlier the same month of a Catholic mayor, routed 584 evangelical Indian Protestants from their lands...

...But that is not theology, it's politics...

...Miraculously, he survived the 68 stab wounds that were counted on his body...

...He is every bit as hostile to Ruiz' faction as Mijangos...

...Within Hermosa Provincia, an atmosphere of aggressive Puritanism prevails...

...In the long run, their fanaticism, ignorance and mutual antagonism in no way prevent the bigoted evangelicals and Catholics from functioning in the capacity of "useful idiots" for the PRI...

...Throughout Mexican history, most political parties have been too closely wed to ideologies— either religious or secular—for their own good...

...The depth of the division among evangelicals is reflected in the opposition to the Protestants who formed the protective cordon around Ruiz' episcopal residence...

...Accompanying him were four pastors, including Arturo Farela Gutierrez, the national chief executive of CONFRATERNICE, and Esdras Alonso, the organization's head in Chiapas...

...He attempted to donate an evangelical church to an Islamic group so they could turn it into a mosque, but he was prevented from doing so by the church's parishioners...

...Mijangos went there, but solely to secure the release of a priest friend who had "disappeared...

...No official action was taken last year, but the issue dramatically came back to life this past February when Padilla was kidnapped by men wearing uniforms of the Judicial Police, brought to the outskirts of the city, and brutally beaten and stabbed...

...The party's political power games are also at least indirectly responsible for the introduction into Chiapas of Islamic fundamentalism, according to Domingo Lopez Angel...

...Tovilla read passages from the Bible...

...Pastor Abdias Tovilla Jaime heads CODECH...

...Tovilla suggests that the latter's conversion was not a purely spiritual experience...

...They marginalized me because I don't agree with the liberation theology views of the diocese," said Mijangos...

...The first inkling that the situation in the state of Chiapas had a dimension other than the Zapatista struggle for social justice and indigenous rights came in July 1994...

...The two are engaged, it says, in a conspiracy to use "militant sects" in their fight against "liberation theology"—the idea that Catholics should be committed to radical social activism on behalf of the oppressed...

...Stories have surfaced in the press that sect members were defrauded by being denied title to property they had paid for in two subdivisions that are owned by the church...

...Adding that "I don't have to account to the Bishop," he said he would not give "five centavos" of the collections to the diocese but would donate everything to the poor...

...He blessed the houses they built and, in return, the expulsados ("expelled ones") formed a human barrier around the Bishop's residence when it was attacked by coletos sympathetic to a breakaway "traditionalist" Catholic faction...

...When Lopez delivers his proselytizing pep talks, said Tovilla, he continually stresses how rich some Muslim countries are in money and oil...

...Whether its surrogates are Catholic or Protestant, fundamentalist, evangelical or traditionalist, the PRI has always remained firmly riveted in one place—the driver's seat...

...The PRI has avoided this pitfall in both the political and religious arena...

...Yet the sect continues to lead a charmed life...

...Ruiz sympathizes with the goals of the Zapatista movement, but he denies helping to foment their 1994 uprising...

...PAN has a Catholic taint, albeit by no means as strong as in its early days...

...Both Protestants and Catholics are bitterly divided...

...They either handed them over to priests who oppose the diocese, the magazine said, or used them for more profane purposes...

...The fact that a person belonging to one church shoots and kills a person belonging to another church doesn't make it a religious war.' Salinas accused the Mexican government of stirring religious conflict as part of "a counterinsurgency and counterrevolutionary plan to smash the unity of the communities of Chiapas...

...A diocesan statement goes beyond implicating the national government and also points a finger at "the North American intelligence community...

...Launched in 1925, it claims 5 million members and branches in 26 countries, including the United States and several in Europe...

...THE PRI AS PUPPETMASTER Exploiting Religion in Chiapas By Addison De Witt Guadalajara If Northern Ireland presents a case of religious fanaticism dominating politics, Mexico presents one of politics dominating religious fanaticism...

...The pastors wanted to return to San Cristobal before sunset...

...At its core are two groups called the Chiapas Evangelical Defense Committee (CODECH) and the National Confraternity of Christian Evangelical Churches (CONFRATERNICE...

...Behind this confused scenario of violence and obscurantism, the PRI plays the role of puppetmaster with consummate skill...

...Its "Vatican" is the Hermosa Provincia sector in eastern Guadalajara, where it has a huge, ornate temple that was constructed over a 10-year period, beginning in 1982...

...Once, while a prisoner at Cerro Hueco, he threatened to burn himself alive...

...The incredibly complicated politicoreligious mosaic of Chiapas includes such disparate elements as Zapatistas, pro-Ruiz Catholics and Protestants, antiRuiz Catholics and Protestants, coletos (anti-Zapatista, anti-Ruiz ranchers, lumbermen and landowners), paramilitaries of every political and religious shade and—to add an exotic touch—a small but rapidly growing group of Islamic fundamentalists...

...César Mascarenas, an official of the Christian Institute Research Center, is apprehensive about the Islamic converts now operating in Chiapas...

...There is a dark side to ecumenism too...

...Addison de Witt is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist who lives in Mexico...

...Light of the World's denial of responsibility for the incident has been greeted with vast skepticism...

...The diocese had nominated a Jesuit, Pedro Arriaga, for the post...

...Father Mijangos has no authority to perform marriages or baptisms," Salinas says, "He has involved himself in a schismatic process and has placed himself outside the communion of the Church.' Mijangos' response reveals the extent of his alienation from the diocesan leadership...

...Before taking over his father's church, Samuel Joaquin was a youth leader in the PRI's National Confederation of Popular Organizations...