Indians,
Evangelicals, Catholics sign truce in Chiapas
San
Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico (Compass Direct News)
Local
political bosses who had voted to expel
65 Christians from a small town near here grudgingly signed
an agreement to let the evangelicals stay in their homes.
Evangelical
pastor and attorney Esdras Alonso Gonzalez told Compass
the town bosses (caciques) of Los Pozos, 18 miles (29
kilometers) from San Cristobal, showed up here for the
formal signing of the accord armed with demands that put
extra conditions on the terms they verbally agreed to
on February 28.
Alonso
said the proposal of the caciques and other "traditionalist
Catholics," who practice a mixture of indigenous
ritual and Roman Catholicism, called for the Christians
to pay for religious festivals plus fines for refusing
to contribute in the past. The evangelicals' refusal to
help pay for and participate in the festivals, which include
drunken revelry and what they regard as idolatrous adoration
of saints, was the reason the town officials voted to
expel them last Dec. 23.
"The
caciques' attitude was that they wanted the brothers to
sign another document obligating them to contribute funds
for past festivals, and for the next festival, and pay
fines they had supposedly accumulated," Alonso said.
"But the state government did not allow it."
The
signing of the agreement by the caciques and Los Pozos
Catholic leaders, bosses from the municipality of Huistan
(to which the Los Pozos community belongs), evangelicals
and state officials came nine days after traditionalist
Catholics and civil authorities destroyed a Pentecostal
church building in Ollas, a community of nearby San Juan
Chamula municipality, on April 14. "They destroyed
the temple in Chamula, and the government feels very obligated
to maintain calm," Alonso said. "The state government
is very committed now, because it's not in their interest
that the problem expand further. They left it clear that
there would be religious freedom."
It
remains to be seen, he added, whether the Los Pozos town
bosses will follow through on the accord's stipulation
that they restore water lines and electricity cut off
from some evangelical families since January 30.
"The
caciques signed it, but we want them to go ahead now and
fulfill it," he said. "The state government
officials also signed it, we'll see if they honor it.
Now they have to respect this document."
The
agreement also calls for local authorities to restore
firewood-gathering rights and resume distributing federal
food aid and fertilizers they have diverted from the Tzotzil
Maya Christians.
Alonso
said the signing of the accord could prove to be a water-shed
moment in Mexican human rights in that it sets a precedent
for state authority to head off conflicts before they
fester into decades-old, major confrontations. He told
Compass the accord does not seek religious tolerance—which
unduly assumes evangelical faith by nature can only be
tolerated— but rather the constitutional guarantee
of religious freedom.
"In
the agreement," Alonso told Compass, "we're
not asking for anything—we're demanding a right
that the brothers have by law."
Los
Pozos and other town officials throughout Mexico force
evangelicals to help pay for and participate in the traditionalist
Catholic processions and revelry based on a legal argument
drawn from the Mexican constitution's protection of indigenous
"uses and customs."
The
constitutional article is meant to protect indigenous
customs from government obliterations, said Victor Raul
Flota, president of the Chiapas Bar of Christian Attorneys.
"The
native traditionalist Catholics speak of 'uses and customs,'
but in a completely different sense," Flota told
Compass. "It is supposed to refer to their language
not being lost, or that the government not attack their
cultural traditions—the work that they do, the way
they do it. But when these caciques speak of 'uses and
customs,' they're thinking, 'Here it's custom to beat
and fight, to rape and to jail people different from us."
Flota
said the ignorance of local authorities is at the heart
of the small town persecution of Christians.
"I
remember in 2002, because I worked on a human rights commission,
I was surrounded by these political bosses," he said.
"We almost cam to exchanging blows. They're completely
ignorant."
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