The Separated BrothersMEXICO CITY, Mexico April 2, 1997

By William F. Foote

The search party spotted buzzards circling over the river bank just north of aZapotec Indian hamlet. Josefa Velazco expected the worst: her brother-in-law, anevangelista like her, had been missing for weeks. As she neared the shore, Josefaremembered how the neighbors had mocked his pious harangues; how childrenhad thrown pebbles at him in the village square. Upon seeing that lifeless bodyhalf buried by the rapids, Josefa fled her birthplace in the mountains of southernMexico, never to return.

Thirty years later, she rents a tumble-down apartment in the peripheral slumsof Mexico City. Recently her daughter, who works as a maid downtown, invitedme to visit their home and meet Josefa. Upon hearing her story, and with an inter-est in Mexico’s Protestant-Catholic conflicts, readied my map and drove south,in search of Josefa’ s past.

Passing Oaxaca City, headed west into the mountains of La Mixteca, Oaxaca’spoorest region. A bruising dirt road climbed ever upward, passing a half-dozenIndian pueblos before reaching San Miguel Peras. Like the others, it was a sorry col-lection of thatch-roofed mud huts with not much else, save a towering blue andwhite Catholic church perched on the high ground in the village’s center.

"The preacher lives up there," said an old man in the main plaza, referring to

Josefa Velazcoposing with her

daughter andgrandchild inMexico City

Zenairo Martinez standing beside a Star ofDavid and the Ten Commandments inside anevangelical temple in San Miguel Peras

Josefa’s first cousin, Zenairo Martinez. Spray-painted ona wall, fresh graffiti read: E.P.R., the Spanish initials for thePeople’s Revolutionary Army. Guerrilla troops had vis-ited town recently. Passing pigs and malnourished dogs,leapt over a creek and followed the footpath up a steep

escarpment. Halfway to the top, a leveled place gave wayto a small, whitewashed adobe building. In sandals anda cowboy hat, Reverend Martinez beckoned me inside hisone-room temple: The Church of God.

"You know Josefa?" said the preacher with surprise.As he sat down on one of the rough-hewn woodenbenches, I asked what had happened since she left."We’ve had our troubles," he replied, "but we survivedand we’re growing."

Martinez’s congregation now has over 70 members.Farmers mostly, the men built the temple and the womencrafted the religious decorations inside: a plywood altarbearing the Ten Commandments in hand-painted, yellowletters; a golden Star of David embroidered on a greenvelvet banner draped from the ceiling.

"We are the Israelites," he continued, kicking off anunsolicited, half-hour Bible lesson. Waving a tatteredcopy of the New Testament, Martinez railed against theChurch of Rome, the local religiousfiestas, the alcohol con-sumption. Calling the Catholic saints mere wooden fig-ures, he declared idolatry an abomination and explained:"We live by the Scriptures, with moral vigor and probity.The Catholics--who don’tmcall us the separatedbrothers."

San Miguel Peras is hardly unique. For nearly three

decades, Mexico’s religious landscape has been undergo-ing a change marked by the emergence of non-Catholicminorities, particularly evangelical Protestants and Pen-tecostals. From mega-cities to minuscule villages, a clashof culture and credence has eroded social stability anddivided communities. The fallout of this spiritual struggleis most evident in rural hamlets like San Miguel Peras,where customs based on Catholic and semi-pagan beliefsform an essential part of an entire vision of life.

That vision is blurring with the pace of change. In1930, 98 percent of Mexicans called themselves Catholic.By 1990, fewer than 90 percent did. Over the past 20years, as Mexico’s population grewby 40 percent and thenumber of Catholics increased by only 30 percent, thepool of Protestants expanded by 174 percent. TodayMexico has between four and five million converts. Astheir ranks have swelled, evangelicals have spread fromtheir traditional strongholds in northern and central cit-ies toward Mexico’s rural Southeast, which now accountsfor 22.5 percent of membership in the country. In the stateof Oaxaca, estimates of the number of Protestants rangefrom 7 to 30 percent of the population.

Protestants are hardly newcomers to Mexico. Theyfirst arrived here during the mid-19th Century. Only thesewere neither SeventhDay Adventists nor Jehovah’s Wit-nesses, but rather members of conservative Protestantchurches: Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian.From the 1850s onward, these largely U.S.-based churchesexpanded southward by capitalizing on an historic riftbetween the Mexican state and the Catholic church.

Since Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821,

1. El Financiero, 3 /4/962. Enrique Marroquin Z., Persecuci6n Religiosa en Oaxaca?, Instituto Oaxaquefio de las Culturas (1995), p.9.3. Ibid., p.10

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The Church oJ: God

relations between politicians and priests have been am-biguous and filled with rancor. Benito Juarez, Mexico’sgreat liberal reformer of the last century, believed thecountry should turn its back on Catholic traditions andbuild a new nation modeled after the United States. Aspresident in the 1860s, the Indian lawyer from Oaxaca setan enduring precedent by attacking the powerful Catho-lic church: nationalizing its property, closing monasteriesand convents, suppressing religious festivals. After the1910 revolution, a new constitution included harshreligious prohibitions, like forbidding priests fromdonning robes in public and barring the Church fromowning land.

All this benefited the Protestants, whom Mexicanstatesmen came to see as useful counterweights toCatholicism. For example, in the 1930s, leftist Presi-dent Lzaro Crdenas believed that Protestant min-isters might help break the Catholic barriers tomodernizing the Indians. As a welcoming gesture,the same man who nationalized Mexico’s oil indus-try invited the Summer Institute of Linguistics, abranch of the U.S.-based Wycliffe Bible Translators(WBT), to establish operations in Mexico. For thenext half century, WBT translated the Bible andreligious music into indigenous languages, under-took social assistance programs and convertedthousands.

Conservative Protestant churches, however, soonfell on hard times. By the early 1980s, in Mexico andacross Latin America, the face of Protestantism hadbeen completely transformed by its more fanaticalexpression. Starting in the 1960s, evangelical funda-

mentalists began steadily pushing aside their moreconservative cousins, who currently comprise lessthan a fifth of Protestant membership in LatinAmerica. In the case of Mexico, the Methodist, Pres-byterian and Baptist churches now have about100,000 members each, or less than ten percent of thetotal number of Protestants in the country.

What explains this spread of evangelicalism? In thecase of poor states like Oaxaca, the role of migration to theU.S. cannot be underestimated. Imagine a farmer fromSan Miguel Peras who migrates to America. Leaving be-hind his close-knit indigenous community, he typicallyfeels homesick and depressed in the North. Seeking sub-stitutes for the emotional stability left behind, he is oftenwilling to accept what he might otherwise reject backhome. Filled with lonely, needy people, his camp of mi-grant workers offers prime recruiting grounds for U.S.evangelical churches.

Efrain Gaspar, whom met on the mountain pass toSan Miguel Peras, is a case in point. In the late 1980s, theOaxacan corn grower spent several seasons planting pinetrees in the forests of Oregon state, along with dozens ofother Mexicans. Sunday was their only day off, a day thatGaspar, ironically, disliked. "With time to think," he said,resting in my passenger seat, "I got homesick."

For fun, he and his companions attended activitiesorganizedby an evangelical church. In addition to arrang-ing soccer games, the evangelistas donated food, second-hand clothing and basic medical supplies to the migrantworkers. Meanwhile, religious services were held undertents near the dormitories. While Mr. Gaspar remains a

4. Over the years, these activities drew increasing criticism from Mexican intellectual circles. In 1983, the Summer Institute ofLinguistics was evicted from Mexico on grounds of "ethnocide and cultural expropriationS" as stated in one document of theNational Indigenous Institute. Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors, (Vintage Books), 1984, pp.205-6.

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Recruiting in San Miguel Peras recently, thePeople’s Revolutionary Army spray-painted their

initials on houses, stores, and electric posts.practicing Catholic, he admits to having liked the mis-sionaries, who managed to convert many of his friends."Everyone appreciated their help," he said. "The evange-lists were nice to us."

Rub6n Borguete, director of the Baptist TheologicalSeminary in Oaxaca City, explained the success of hischurch’s faith missions in migrant communities. In theearly 1990s, he preached among the fruit and vegetablepickers of the northern state of Sinaloa. Many had comenorth from states like Oaxaca and Chiapas. Borguete re-called how on Saturday nights, his church would showmotion pictures free of charge about the life of JesusChrist. The Baptists also helped finance water and electri-fication projects and set up medical clinics in makeshiftneighborhoods. "By lending them a hanG" said Borguete,"we were delivering God’s message."

Not that everyone listens. Mr. Gaspar, for instance, re-fused to attend church in Oregon. In fact, he had harshwords to say about the spread of evangelical fundamen-talism back home. "It’s terrible," said the 46-year-oldman. "Long before I went North, the evangelistas had beencomitg here from America to divide us."

His statements reflect a popular, if not necessarily ac-curate, view of the evangelist invasion, as Mr. Gasparcalled it. Conspiracy theories are fashionable amongMexicans who demand simple explanations for the pro-

liferation of non-Catholic minorities in their country.These people often subscribe to the xenophobic conten-tion that evangelical crusades form part of a deliberatestrategy of the Imperialist North to destroy Mexicanculture.

One such person, a shopkeeper I met in Oaxaca City,rattled off historical evidence to back his position. JuanRamirez, who had clearly pondered the issue before, ex-plained how the crusades of evangelical preacher BillyGraham, conducted inside the U.S. following World WarII, were virtually recreated south of the border. U.S. con-verts, hell-bent on extending their Bible Belt southward,financed saturation marketing campaigns to proselytizeacross Latin America. Through radio and TV shows, reli-gious pamphlets, telethons, street interviews and housecalls, they managed to brainwash millions of Mexicans,said Ramirez.

Beyond their crusades, evangelists in LatinAmerica have drawn fierce criticism for their ultra-conservative politics. Since the 1960s, there has beena holy alliance between American-based churchesand the Latin American right. Perhaps it was the in-fluence of Rev. Graham’s Cold War-era crusades,which mixed the biblical message with anti-Communistrhetoric. Or maybe the "faith missions" allied themselveswith local dictators in a machiavellian ploy to ensure thesystematic growth of their organizations. Whatever themotive, as historian Jean-Pierre Bastian writes, "the evan-

Rben Borguete, head of the Baptist TheologicalSerninay in Oaxaca, poses beside a photo of his

church’s first U.S. rnissiona to Mexico.

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Sandinista guerrilla turned evangelical preache;Mario Ayala Olivares stands outside the Church of

Christ in downtown Oaxaca City.

gelical churches grew rapidly with the support,whether implicit or explicit, of the military."s

Ironically, the rise of non-Catholic minorities in LatinAmerica coincided with the adoption by a progressivewing of the Catholic church of a critical position towardthe region’s military regimes. In the 1970s and ’80s, so-called liberation theologians advocated taking concreteaction to correct social injustices, like defending humanrights in Central America. Who can forget the images ofCatholic nuns fighting alongside Sandinista forces totopple the dictator Anastasio Somoza; the memory ofpriests joining the revolutionary cabinet ofDaniel Ortega;the struggle of Archbishop Oscar Romero in favor of E1Salvador’s downtrodden and his subsequent assassina-tion at the hands of right-wing death squads?

By contrast, recent memory also recalls the statue of anevangelical preacher erected in 1982 in downtownSantiago, Chile, to symbolize good relations betweenPinochet’s armed forces and the evangelists. In Guate-mala, Rios Montt, a bloodthirsty dictator (1982-83), was amember of Gospel Outreach of California and hosted hisown evangelical TV show. In general, Latin Americanmen-of-arms identified with the evangelists’ message,

which condemns collective revolutionary activity, advo-cating instead the spiritual revolution of the individual.

There were, to be fair, exceptions to the rule. In CentralAmerica, some Protestant churchmen did denounce armyatrocities, and often paid for their courage with their lives.In Oaxaca, I even met a former communist guerrillaturned evangelical preacher. Mario Ayala Olivares, Nica-raguan by birth, spent his late teens as a bomb-slingingSandinista. In 1982, still a committed atheist, he fell in lovewith a Protestant woman in Managua who eventuallyconverted him. After three years of Bible study in Hondu-ras, and seven years of preaching in Mexico Cit he nowheads the Church of Christ in downtown Oaxaca City.When heard that a parent congregation in Golding,Colorado, pays for his salary and housing, I asked the rev-erend about the Protestant-imperialism theory.

"What you say is true," he replied. "Many Mexicansdo criticize our religion for being a U.S. import; but howeasily they forget the way the Spanish imported theircrushing brand of Catholicism."

This is true Catholicism came by the sword, yet thepeaceful introduction of Protestantism belies its conflic-tive role in recent Mexican history. As we have seen, evan-gelical fundamentalism, once a curiosity for Catholics,quickly became a threat, spurring religious conflict. InOaxaca alone, 254 of these were recorded between 1986and 1992. Whether it takes the form of subtle discrimina-tion, ostracism, expulsion or murder, religious persecu-tion is on the rise in a growing number of communitiesacross Mexico.

Take the town of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas. By theearly 1970s, a third of the population of approximately30,000 had converted to Protestant religions. As usual,they rejected local custom, boycotted religiousfiestas, ab-stained from alcohol consumption. In 1974, the convertsorganized politically, presenting candidates in the localelections. In response, municipal officials, with the al-leged blessing of Catholic authorities, forcibly expelledthe religious dissidents from their homes and land. Ac-cused of "destroying ethnic identity and solidarity," theProtestant refugees relocated to San Cristobal de lasCasas, the county seat, and founded new neighborhoodswith names borrowed from the Bible.

What motivates this persecution? Some point toCatholic frustration over an inability to disprove the Prot-estant claim that the Catholic faith is based more on cus-tom than credence. Nowhere, preach the evangelistas, doesthe Bible sanction things like financial excesses forJ:iestas,or drunkenness on religious holidays, or the self-inflictionof bloody wounds during pilgrimages to the Virgin ofGuadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint; yet these are consid-

5. Jean-Pierre Bastian, Protestantisrnos y modernidad Latinoarnericana, (Fondo de Cultura Econ6rnica), 1994, p. 243.6. Enrique Marroquin Z., Persecuci6on Religiosa en Oaxaca?, Instituto Oaxaquefio de las Culturas (1995), pp. 257. Jean-Pierre Bastian, Protestantismos y rnodernidad Latinoarnericana, (Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica), 1994, pp. 245-6.

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ered as Mexican as sombreros or tortillas. They are, in fact,central to what has become known as folk Catholicism, aform of spirituality that reflects Mexico’s mestizo (mixed-race) tradition. Embodying an Indian legacy of religiousfanaticism and violence, it has long been tolerated by theChurch of Rome under the umbrella of ecumenism.

But doctrinal differences are only part of the story. Spe-cifi beliefs aside, the evangelists, with their chosen life ofmoral rectitude, behave in ways that seriously threatenthe economic and political status quo in Mexico, especiallyin rural communities. This defiance of established normsranges from obvious cases, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses’refusal to honor the Mexican flag, to less conspicuousways of challenging time-honored tradition.

For instance, some academics thank Protestantism forfreeing poor people from paying the hidden costs of Ca-tholicism. To discern some of these, Rev. Ayala and vis-ited a cathedral close to Oaxaca City. Bolted to tablesbeside velvet-clad saint figures, tin donation boxes werebrimming with pesos. "These offerings are supposed toinspire the icons to make miracles happen," said Ayala."The more you pay, the better your chances." Arranged

Holding the New Testament, Rev. Martinezpreaches religious tolerance in San Miguel Peras.

8. Ibid., p.255

Votive candles flickering before a Catholic saintfigure inside a cathedral in Oaxaca.

around the boxes, votive candles flickered light onto thecanonized, whose devotees must keep their flames lityear round at a cost of two pesos per candle, or 30 pesosper month, since the candles burn out in 48 hours.

Add to that the cost of Catholic fiestas. Once upon atime, when class differentiation between rural villagerswas negligible, religious feasts served to redistribute sur-plus wealth. Each person contributed his or her fair shareand reaped relatively equal rewards. Over time, however,things changed as subsistence farmers became wage la-borers and entered the money economy. With growingincome disparities in the countryside, local strongmen, orcaciques, began misappropriating festival funds for theirown benefit. Within this context, the evangelist boycott offiestas can be interpreted, writes one academic, "as a sym-bolic power struggle...waged by Mexico’s disenfran-chised rural workers through their conversion toPentecostal or Protestant religions."

By the same token, the proscription of alcohol con-

6 WF-18

sumption on religious grounds may have less to do withAnglo-Saxon Puritanism than a desire to break the liquormonopoly controlled by local caciques. As for the famoustequio, which refers to the obligatory communal labor stillexpected of many rural villagers in Mexico, Protestantsrefuse to participate in these community projects on Sat-urdays. Is this because, as evangelists claim, Saturday istheir Sabbath? Or, have the converts merely found a goodexcuse to deny caciques the opportunity to misappropri-ate their free labor? Whichever the case, by resisting localmonopolies--the sale of alcohol and votive candles, thefinancing of Catholic feasts, the allocation of voluntarylabor--evangelistas have helped undermine the authorityof Mexico’s local elite.

But not all are Christian combatants. "We try hard toavoid trouble," says Rev. Martinez, exiting his hillside

church in San Miguel Peras. Since Josefa Velazco lefttown thirty years ago, the Protestants seem to havereached a modus vivendi with their Catholic neighbors.While an exceptional case perhaps, this village offers hopethat religious tolerance may one day conquer Mexico’sspiritual conflicts.

That doesn’t mean the evangelistas will attend Easterfeasts, but they nevertheless agree to play their part. Thelocal authorities, on the other hand, schedule tequios onlyon Sundays.

"We have to be pragmatic," reasons Martinez. Stand-ing outside the Church of God, he gazed down at the blueand white cathedral towering far below in the village’scenter. "We’re separated," adds the preacher, "but we’restill brothers." GI

Institute of Current World Affairs 7

Institute of Current World AffairsFOUR WEST WHEELOCK STREETHANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03755

ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED

Institute : :Fellows ::and theirAdam Smith Albion.Aformer research as-sociate at the Institute for EastWest Stud-ies at Prague in the Czech Republic, Adamis spending two years studying and writingabout Turkey and Central Asia, and theirimportance as actors the Middle East andthe former Soviet bloc A Harvard graduate(1988; History), Adam has completed thefirst year of a two-year M Litt Degree inRussian/East European history and lan-guages at Oxford University [EUROPE/RUSSIA]

Christopher P. Ball An economist, ChrisBall holds a B.A from the University of Ala-bama in Huntsville and attended the 1992International Summer School at the Lon-don School of Economics He studied Hun-garian for two years in Budapest whileserving as Project Director for the Hungar-ian Atlantic Council. As an Institute Fellow,he is studying and writing about Hungarianminorities in the former Soviet-bloc nationsof East and Central Europe [EUROPE/RUSSIA]

William F. Foote Formerly a financialanalyst with Lehman Brothers’ EmergingMarkets Group, Willy Foote is examiningthe economic substructure of Mexico andthe impact of free-market reforms onMexico’s people, society and politics. Willyholds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale Uni-versity (history), a Master’s from the Lon-don School of Economics (Development

Economics; Latin America) and studiedBasque history in San Sebastian, SpainHe carried out intensive Spanish-lan-guage studies in Guatemala in 1990 andthen worked as a copy editor and Reporterfor the Buenos Aires Herald from 1990 to1992. [THE AMERICAS]

John Harris A would-be lawyer with anundergraduate degree in History fromthe University of Chicago, John revertedto international studies after a year ofinternship in the product-liability depart-ment of a Chicago law firm and took twoyears of postgraduate Russian at theUniversity of Washington in SeattleBased in Moscow during his fellowship,John is studying and writing aboutRussia’s nascent political parties asthey begin the difficult transition fromidentities based on the personalities oftheir leaders to positions based on na-tional and international issues[EUROPE/RUSSIA]

Pramila Jayapal Born in India, Pramila leftwhen she was four and went through pri-mary and secondary education in Indone-sia. She graduated from GeorgetownUniversity in 1986 and won an M.B A. fromthe Kellogg School of Management in Evan-ston, Illinois in 1990. She has worked as acorporate analyst for PaineWebber, an ac-counts manager for the world’s leading pro-ducer of cardiac defibrillators and manager

of a $7 million developing-country revolv-ing-loan fund for the Program for Appropri-ate Technology in Health (PATH) in Seattle.Pramila is tracing her roots in India, andstudying social issues involving religion, thestatus of women, population and AIDS[SOUTH ASIA]

Marc Michaelson A program manager forSave the Children in The Gambia, Marc hasmoved across Africa to the Horn, there toassess nation-building in Eritrea and Ethio-pia, and (conditions permitting) availing andunavailing humanitarian efforts in northernSomalia and southern Sudan With a B.A inpolitical science from Tufts, a year of non-de-gree study at the London School of Eco-nomics and a Master’s in InternationalPeace Studies from Notre Dame, he de-scribes his postgraduate years as "sevenyears’ experience in international develop-ment programming and peace research"[sub-SAHARA]

Randi Movich. The current John MillerMusser Memorial Forest & Society Fellow,Randi is spending two years in Guinea, WestAfrica, studying and writing about the waysin which indigenous women use forestresources for reproductive health With a B.A.in biology from the University of California atSanta Cruz and a Master of Science degreein Forest Resources from the University ofIdaho, Randi is building on two years’experience as a Peace Corps agroforestry

extension agent in the same region of Guineawhere she will be living as a Fellow with herhusband, Jeff Fields also the holder of anIdaho Master’s in Forest Resources. [sub-SAHARA]

John B. Robinson. A 1991 Harvard gradu-ate with a certificate of proficiency from theInstitute of KiSwahili in Zanzibar, John spenttwo years as an English teacher in Tanza-nia He received a Master’s degree in Cre-ative Writing from Brown University in 1995He and his wife Delphine, a French ocean-ographer, are spending two years in Mada-gascar with their two young sons, Nicolasand Rowland, where he will be writing aboutvaried aspects of the island-nation’sstruggle to survive industrial and natural-resource exploitation and the effects of arapidly swelling population [sub-SAHARA]

Teresa C. Yates. A former member of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union’s nationaltask force on the workplace, Teresa isspending two years in South Africa observ-ing and reporting on the efforts of the Man-dela government to reform the nationalland-tenure system AVassar graduate witha juris doctor from the University of Cincin-nati College of Law, Teresa had an intern-ship at the Centre for Applied Legal Studiesin Johannesburg in 1991 and 1992, study-ing the feasibility of including social andeconomic rights in the new South Africanconstitution [sub-SAHARA]

Chosen on the basis of character, previous experience and promise, Institute Fellows are young professionals funded to spend aminimum of two years carrying out self-designed programs of study and writing outside the United States. The Fellows are required to

report their findings and experiences from the field once a month. They can write on any subject, as formally or informally as theywish. The result is a unique form of reporting, analysis and periodic assessment of international events and issues.

Author: Foote, William F.Title: ICWA Letters The AmericasISSN: 1083-4303

Imprint: Institute of Current World Affairs,Hanover, NH

Material Type: SerialLanguage: EnglishFrequency: Monthly

Other Regions: EastAsia; Mideast/NorthAfrica;Europe/Russia; South Asia;SubSaharan Africa

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