Religious intolerance in Oaxaca, the land of Benito Juárez

In case there was any doubt, it was dispelled by the Archbishop of Oaxaca.

Pedro Vásquez Villalobos three days ago, in his Sunday homily, acknowledged that the burning of an evangelical temple in the the Cerro Cajón Ranchería, which belongs to the municipality of San Isidro Arenal, was the work of Catholics who prohibit the religious worship of any other confession than the traditional one professed by them.

The archbishop did not use detours or pseudo-explanations, which happens in similar cases when other high clergymen. His parishioners heard the following: ‘Who burned the temple of the non-Catholics? Catholics. In this century with such attitudes, would God agree? God does not agree. I am very saddened by what has sometimes in our communities, it gives me great pain and I am ashamed.

Admittedly, the incumbent of the diocese of Oaxaca identified the heart of the problem and not only referred to it in his homily, but also circulated the homily. What he said about the issue also appeared in a media report.

The community of Cerro Cajón is Chinantec, under the administration of the San Isidro Arenal agency, which is part of the larger municipality of San Juan Lalana. Since 1993, it has been forbidden to profess a religion other than Roman Catholicism. On 15 June of this year, a community assembly, the ban was endorsed. The decision intensified the hostilities against the evangelical minority. Not only did the vigilante defenders of religious monolithism burn down the church building and the temple and stripped the ‘rebels’ of their property, but they also imprisoned several of them and have them under threat of expulsion.

The heart of the conflict is religious, which also has political and economic ramifications. In traditional communities, the symbiosis of religious office and civilian office takes place. Often both are held by the same people, who make no distinction between the two orders, because everything is mixed up. Consequently, the governing body has the task of enforcing rules pertaining to the religious sphere. In a symbiotic scenario, those who do not comply with religious norms professed by the majority and do not join a public expression of these (as in the case of San Juan Lalana) end up unwillingly seen as challengers of the socio-political organisation of the community.

What do the Oaxacan authorities do in the face of religious intolerance? They explain what has happened, declare that they will investigate the matter, they put pressure on those attacked so that they do not denounce what they have experienced in the media or social networks, they make promises, and ask for patience because soon the laws should be enforced.

It is one thing to address the problem and quite another to solve it, while safeguarding the human rights of the people whose rights have been violated. For his part, the director of Religious Affairs of Oaxaca, Edwin Martínez Espíndola, called representatives of the persecuted for a dialogue in the San Lorenzo public offices, but had to wait five hours for the meeting to begin.

Oaxacan officials are denying Oaxacan evangelicals who have been attacked for having a chosen religious identity that goes against the traditional one, their constitutional rights. These rights have their origin, it should be remembered, in the Law of Freedom of Religion, promulgated by the Oaxacan President of Mexico, Benito Juárez, on 4 December 1860.

I will conclude with what Carlos Monsiváis wrote in October 1989 in the book Los mexicanos de tercera clase. Las demás iglesias, in response to cases similar to that of San Juan Lalana: “At bottom, the old thesis is sometimes disguised: non-majority beliefs are ‘illegitimate’. Anthropologists, sociologists and priests often insist, without further explanation (perhaps because they assume that the matter is so obvious that it does not merit it), on the ‘crime’ or ‘betrayal’ committed by indigenous people who for whatever reason abandon Catholicism. They ‘divide the communities’, it is said, but the logical consequence of the charge is not drawn: so that the communities do not divide, that the renunciation of the Catholic faith be prohibited by law (atheists are begged to pretend)”.

Carlos Martínez García, journalist and sociologist. He is a founder of the Centre of Mexican Protestant Studies (Cenpromex), a network of evangelical researchers studying Protestantism from different perspectives.

This article was originally published in La Jornada de México and translated into English by Evangelical Focus.