Terrible Violence Towards Tribal Believers In Southern Mexico

Some disturbing events from late 2010, all from Mexico in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca:

* Pastor Armando Lopes is waylaid and killed as he travels back to his village after a doctor’s appointment in Comitan, Chiapas.
* Three pastors are killed in Santa Maria El Tule, Oaxaca.
* Four families of believers are expelled from the village of Chilil, Chiapas.
* The church in Llanos, Chiapas, was destroyed last June, and believers put on notice. This month, six homes are destroyed and the families expelled from the community.
* In Mitziton, Chiapas, the church and many homes are destroyed and fifty families are expelled from the community.
* In Nachug, Chiapas, 86 families are expelled.
* At the end of 2010, 498 Indian believers were living as street people, homeless in the city of San Cristobal, where they had sought protection.

“Almost all of this persecution is the result of the conflict which develops when new believers decide they can no longer go along with the rest of the villagers in their practice of drunken fiestas to saints housed in the untended Catholic church, but which have really come to represent ancient pagan gods,” he said. “The responsibility for funding the fiestas are passed around to families in the community, and the conflict begins when an evangelical family is supposed to buy the liquor but refuses to do so.

“Pray for these ‘suffering saints’, many of them very new believers! Some will eventually establish new villages and gradually build their homes again, usually after first building a new church. But the days ahead will be very hard."

Dr. Dale W. Kietzman, founder of Latin American Indian Ministries (www.laim.org), reported in Terrible Violence Towards Tribal Believers In Southern Mexico, International Press Association


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