Part Three
One man’s response to religious intolerance
“When there is greater (religious) liberty,
then God can send us to another place,” states pastor and lawyer Abdías
Tovilla Jaime. He is director, legal consultant and founder of CEDECH, the
State Committee of Chiapas for Evangelical Defense, located in the city
of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico. In the meantime, 47-year-old
Tovilla, a native of Chiapas, continues to handle the “matters of expulsions
and religious intolerance,” as his business card says.
On the day that I met with Tovilla, he had just returned from a meeting
with the new governor of Chiapas, Roberto Albores Guillén. This fact
in itself demonstrates that CEDECH is a recognized participant in the process
to secure reconciliation and peace in the state. During this meeting, Tovilla
says, they talked about problems of persecution from the previous year,
including the expulsions from Saltillo; the thirty children from San Juan
Chamula who have been barred from attending school since 1993; and the widows
of recent murder victims. “The government feels it is better if the
church intervenes to unite the various factions and work toward reconciliation,”
Tovilla explains. Toward that end, CEDECH helped sponsor the “Third
Ecumenical Encounter For the Reconciliation of Chiapas” at the end
of February in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Tovilla asked Albores
Guillén to send a representative. The purpose of this event, according
to Tracey King, a short-term missionary serving in the CEDECH office, was
to permit dialogue “between the evangelicals and Catholics of Chenalhó
(i.e., location of the massacre in Acteal on December 22, 1997).” Tovilla
was one of the event’s coordinators. However, “as far as government
representation, there was none,” states King.
Tovilla began this ministry as a volunteer in 1981, in response to the needs
of persecuted believers. “Christian brothers arrived (in San Cristóbal)
who’d been beaten,” he recalls. “They’d say, ‘Pastor,
help us;’ so I had to do something, even though how to defend human
rights was not something I learned in seminary.” In 1992, the National
Presbyterian Church of Mexico made CEDECH one of its official ministries,
with the slogan “For an integral, Christian liberty” (“Por
una libertad cristiana integral”).
Consequently, there are four primary “roles” that CEDECH performs.
First of all, it fulfills a legal function. For example, when massive expulsions
occur (see Part 2 of this series), the initial task is to evaluate the case.
Of course, if the expelled believers arrive beaten and injured, they are
first given medical attention. (As a matter of fact, one of our objectives
in traveling to Chiapas was to deliver a large box of medicines.) Next,
the formal accusation is presented to the appropriate authorities because
in nearly all cases, constitutional rights have been violated.
For instance, after Christians are expelled, they can only “return
to their communities with many limitations; they cannot preach, sing, or
even listen to evangelical music, or have meetings,” Tovilla says.
“These are the conditions the caciques present, wanting them to continue
to participate in their pagan rituals. But this is a violation of their
constitutional rights.”
Carlos Martínez García, a Christian columnist for the newspaper
Uno Más Uno, asks: “Are perhaps the indigenous people prohibited
constitutionally from the right to freedom of conscience? Should this right
only be valid in the non-indigenous society? To maintain cultural unity,
is it necessary to expel those who elect diversity? Is it so difficult to
accept that there is more than one way to be indigenous?”
Second, CEDECH serves a pastoral and spiritual function. Many of the believers
who have been beaten, jailed and expelled from their land are new converts,
“just beginning to read the Bible,” as Tovilla says. So he helps
them cope with these experiences that leave many traumatized. “Some
have been tied to trees while their wives and daughters are raped in front
of them. Children see their houses burned. Pregnant women have been forced
to stay in a vacant school for three or four days without food because there
was no more room in the jail.”
Salvador Lopez assists with this aspect of the ministry. Lopez is the treasurer
of Agape Network (“La Red Agape”), which is a network of leaders
from various denominations. He also is the pastor of a large evangelical
church called The Divine Savior, located in Nueva Esperanza, a community
of expelled believers on the outskirts of San Cristóbal. So Lopez
helps coordinate relief efforts in the community. Aid is distributed—sometimes
simply in the form of cornmeal for tortillas—that arrives not only
from other areas of Mexico, but also from other countries.
Third, CEDECH performs an educational role. As the size of the congregation
at The Divine Savior continues to swell, the church has spawned many daughter
churches, which have been constructed nearby. Therefore, the upper floor
of this church houses an interdenominational seminary that is part of the
Agape Network. It was designed to help meet the leadership needs in all
of these new churches, as well as in the outlying areas where the evangelicals
have not been expelled. The seminary, of which Tovilla serves as director,
consists of two small dormitories, a kitchen, and two large classrooms.
They receive donated books. Since 1997, approximately 30 students have been
coming from different ethnic groups and languages in southern Mexico.
In addition, CEDECH tries to meet the need for Bible courses in the indigenous
languages. On the streets of San Cristóbal, the natives speak Tzotzil,
not Spanish. So two part-time workers at the CEDECH office, Armando and
Sebastian, are translating courses from Spanish into Tzotzil.
Finally, CEDECH fulfills a social and political function. Tovilla says:
“We are not against the development of many different social groups
to defend the rights of the indigenous peoples. The National Presbyterian
Church supports this. What we do not support are the social groups that
divide the communities due to political ideologies, which results in conflicts
and bloodshed.” He points out that this was the cause behind the massacre
in Acteal. “It was not an issue related to religious intolerance or
expulsions, but purely political. The indigenous peoples are becoming ‘politicized,’”
he says.
Furthermore, CEDECH assists in the economic development of the region. It
provides agricultural orientation, and also helps with the sale of native
crafts. Tovilla says he is looking for contacts outside of the immediate
region in order to broaden the market for these items. CEDECH also is able
to receive financial aid for needy families, as well as donations for scholarships
at the seminary. The annual cost to sponsor a student is $850, for which
contributions may be given either fully or partially.
Unfortunately, the persecution against evangelicals in Chiapas has been
largely overshadowed by the Zapatista militant uprising. In fact, Emiliano
Zapata, for which the militant group is named, was such a popular, Mexican
folk-hero that his portrait appears on the ten-peso bill. However, the national
policy of overlooking or ignoring the situation in Chiapas has proven to
be a “costly” omission, says Tovilla.
After 17 years of responding to adversity and deprivation of religious liberty,
Tovilla asks: “When will there be freedom to read the Bible? When will
there be even a small evangelical church in Chamula?” His question,
in part, is already being answered. One sign of hope and potential tolerance
is the fact that the first Protestant church is under construction in the
municipality of San Juan Chamula. Located in the village of Arbenza I, the
project is currently suspended due to lack of funds. Yet CEDECH reports:
“This is an incredible milestone for the evangelicals and one that
no one imagined possible even a few years ago.”
- end -
Copyright © 1998, by Lee Cuesta