Right activists, landowners vie for pope's attention

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 29, 1999

FROM WIRE SERVICES Mexico City

Six church-related groups wrote Pope John Paul II just before his visit to Mexico about the "especially delicate" human rights situation in the country.

In a five-page letter dated Jan. 18, the groups said poverty was the main obstacle to fully guaranteeing the exercise of human rights by millions of Mexicans. The letter was signed by representatives of Jesuit and Dominican national human rights offices and four diocesan human rights centers in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero.

In another letter dated Jan. 20, a group of wealthy and conservative landowners asked the pope to remove activist Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who has sided with the poor in their battle for rights.

Large parts of the three states in which the human rights activists work, all in southern Mexico, are heavily militarized in the wake of peasant uprisings in the past five years.

During his Jan. 22-26 visit to Mexico, Pope John Paul was scheduled to release an apostolic exhortation, the final document resulting from the Synod of Bishops for America held in Rome in 1997.

In an interview published Jan. 17 in the weekly newsmagazine Proceso, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara said that in Mexico the pope could not avoid speaking on economic justice, the foreign debt and indigenous rights.

However, the government official responsible for relations with religious groups, Guillermo Jimenez Morales, subsecretary for religious affairs, said Jan. 18 the papal visit was not just to Mexico but to the Americas and would not deal with "internal questions."

Human rights groups say that in the state of Chiapas there is one soldier for every 12 civilians in the municipality of Chenalho, site of a peasant massacre in 1997. Armed civilian groups known as paramilitaries are active in Chiapas communities that support Mexico's ruling party. The San Cristobal diocese and Amnesty International say the paramilitaries are armed and supported by federal and state governments, the army and the state police.

"It's obvious that Chiapas has taken on not only a national, but also an international dimension," said Auxiliary Bishop Abelardo Alvarado Alcantara of Mexico City, secretary general of the Mexican bishops' conference. "Even if [Pope John Paul] doesn't mention it by name, it will be implicit."

The group of wealthy landowners from Chiapas released their public letter two days before the pontiff was scheduled to arrive in Mexico City. The landowners accused Ruiz of supporting leftist guerrillas, especially the Zapatista movement.

Ruiz "has falsified Catholic doctrine in favor of a Marxist socialist revolution," the letter said.

The letter was delivered to the Vatican's representative in Mexico City. It asked John Paul to replace Ruiz with "a pastor who teaches the authentic Catholic doctrine."

Ruiz has repeatedly denied his work among the Indians is politically motivated.