wfn.org | Protestants Forced Out of Southern Mexican Village

["Beckett, John" <BeckettJ@gc.adventist.org>]

ANN Bulletin
Adventist News Network
Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters
March 14, 2000
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Protestants Forced Out of Southern Mexican Village
Chiapas, Mexico .... [ANN] 

Twelve Seventh-day Adventist families were among 72 Protestant families
apparently expelled from the village of Plan de Ayala on March 5 by the
community's Roman Catholic majority.  More than 150 residents from several
evangelical denominations were banished by a predominantly indigenous mob
that gathered in the village center wielding machetes and guns, say
eyewitnesses. This incident is the latest in a series of violent conflicts
arising from more than a decade of tension between Roman Catholic and
Protestant Christians in Plan de Ayala.
	
"Fourteen homes were demolished by the mob as the Protestants fled to the
hills for refuge," says Pastor Isaias Espinosa, president of the Adventist
Church in the region. "No one was injured. They had been advised by one of
their pastors that if the situation ever came to what it did, to run, rather
than risk their lives."  The pastor of that district is no longer allowed to
enter the community, Espinosa adds. 

The Plan de Ayala refugees took shelter at the Municipal Palace in the
nearby city of Las Margaritas. Chiapas State security forces have been
dispatched to Plan de Ayala, along with state officials who will attempt to
negotiate a solution allowing the banished families to return to their
homes.  [Nancy Newball Rivera/Bettina Krause] 
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