From the US State Department's website on religious freedoms 2006 The Federal Government generally respects religious freedom in practice; however, poor enforcement mechanisms allowed local authorities in Chiapas and several other states to discriminate against persons based on their religious beliefs. Federal and local governments often failed to punish those responsible for acts of religiously motivated violence.
In parts of Chiapas, leaders of indigenous communities sometimes regarded evangelical groups and Catholic lay catechists as unwelcome outside influences and as potential economic and political threats. As a result, these leaders sometimes acquiesced in or ordered the harassment or expulsion of individuals belonging chiefly to Protestant evangelical groups. The DAR estimated that 15 percent of reported religious conflicts--115 since the beginning of the Fox administration in 2000--were abuses by local authorities. Often these authorities were unpaid officials of small, rural municipalities.
Religious differences frequently were the cited feature of such incidents; however, the disputes frequently involved several underlying factors, including ethnic differences, land disputes, and struggles over local political and economic power. In past years, expulsions involved burning of homes and crops, beatings, and, occasionally, killings. During the period covered by this report, there were no known deaths in incidents that had a religious dimension. These incidents usually occurred in predominantly Catholic-Mayan communities, and they mostly involved Catholics harassing or abusing evangelicals or other Protestants.
On several occasions, village officials imposed sanctions on evangelicals for resisting participation in community festivals or refusing to work on Saturdays. The Chiapas-based Evangelical Commission for the Defense of Human Rights (CEDEH) claimed that municipal authorities have expelled 30,000 persons from their communities in the last thirty years. Some of these persons were displaced at least partly on religious grounds.
A representative from the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reported that there were no official statistics on the displaced. However, the Diagnostic on Human Rights in Mexico, published in 2003 by the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited religious conflict as one of the principal reasons for internal displacement in Chiapas.
In August 2005 members of the Huichol ethnic group belonging to the Seventh‑day Adventist, Baptist, and Apostolic Churches were driven from their homes in the community of Agua Fria, Mezquitic Municipality, Jalisco. Village leaders charged that evangelicals did not follow community by-laws, which require partaking in native religious practices, including the use of liquor and peyote. Most Huichol practiced these native customs alongside Catholicism. According to press reports, at least 120 persons fled their homes and sought refuge in the neighboring state of Nayarit.
According to the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, many of those who fled settled in Nayarit permanently, while others intended to return to their village in Jalisco. Local authorities in Jalisco denied charges of religious intolerance and referred to the conflict as a land dispute. In October 2005 an estimated forty families (approximately 150 persons) were threatened with expulsion from the village of San Nicolas, Ixmiquilpan Municipality, in the state of Hidalgo, allegedly for defying the "customs of th[e] town." According to press reports, during an August 28 town assembly it was decided not to permit evangelicals in the town.
In November the governor of Hidalgo and officials from the Secretariat of Government met with representatives of the evangelical families and publicly reassured them of their safety and right to remain. Although a formal resolution had not been reached by the end of the period covered by this report, tension in the community had decreased, and newly elected local officials were reportedly more accommodating of religious differences. While a dispute concerning official permission for the construction of an evangelical church had not been resolved, construction materials were reportedly located at the building site.
According to a Chiapas newspaper, Cuarto Poder, in November 2005 an evangelical leader in Santa Rita, La Trinitaria Municipality, denounced a series of attacks on local evangelicals, including assaults, vandalism, and land seizures. A representative of Jehovah's Witnesses reported that one of its members in Santa Rita had been incarcerated on several occasions for not participating in Catholic feast days. Local authorities seized his farmland, distributed it to other villagers, and threatened to evict him from the community.
The State Directorate for Religious Affairs in Chiapas, however, categorized this situation as a land dispute, and legal proceedings were underway to resolve the problem. By the end of the period covered by this report, the Tojolabal Christian families who fled their homes in 2004 after being attacked by a mob including local officials linked to the Democratic Revolution Party had not returned. The families joined approximately 300 to 400 Tojolabal Christians expelled from their farms in Las Margaritas Township in the previous ten months.
Reading the above it appears that corrupt officials and their cronies are using the excuse of religion to unlawfully seize land and redistribute it as they wish.
Nowhere in the article does it say that these abuses of human and property rights are sanctioned by the Church. This region has been torn by conflict between Government and rebel forces which no doubt increased the divide between the residents.
It is also interesting to note that those who expelled Protestants claim to have done so in accordance with town law. It is not religion that they use to defend themselves but the secular law. No doubt they see religious festivals as a cash cow and resent the loss to the town's coffers when not everyone participates. But again no where is this sanctioned or approved by the Church.
The non Catholics in Mexico should have complete freedom to worship as they please. Without fearing physical abuse or loss of property.
One of the things not mentioned in most of the articles is that Chiapas, of course, was the main center of “Comandante Marcos” and his roving guerrilla band. The place is extremely left-wing, and the Catholic bishop at the time was very lefty himself and did nothing to improve Catholic religious practice, encourage the Catholic faith, or work on the real problems of the people of the area. He was too busy sucking up to Comandante Marcos.
However, he was removed and replaced a couple of years ago, so there is a new bishop working on things and I’m sure changes are taking place.
It’s complicated, because in addition to its Catholics, its Evangelicals, its practicers of santería-type syncretist cults, and its raving Marxists, Chaipas has a heavy Islamic influence. There has been a wave of conversions by Evangelicals to Islam, and the Muslims, working through an Islamic organization headed by a Spanish Muslim convert, have been working among the disaffected Protestants of the area. Just recently, in fact, the Mexican government expelled some of the Muslim recruiters, because there was some indication that they were tied in with foreign Islamist powers. And of course the Muslims and the left are hand in glove.
It’s an area to watch, certainly, and it’s very hard to figure out what’s going on there.