Archdiocese, Officials Critical : Protestants’ Activities in Tijuana Come Under Fire

A curious struggle over the hearts and souls of the poor is being waged in this sprawling Mexican border city.

Members of Protestant groups based in the United States who cross the border to help some of the hundreds of thousands of poor people here are being accused by a monsignor of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tijuana of using food, clothing and housing to buy religious conversions.

Msgr. Sergio De La Cerda also accuses the groups of turning poor people into “social parasites” dependent on charity.

In an attempt to counter the impact of the Protestant organizations, the Catholic Church is stepping up its own evangelical activities in the poverty-plagued city of a million or more people.

“We’ll be going home-by-home, just as the Protestants do,” De La Cerda said.

Some members of the Tijuana City Council also have expressed concern over the activities of the U.S.-based religious groups and charities, with one council member calling for stricter government regulation of foreign clergy.

In addition, the Tijuana office of the Mexican department of immigration has begun an investigation into the activities of the foreign clergymen who cross the border to preach without government permits. Such religious activity without government permission violates Mexican law, according to Alfredo Alvarez Cardenas, chief of the Tijuana immigration office, who ordered the investigation. Alvarez said that none of the foreign clergymen has registered with his office as required by law.

No one is certain how many U.S.-based religious groups are active in Tijuana. But observers familiar with the activities estimate that there are dozens of them, including some from well-known denominations, such as Methodists and Presbyterians, and some from newly-formed and little-known evangelical faiths.

These groups bring with them a wide range of approaches to the city’s poor. Some provide food, clothing and medicine in regular visits. Others build dwellings for the most desperately impoverished, go door-to-door handing out bibles and religious tracts in Spanish, or hold bible study sessions in homes. Others have opened churches in Tijuana where regular services are held.

Two very active Protestant organizations--Amor Ministries, based in Fullerton, and Spectrum Ministries, based in San Diego--acknowledge that religious conversions occur as a result of the activities. They insist, however, that their purpose south of the border is not to convert Catholics into Protestants, but to improve living conditions.

Amor Ministries--Amor is Spanish for love--has indeed improved conditions in one of Tijuana’s most abysmal slums by building about 40 simple frame dwellings at a dump site neighborhood called Colonia Panamericana, where families had been living for years in patchwork shacks.

Both Amor and Spectrum Ministries regularly recruit U.S.-based churches of various denominations to join their missions of aid to Tijuana.

Efron Lopez, assistant director of Spectrum, said that some of these churches, in turn, develop their own programs to help Tijuana’s poor and make periodic trips south of the border.

Funds Donated for Food

Lopez, a naturalized American citizen, grew up as a nominal Catholic in a Tijuana orphanage, but subsequently became a born-again Protestant.

Spectrum operates out of a Baptist church in San Diego but is nondenominational, Lopez said.

The organization spends between $400 and $700 in donated funds per week on food for the poor in Tijuana and also buys medicine, holds bible study classes and organizes games for poor children, he said.

“We visit orphanages,” he said, “and we visit the poor neighborhoods where most people would not go, rough areas. . . . We minister to them with food and, with our Mexican co-workers, we do evangelical work.”

Lopez said that Spectrum does not really care what religion a person embraces.

“Our main concern,” he said, “is to see a heart change. . . . Most of the people we know are Catholic, but they don’t really go to church at all . . . We never push our beliefs on them. We just make them known.”

Getting Affluent to Help

Besides helping the poor, Spectrum is interested in getting the relatively affluent North Americans to help less fortunate people, Lopez said.

“We don’t take them to Ethiopia because it’s far, but we take them to Mexico because it’s closer and it gets them off their butts doing something for someone else,” he said.

Lopez scoffed at De La Cerda’s contention that the poor are being made dependent on groups such as Spectrum. The conditions facing Tijuana’s poor are so bad, he said, that the little bit of outside aid provided simply helps people survive.

“There will always be people that will be critical about giving out food,” Lopez said, “and mostly I would say they are people who are really doing nothing to help at all.”

De La Cerda denied that the Catholic Church has ignored the longstanding miseries of Tijuana’s poor, noting that the church operates several programs to distribute food and provide shelter in Tijuana.

‘Separated Brothers’

De La Cerda stressed that some of the “separated brothers”--as he termed Protestants--perform good works among poor people. But he said that most of the religious groups that regularly visit the city are exploiting poverty to make conversions, and at the same time are creating dependency and other problems within communities.

“These people come and give material goods to convert the poor . . . in most cases,” he said.

“If you don’t promote the people” by helping them become independent, De La Cerda said, “you’re going to see in the future these kinds of social parasites that can only wait for something to be handed out. . . . Sometimes it’s a way of life for some of these families.

“There are people,” he said, “that live in these marginal areas, for example the ( Colonia Panamericana ) dump site, because it is one of the neighborhoods most visited by the separated brothers.

“Those living there find it easier not to work because they wait for the . . . visits from those who come and bring them food and clothing and those people become lazy.”

Cultural Erosion

De La Cerda also contended that evangelism by outsiders erodes Mexican cultural values “that have roots profoundly Catholic.”

Aid to the poor, he said, should be coordinated through the Catholic Church along with what he termed the “serious” established Protestant denominations such as the Lutheran Church.

De La Cerda, well aware that the Catholic Church itself could become a target of government action, is opposed to a government crackdown on foreign evangelists.

But Tijuana City Councilwoman Irene Contreras, a member of the opposition National Action Party, is in favor of the government investigation into the activities of the religious groups and wants the evangelists tightly regulated.

She complains that regulations to control religious activity are not being enforced and is calling for a crackdown. Immigration official Alvarez acknowledged that no foreign evangelist has been arrested for failing to obey the registration law.

“I am not against religions,” Contreras insisted, “but it is not (acceptable) that somebody invents a new religion and comes to Tijuana to work. It is absurd.”

Contreras, who is suspicious of aid to the poor from the foreign religious groups and from non-religious charities as well, is concerned over what she sees as the failure of the government to combat poverty.

The houses built by Amor Ministries for the poor at Colonia Panamericana are better than patchwork shacks, she said.

“But what is not good,” she added, “is somebody coming, first from another country and second with religious or ideological interests, to do those things. . . .

“My point of view is that government must do its job. I will never accept that others should come and . . . do the work that government neglects to do.”

Whatever their motivations, the religious groups seem to be having an impact on places such as Colonia Panamericana.

Dwellings Line Road

Colonia Panamericana Aparte Alta-- or the upper part of the Panamericana neighborhood--is located atop a wind-swept mesa overlooking rolling hills that were green with winter rain, but are rapidly turning dry and brown.

About 400 men, women and children live in 40 or 50 two-room dwellings built by Amor Ministries. Painted bright purple, green, yellow or blue, the houses line two deeply rutted dirt roadways into the community. Next to some of them are tiny hovels made of patched-together trash, the type of structures that most of the inhabitants lived in before the new dwellings were built.

There is no running water or electricity in the community. Front yard barrels for wash water are filled by trucks. Other trucks bring drinking water.

The yards around the little houses are fenced with salvaged material such as old rusted bedsprings. In some yards potted flowers bloom. In a vacant lot the sun glints on heaps of broken glass and debris.

Community Built on Dump

Children, filthy from playing in the dirt, rummage through trash and throw rocks at the opening of an old culvert. Other youngsters return home from school, having managed somehow to remain spanking clean. The boys rush home and the girls step carefully through the dirt, their hair tied back in long, gleaming black braids.

The community is built on what was a dump site, and to some extent still is. Residents haul truckloads of refuse up the hill from downtown stores and sort through it for what is usable or edible and discard or burn the rest. A man might earn $25 a week at such work if things go well.

“Some of the people work very hard,” said Dave Lynch, a teacher in the community, “and they just need some assistance to get them through.”

Lynch, a Catholic from New York, teaches English to the children in the community and lives nearby. A private volunteer, his work is supported by donations.

Despite De La Cerda’s stated concern that giveaways are making the poor parasitic, the Catholic Archdiocese in Tijuana gives Lynch food for distribution in the colonia , according to the teacher.

Problems From Donations

The Times, in visits to the area, found no apparent cases of families moving into the community to receive handouts, as the monsignor had depicted.

But there have been problems connected with donations by the charitable organizations that visit the neighborhood.

Residents said that fights have occurred over donations when poor people from as far away as Rosarito, nearly 20 miles to the south, have descended on the colonia in hopes of receiving food.

And there may be truth to the criticism that sometimes organizations simply give to the poor rather than involve residents in programs to improve their own living conditions.

David George, public relations officer for Los Ninos, a well-known California-based nondenominational organization that does charitable work in Tijuana, said that he has seen other groups abandon the city’s poor after creating a dependency on gifts.

Self-Help Projects

George said that Los Ninos attempts to involve the poor in such self-help projects as nutrition programs and a crafts cooperative.

But “a lot of groups aren’t sensitive to the needs of the people,” he said. “There’s a (strongly religious) person that goes down there in a truck full of goods that he happens to have at the time and he just kind of throws things to whoever happens to scream the loudest. . . . To me, it’s like having people grovel. . . . To me, it’s not the way to help people.”

Even Amor Ministries, with its six years of work in Tijuana and its undeniable achievements, does not seem to involve the residents of Colonia Panamericana in the construction of their houses.

Members of Amor Ministries and volunteers from the United States put up 30 of the little dwellings in a building blitz during Easter week.

Scott Congdon, a 29-year-old Protestant minister, founded Amor Ministries in 1980. He said members of his organization visit the homes of colonia residents and that, although they respect the beliefs of Catholics, conversions do occur.

Mission to Convert Denied

But, he added: “That’s not the reason we build the houses. . . . Our mission is not to go out and convert Catholics.”

As for the people of Colonia Panamericana, they don’t seem to feel exploited by the visitors.

Isabel Alcala, 29, lives there with her husband, three children and a friend of the family. The family had lived in a patchwork shack until Amor Ministries built them a two-room dwelling, and Alcala’s husband added two rooms.

There is no floor in the kitchen. There are no screens on the door or windows and flies swarm in.

In the front yard, Alcala has spread old carpets on the earth, and on them she has placed five-gallon tubs containing geraniums and other flowers.

Alcala is a Catholic. The visitors who bring things to the colonia, she said, sometimes ask her to pray with them.

“But that’s what you should do, anyway,” she said. “Give thanks to God for bringing food.”

Of the visitors themselves:

“We thank them for coming. And God must send them.”

‘Our main concern is to see a heart change. . . . Most of the people we know are Catholic, but they don’t really go to church at all. . . . We never push our beliefs on them. We just make them known.’--Efron Lopez

Spectrum Ministries