Families of 12 Who Died During Rite Are Skeptical : Tragedy: Survivors are angry over official finding of accidental death by asphyxiation in a Tijuana home during religious ceremony. Some suspect foul play.

Families of the 12 people who died in a spiritualist prayer meeting gone awry held wakes for their dead Saturday, disbelieving and angry at the official finding that the victims died of accidental asphyxiation brought on by a malfunctioning butane lantern.

“Put down that justice needs to be done here, that someone is to blame and that somehow those of us who did not die will find an answer,” said Fidel Mondragon, 61, who was one of an extended family of 20 who came from East Los Angeles to mourn and bury his daughter, her husband, and both their children.

Tijuana coroner’s officials declared Friday that, based on preliminary autopsies, the 12 had died of carbon monoxide poisoning after being enclosed in a four-room house during an overnight religious ceremony led by Federico Padres Mexia, a 61-year-old self-styled spiritualist.

“It was definitely an accident,” a deputy prosecutor said.

On Saturday, however, doctors attending six people who survived the ceremony appeared nearly as skeptical of the official cause of death as the victims’ relatives. Two of the survivors may have been bruised or beaten during the evening rite. Others, doctors said, suffered unexplained burns.

“As a doctor, it’s hard for me to accept carbon monoxide as the exclusive explanation,” said Dr. Ariel Perez Munoz, director of Social Security Clinic 20, a public hospital. Doctors said all the survivors had symptoms, such as highly acidic blood and a swelling of the eyes, that were not necessarily caused by carbon monoxide poisoning alone.

Perez Munoz suggested that a combination of factors--including carbon monoxide, methanol possibly ingested during the ceremony and perhaps another poison--probably caused the tragedy.

Blood samples have been turned over to the San Diego Medical Examiner for further tests, but Perez Munoz stressed that they may be inconclusive because the victims were found several hours after they had fallen unconscious.

“I feel that we are never going to find an explanation of exactly what occurred,” he said.

Relatives gathered Saturday at the government-run funeral home--where burial services were provided for about $250 a person--seeking someone or something to blame. Most were convinced someone--whether part of a suicidal mission or murder--had tried to kill their families.

If the 12 died from a lantern, they asked, why were screams of pain coming from Mexia’s house that night? Why did a the daughter of one of the victims stand guard and refuse to let anyone in, claiming Jesus Christ was descending? Why did a survivor speak of drinking from a fruit punch that made people sick?

“We’re poor people, we’re humble people, but we won’t let them fool us into believing that this was an accident,” said Jesus Moreno, who lost a 14-year-old sister and whose mother is in a coma. “I plan to fight this. This is a great injustice.”

Answers to the mystery may lie with the six survivors, but three, including Mexia, are in apparently irreversible comas. The other survivors are an 8-month-old baby and two men who remain semi-coherent and who may have suffered some brain damage, doctors say.

One is Moises Merida Gonzalez, 32, who had lain incoherent until Saturday, when he spoke, for the first time, with a reporter. He had a black eye and other facial injuries. Asked what had happened to him, he answered only, “I was beaten.” Then he sat up and pulled his shirt over his head.

Merida Gonzalez was the only victim who was not found in Mexia’s home on Thursday morning. He arrived at the hospital that night, and told medical staff that he had escaped from the ritual during the night.

Survivor Alfredo Osuna Hernandez, 22, whose wife is one of the dead, is still dazed by the grief and the after-effects of the rite. He said in a short interview Saturday that he did not understand what had caused the tragedy. He had a cut on his face and bruises on his shoulder, but said he could not remember how he got them. The last thing he could remember was several people, including his wife, starting to vomit.

Asked why the group didn’t disband and go for help, he said, “We could not leave, it would be harmful.” No one, he added, wanted to leave.

He arrived at Mexia’s house early Wednesday evening for a ceremony in which he hoped to ask the Virgin Mary for help in finding a job. He had been attending the spiritualist’s rituals for about four months and said he had already seen the Virgin and God at some of those sessions.

Mexia promised a special session on Dec. 12, however, because it was the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. “He (Mexia) said we would see many things. The Virgin. God. Saints. Many things.”

Others who had attended the sessions said they generally opened with Mexia offering a brand of perfume called “Siete Machos” to the worshipers to rub on themselves as part of a ritual “cleansing.” Afterward, they said, he would usually introduce a “medium” through whom God would speak. The medium, often a woman, would stand in front of an armchair and appear to allow God to speak through her, they said.

For the feast of Guadalupe, Mexia had promised a “more powerful” medium who coming from Rosarito Beach. That medium was identified by Osuna as Benita Rosales Villalpando, of Rosarito Beach. She and her husband are among the dead.

At some point--Osuna’s recollection of the sequence of events remains murky--the participants drank punch and began praying. A short time later, Mexia poured alcohol over a tray of what he described as salts and neighbors said smelled like sulfur, and set it on fire. It smelled foul, Osuna said.

Osuna said the “spirit of the Virgin” then appeared and entered Rosales’ body.

“She fainted,” Osuna said. “Don Federico said not to worry, that it was not a problem and that she would wake up.”

The woman did awake a few minutes later, but was vomiting, Osuna said. Soon, several in the room were fainting or retching. At the same time, several of the participants started screaming in pain.

“A force comes over you, you cannot help but scream,” Osuna said.

Yet, no one tried to seek help, Osuna said. They were all seated inside a large rope circle with 13 knots, and Mexia had told them leaving would be “harmful” and break the spell.

Osuna, who frequently lost his train of thought as he spoke, said one of the last things he remembers was trying to aid his wife. “I tried to lift her, but I couldn’t.” Dizziness and nausea overcame him, and he passed out.

Just what kept those 18 people in that room may be at least as much to blame for their deaths as the carbon monoxide or methanol or whatever else caused their deaths.

Clearly, Mexia’s brand of spiritualism struck a chord among some in the poor neighborhood. Those who attended his prayer sessions were among literally millions of people who have immigrated in recent decades to Baja California, where wages are among the highest in the country. They wind up in neighborhoods like Colonia Mariano Matamoros, impromptu settlements of dirt streets, scrawny dogs and tar-paper homes that spill over whole hillsides as the population swells.

Mexia drove into the colonia several months ago with enough money to build a four-room home with real stucco walls and a small satellite dish on top. Though he was apparently little more than a retired cement mason with a bad heart and a $100,000 home in Sun City, Calif., word circulated through the neighborhood that he could earn $4,000 a day north of the border.

What was so compelling about him, and other self-styled seers, was that he offered an explanation of why workers remain unemployed, why the prayers of the faithful went unanswered.

They were living under a spell of bad luck, he said, and he could cleanse them of the bad luck. Then Jesus Christ himself would descend right into their very neighborhood, and after it was over, hotels would spring up and jobs would appear and the Colonia Mariano Matamoros would be famous.

“He said God would come to us, that one could ask things from God and then have good luck,” said Ramon Sarabia, who attended one session with his late mother a few weeks ago. “People thought they would end up being better off.”

One by one, people of the Colonia Mariano Matamoros came. The man who owned the neighborhood tortilla shop was one of the first to meet Mexia. With his tortillas, he delivered Mexia’s message. First he brought his wife, who brought their son, who brought his girlfriend, who brought her sisters, who brought their mother and father.

For most, little came of efforts to improve their lots. As their relatives would describe it, they had worked their hardest, and still not been able to escape poverty. Salsipuedes , goes an old Mexican saying frequently repeated in such colonias . “Get out if you can.” The saying is both a dare and a commentary on fate. Try and get out, it taunts, but you never will.

Those who attended Mexia’s ceremonies were devout Roman Catholics. Most went to Mass Wednesday to celebrate the Feast of Guadalupe. They prayed, Osuna said, to the Virgin of Guadalupe and to Juan Diego, the Indian who saw her image.

Mourners who gathered Saturday at the public mortuary found it inconceivable that Mexia’s odd religious rite did not have something to do with the carnage. Poison potions, drugs, and other insidious substances--among these the answers could be found, they said.

“Someone wanted to kill them,” declared Felipe Osuna, 24, who lost his wife and whose younger brother and 4-month-old daughter are recuperating.

At the Funeraria Santa Estela in the Zona Norte, the crowded neighborhood that is the last stop for many immigrants planning to “jump” the border, four bodies lay side-by-side, the family of the tortilla shop owner. Twenty relatives of his wife, Elodia Mondragon, had come from Los Angeles. They had bought a new white dress to bury Elodia in, and a pink ruffled one for her daughter, Monica, 11.

The family spent Friday night at the funeral home, keeping vigil over the four bodies, which were safeguarded by two large electric candelabra that cast a pink light over everything. Outside, a street fair celebrating the feast of the Guadalupe went on, raucous, full of music, sizzling tacos and the lights of Ferris wheels.

The deaths prompted Roman Catholic Bishop Emilio Carlos Berlie to renew previous calls for federal controls on evangelical and other religious sects that have proliferated in poor neighborhoods of Tijuana and elsewhere in Mexico. Roman Catholic leaders have long charged that the sects--which are mostly affiliated with U.S.-based Protestant denominations--have enticed prospective converts by offering homes, money, food, and other necessities.

Though he used evangelical techniques, Mexia told people he was a Catholic.

Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel also has called for a state investigation into the events, including an inquiry into underlying social-economic factors.

Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.