Bishop Agrees to Mediate in Mexican Crisis

A faint hope for peace Sunday has once again placed Samuel Ruiz, the outspoken bishop of this embattled diocese, at the center of a conflict over indigenous rights just as the Mexican government seeks to blame Roman Catholic priests for last week’s peasant uprising.

Ruiz was asked to mediate in the armed insurrection by a group claiming to represent rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army. But it was not yet clear whether the government, which has had an ongoing battle with the bishop, would accept Ruiz’s mediation.

The controversy surrounding the 69-year-old Ruiz highlights the delicate relationship between representatives of the Catholic Church and a government that only a little over a year ago began recognizing religious groups. Where priests have become increasingly involved in encouraging Indians to stand up for their rights, military and government officials have become increasingly critical.

Now, struggling to restore order after the deadliest outbreak of peasant violence in more than two decades, the government accused pro-left clerics and lay catechists of fomenting unrest by encouraging peasants to organize. Especially in impoverished Chiapas, the conflict had been coming to a head in recent months.

Ruiz--a vocal advocate of liberation theology whose conduct has come under Vatican review--denied the government’s accusations Sunday. He said he cannot account for all the priests in Chiapas but vehemently denied that he personally has ever supported violence. What he has advocated, he said, is equality.

Speaking at Sunday Mass in the colonial Santo Domingo Church, exactly a week after rebels briefly took control of this tourist town, Ruiz said he had agreed to mediate.

“We have more or less firm hopes of a peaceful end,” he told the congregation.

The request that Ruiz mediate was contained in a fax sent to La Jornada newspaper. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.

In addition to Ruiz, Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and respected Mexican journalist Julio Scherer, editor of the feisty weekly magazine Proceso, were invited. Scherer declined, and Menchu has not commented.

Despite the bishop’s optimism, the violence appeared to be spreading. Early Sunday two electrical towers north of Mexico City were attacked with explosives but not damaged. Late Saturday night, a stolen recreational vehicle loaded with dynamite exploded at the front gate of a military base at Naucalpan, also near the capital.

In Chiapas, services were held in the old Santo Domingo Church because government troops continued to block off the main plaza where the cathedral is. Since the uprising, an estimated 12,000 troops have been sent to Chiapas, the state located on the Guatemalan border.

As barefoot women in traditional woolen wrap skirts and shawls quietly entered the old church, Ruiz made another plea for equality in the difficult time San Cristobal de las Casas is now suffering:

“On city buses these days it is common to hear, ‘Rotten Indians, now I hate them more than ever.’ These are not Christian words, and they are at the root of a lot of misery.”

He has criticized the government’s massive military efforts, including the bombing of hillsides, in going after the rebels and has scoffed at administration claims that Indians were duped or coerced into joining the guerrilla movement.

“Nobody was tricked, nobody was forced,” Ruiz said. “This was caused by a society structured in a way that results in a level of poverty that brings about an almost suicidal situation.”

An unassuming man with a ring of graying hair and thick glasses, Ruiz has fought for Indian rights, often against wealthy cattle owners who generally blame the poverty of indigenous people here on racist stereotypes of laziness and drunkenness.

He has also publicized allegations of abuses by Indian leaders, who are generally closely linked to the government. The hills above San Cristobal are filled with thousands of Indians expelled from their communities when they converted from their traditional religion, a mixture of Catholic and Indian rites, to standard Catholicism or a Protestant belief.

That record has not always endeared Ruiz to the government.

“Without any disrespect to Samuel, he is not the only one nor is his the only church that fights for the Indians and the poor,” Patrocinio Gonzalez Blanco Garrido, interior minister and former governor of Chiapas, said in a recent interview.

Other church leaders concerned about Indians have gone along with the government’s efforts to solve the state’s problems, avoiding confrontations, said Gonzalez, who has known Ruiz for more than 30 years. Gonzalez denied that the government is behind a 2-month-old Vatican inquiry into Ruiz’s conduct that could result in his removal as bishop. Ruiz is accused of errors of doctrine, an apparent reference to his advocacy of liberation theology, a movement within the church that advocates an active defense of the poor and oppressed.

The Vatican has kept an increasingly tighter rein on liberation theology supporters in recent years, leading some of them to leave the church.

Despite the threat of removal from the diocese he has led for 33 years, Ruiz continues to speak out.

Sunday, he criticized the refusal of the army to allow journalists to travel to the rural areas where fighting reportedly continues to rage. Worries about possible human rights abuses continued to grow as the army turned back a caravan of human rights activists headed for Ocosingo, site of the rebellion’s fiercest fighting.

“While we understand some measures are necessary for security,” he said, “we get the impression that there really is not activity and what they are doing is hiding other things.”

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