Chiapas Bishop Who Fought for the Poor Heads Down Road to Retirement

Like his predecessor Fray Bartolome de las Casas in 1545, Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz came to Chiapas as a conservative young cleric determined to change the ways of the Maya Indians of this poor southern Mexican state.

Instead, Ruiz recalled during a festive two-day retirement celebration that ended Thursday, the Indians changed him. During nearly 40 years as head of the diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas, Ruiz became a champion of Maya culture and rights.

That personal conversion in the 1960s thrust Ruiz into conflict with elements of his own church who more than once sought to oust him, and with politicians who accused him of fomenting the rebellion by Zapatista rebels in Chiapas in January 1994. The uprising still festers today in an uncertain cease-fire.

A reluctant retiree, Ruiz told 2,000 parishioners and pilgrims who gathered Wednesday in the yellow-and-red cathedral of this colonial city to fete him that he was going to sign his retirement letter to Pope John Paul II at one minute to midnight, just before the end of his 75th birthday. Church custom dictates that bishops submit their resignations at 75.

Ruiz will stay on as bishop until the pope accepts his resignation, which could take months.

“It has been my fortune, and this is uncommon, not only to be able to sow seeds but also to harvest the fruit,” Ruiz told members of the congregation, many of whom wore brightly embroidered Maya blouses.

The critical question now for his followers and his foes is who will succeed Don Samuel, as many call him. His supporters want the next bishop to be Raul Vera, the 54-year-old adjutant bishop sent to assist Ruiz in 1995.

Many suspect that the Vatican dispatched Vera to control and restrain Ruiz. But like his mentor, Vera soon was won over and now echoes Ruiz’s strident sentiments in favor of the poor, even if it stirs controversy.

“When Don Samuel came here at 35, he came to an environment of forced poverty, a land without justice, a land of the poorest of the poor,” Vera said in an interview. “He came here just as the church was starting its cultural evangelization amid ferment of the Second Vatican Council.

“The great advances of the church aren’t achieved without these tensions, these difficulties. You have to understand Don Samuel in the context of a poor continent, a continent that suffered dictatorships, a Mexico that was hardening its authoritarian system.”

The young Ruiz plunged into perhaps his most important initiative: organizing a network of rural “catechists,” or lay Bible teachers, who became the arm of the church in every remote corner of the diocese, including hundreds of hamlets of a few hundred people each.

Diocese historian Andres Aubry said not even the state had such an effective organization in Chiapas, allowing the diocese to embrace rural indigenous people in ways that let them participate fully.

“This sums up what Samuel wanted to do,” Aubry said. “The indigenous people always were the object of study. They were victims of history. Don Samuel fostered a change in which the indigenous person woke up and made himself the subject of his destiny, of his history, an actor in his own transformation.”

But that focus on the impoverished Maya Indians alienated Ruiz from some in the mestizo, or mixed race, middle class. And the government accused him of allowing the network of catechists to become the backbone of the Zapatista insurrection, which seized control of this colonial mountain city for a few hours on New Year’s Day 1994.

The Zapatistas demanded government recognition of Indian rights and customs as well as greater economic development. Many blamed Ruiz for the stunning and embarrassing uprising.

Foes burned a mock coffin bearing his name in front of the stately cathedral where he presides, calling him the “Red Bishop” and worse. He survived an assassination attempt in 1997 and sometimes wore a helmet to protect himself during visits to villages.

Last year, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo attacked the “theology of violence.” Although he didn’t mention names, many thought he was referring to Ruiz.

San Cristobal Mayor Mariano Diaz Ochoa said Thursday that he stopped attending the city’s cathedral in 1994 in protest against Ruiz’s policies because “his partiality was clearly visible.”

“We are not going to miss him,” said Diaz Ochoa, a local businessman elected mayor last year for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. “I believe his departure will contribute to the achievement of peace in Chiapas.”

Ruiz served as the first mediator between the government and Zapatista rebels, and later led a mediation commission. But with the talks stalled since August 1996, Ruiz resigned from the body in June 1998, saying the government had put too many obstacles in its path and that other forms of mediation were necessary.

He presided at the Christmas Day 1997 funerals that came after the worst single incident of the Zapatista conflict. Pro-government paramilitary members attacked adherents of a pro-Zapatista group in the village of Acteal, killing 45 people.

The Acteal massacre underscored the layers of political, religious and cultural conflicts that have long simmered in Chiapas. The religious split, reflected in the expulsion by hard-line Catholics of about 25,000 evangelical Protestants from mountain villages in the 1970s and ‘80s, remains one of the state’s most intractable battles. But Ruiz has encouraged joint Catholic-Protestant Bible groups and other conciliatory initiatives that have reduced tensions in recent years.

Ruiz’s farewell Mass featured prayers in Tzotzil, Chol and other Maya languages, and communion was served by Maya men dressed in traditional skirts and hats festooned with colorful ribbons. Ruiz himself noted with delight during his sermon how much the church had changed in embracing indigenous cultures.

“Forty years ago,” said Miguel Alvarez, a former private secretary to Ruiz, “indigenous people walked with their eyes on the ground. They couldn’t even speak to mestizos. Now they have their own space. Don Samuel forged this irreversible process.”

Bartolome de las Casas, the Dominican monk who helped bring Christianity to Chiapas, was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for campaigning on behalf of the Indians of the New World after the Spanish conquest. Today there is a plaque in the plaza in his honor, and the town bears his name.

Marina Patricia Jimenez, director of the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center, established by Ruiz a decade ago, said De las Casas “was a man who responded to the reality of his time and became indignant. Don Samuel also is a man who makes his indignation contagious in the face of injustice.”