SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico (ABP) — Christmas 2005 will be a little more hopeful for families of the prisoners accused of the Acteal, Mexico, massacre — thanks to a Baptist woman's ministry. But for the eighth consecutive year, the celebration will be muted by prison walls.
Eighty-four men, the majority of them evangelical Christians, remain in a maximum security prison in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, charged with the 1997 attack in the tiny mountain village of Acteal that left six men, 21 women and 18 children dead. Evangelical leaders have consistently insisted that the men are scapegoats and that the real killers have never been arrested.
“Only God can ease the pain of these women and children as they try to survive without their husbands and fathers,” said Norvi Mayfield of Gonzales, Texas, who just returned from another visit to Chiapas. “But we can be faithful to the opportunities we have to minister to the families any way we can.”
The latest opportunity came from an unexpected $1,000 donation to Norvi Mayfield Ministries that will fund a Christmas gathering for the approximately 80 fatherless families. Local Mexican pastors who work with Mayfield plan to bring the women and children together in two groups where they can participate in a Christmas feast and receive Christmas gifts.
More importantly, it will allow them to minister to each other. “Because they live at a subsistence level and because they are from many different villages, it is rare that they can meet,” Mayfield explained. “Every time I visit, I am humbled and awed by their faith and perseverance. But even saints need times they can be encouraged and when they can simply enjoy life.”
In addition to special foods and toys and providing necessary clothing, the women will receive yarn to use in the crafts they make to raise money. If funding allows, the women will be given live chickens to take home that can be used as another source of food.
The Christmas gathering is an extra, laid alongside the on-going work Norvi Mayfield Ministries has been doing for four years to assist what Mayfield calls “the suffering church of Chiapas.”
The plight of the prisoners and the ongoing violations of evangelical's religious freedoms are distinct but related.
While there is a well-documented, decades-long pattern of persecution of Indians when they cease participating in traditional Mayan religious rituals, most of the men charged in the Acteal massacre seem to have been prosecuted because they had no political power. And they had no political power because, as evangelicals, they did not support either the Mexican government or the Zapatistas, whose insurgency against the government was almost four years old when the attack occurred, according to Esdras Alonso, pastor of Wings of Eagles Church in San Cristobal.
The international community took notice of Chiapas when the Zapatistas emerged from the jungles on Jan. 1, 1994, and seized control of major sections of the southern Mexican state in the name of improving the lot of the indigenous tribes. Several weeks of fighting ensued, and since then both the Zapatistas and the government have maintained military camps in an uneasy cease fire.
In November the Zapatistas formally announced the end of armed resistance and an intention to seek continued change through political means. The Acteal massacre happened when local support and opposition to the Zapatistas was still an issue in many indigenous communities.
The Christian world also learned for the first time of the rapidly growing evangelical Christian movement and the attending persecution in the 1990s. “International reporters came to write about the revolution but also saw what was happening to us and wrote those stories too,” Alonso pointed out.
Now the media spotlight is no longer on Chiapas — but the persecution continues.
“In a sense the ‘widows' [as Mayfield calls them] suffer twice because they continue to live in the mouth of the cannon as part of the persecuted evangelical community but also have to struggle without their husbands,” Mayfield noted.
Her ministry funds regular food distributions to the families, assists in transporting the women to the prison to visit their husbands (though often the visits are four-to-six months apart) and provides limited medical care. It also provides training and books for evangelical pastors; supports a school in a town where evangelical children are not allowed into public education and even provides congregations with musical instruments.
“But first and foremost we pledge to pray for the suffering church unceasingly and to share their story with other American Christians,” Mayfield added.
The November trip included people from two Texas Baptist churches as well as two people from Salem, Oregon. They were allowed to meet with the accused inside El Amate prison — a visit that took six months to negotiate — and also met with one large group of “widows,” the Mayfield term for the wives of the prisoners, and worshiped with five different evangelical groups while getting an up-close-and-personal look at persecution.
“Evangelicals are growing at a tremendous rate in Chiapas precisely because of the persecution,” Pastor Esdras Alonso told the visitors. “In the past 30 years 30,000 evangelicals have been evicted from their homes because they refused to continue traditional Mayan religious practices, which they consider idolatrous.
Outright killings are rare now — the last pastor was assassinated two years ago — but evangelicals often are still beaten, their homes and churches burned and they are denied access to water, electricity, transportation, education and even the opportunity to sell their crops.
“I had no idea the believers here are going through things like Peter and Paul did. They are living Bible times,” said Robin Lester, like Mayfield a member of First Baptist Church of Gonzales. “Now that I've touched so many of them and seen how joyful they are despite it, how much family means to them, I'll know how to pray specifically.”
Mark Kemper, Oregon state coordinator for the Christian Motorcycle Association and chairman of the board of Norvi Mayfield Ministries, made his second trip to Chiapas with Mayfield. “The big difference this time is that I was not experiencing it all for the first time so the emotional shock was not the same. But I was still touched deeply by the faith and courage these brothers and sisters show in such tough situations.
“We met a lot more people individually this time, so we got a more direct picture of specific persecution. It made me glad that Norvi Mayfield Ministries is not only helping but is blessing these people on a continuous basis, that they know we will keep on and not just come here once and forget them. We can't forget them. Ever.”
First Baptist of Gonzales and Woodland Baptist in San Antonio supported direct projects on the November trip for a school in Paste, Mexico. Evangelical children were chased from the local schools last March, at the same time about 90 families from the church were cut off from the town's water and electric grid and denied the right to buy or sell in the markets.
The economic pressure was relieved after nine days when state government authorities intervened. But the school ban remains. So Pastor Antonio Mendez, with help from Norvi Mayfield Ministries, led the church to open its own school.
The Awana group from First Baptist, Gonzales, decided to raise money to purchase Bibles for the students, aiming for $65 which would pay for 10 copies of the just-released translation in the tribe's dialect. “The kids didn't collect donations — they contributed from their own money,” Awana director Terry Clay said. “And they gave $150.63. And we're not through yet.
Two Woodland groups took part. An adult group that promotes community within the congregation gave the ministry $450 to purchase school supplies and a ladies sewing group put together approximately 70 brightly colored, individualized fleece hats to protect the children from the mountain cold.
“It was the most fun project we've ever undertaken,” Nadine Holt pointed out. “We had 10 women that worked on them for six months — Norvi had given us pictures of some of the children so we could put faces to the children we were praying for as we worked. It was pure joy for all of us.”
Mayfield, a frequent speaker at Woman's Missionary Union meetings, says she will continue to rally prayer — and financial — support for the “suffering church” at every opportunity. “God has placed a very specific call on my life to minister with these people,” she said. “I am a Mayan from Honduras and I often wondered why God had brought me to America and given me so many blessings. When I met the prisoners and widows in 2001 I understood why.”