In 2015, members of a religious minority living in neighbouring villages in the Huasteca region of Hidalgo State, Mexico were informed by their village leaders that they would no longer be permitted to perform their assigned acts of community service.
To outsiders, this might seem insignificant, especially when compared to violations of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) elsewhere in Mexico and the world. Being told to do less work might even seem like a positive development. Those in the villages of Rancho Nuevo and Coamila, both located in the municipality of Huejutla de los Reyes, however, understood that the non-completion of this work would mean the loss of recognition as members of the community. And, associated with that recognition are rights, including access to health care, government benefit programmes and education.
The situation grew worse in 2016, as members of the religious minority were warned against accessing or using their land for cultivating crops, their main source of sustenance and income. Individuals who helped the group, who all belong to the Great Commission Baptist Church, to build a place of worship on privately owned land were threatened and violently assaulted. The Baptists were repeatedly forced to attend community meetings where local leaders demanded that they take part in Roman Catholic festivals including by making financial contributions and actively participating in acts of worship. The leaders warned them that more severe punishment, including permanent removal from the community membership rolls, would follow if they did not comply.
Later the same year local leaders blocked a religious minority couple from burying their stillborn baby in the local cemetery. Two state government officials, including José Antonio Vital Perez, the then municipal government official responsible for religious affairs, intervened and were informed by community leaders that they would not allow the baby to be buried in Rancho Nuevo because the couple had ‘outstanding matters’ to attend to, specifically their failure to participate in religious activities associated with the Roman Catholic church. Although Mr Vital Pérez was successful in negotiating with village leaders to permit the burial of the baby two days later, he warned the Baptists that they should ‘obey the community leaders’ including in regard to the orders to participate in Roman Catholic activities.
His words, in support of the community leaders’ attempts to enforce participation in religious activities, would be the policy of the Hidalgo State government and the Huejutla de los Reyes Municipality over the next decade, even as FoRB violations grew increasingly severe.
In 2017, two women, one 70 years old and the other pregnant, were attending a Bible study when they were thrown to the ground by a man carrying a machete who entered the church and kicked over the bench they were sitting on. The pregnant woman was then denied access to the local health clinic and was forced to travel an hour to Huejutla de los Reyes to receive pre-natal care. The following year, when her baby arrived stillborn, once again, the local leaders refused to allow her and her husband to bury their child in the local cemetery. This time, the local leaders did not relent, and the couple had to bury the child in the municipal capital.
In early 2018, the Baptists were informed by local leaders that their children would no longer be welcome at the local, state-run school. When the children continued to attend, some of the teachers refused to teach them. The situation was quiet over the school summer holidays, but when classes resumed, the local authorities again warned that the religious minority children should not attempt to go to school. After a teacher, hired by the government and assigned to the school, tried to defend the children’s constitutional right to an education, local leader Diego Hernandez Solórzano ordered the school to close for a week and expelled the teacher from the community. She was told not to return.
The schoolchildren’s situation made national news in Mexico, but once again, the state government did nothing to intervene or to protect the rights of the religious minority children. Instead, government officials, like Mr Vital Pérez and his counterpart at the state level, Ivan Huesca Licona, repeatedly and publicly denied the existence of any cases of religious intolerance in the state. They even took the side of the local leaders, pressuring religious minorities to sign agreements that would oblige them to participate in and contribute financially to Roman Catholic religious activities.
In 2019, after erecting two signs outside the Baptist church declaring that Protestant Christians were not permitted to enter the villages, local leaders took things a step further; they began to refuse to issue birth certificates to any child born to religious minority families. When the parents went to the civil registry at the municipal seat in Huejutla de los Reyes to obtain birth certificates for their children, they were questioned by municipal officials who implied that the local authorities had the right to punish them for their ‘misconduct’. The parents persisted, and they were eventually referred to the local human rights commission, which provided documentation affirming that they were victims of religious discrimination, allowing the municipal civil registry to issue a birth certificate and register the births of their children.
Over the past decade, members of the group have repeatedly been subjected to beatings and arbitrary detention. In February 2018, a recent convert was beaten up by community delegate, Félix Hernández Hernández. The following month, local leaders burst into a church service, violently removed four men, tied them up, and beat them. A fifth man, also a member of the Baptist church, was taken from home and arbitrarily detained together with four other men until the following day. They were not permitted food or water and, before they were released, they were ordered to pay a heavy fine for refusing to convert back to Roman Catholicism. Later that year, church members were cleaning the church grounds when a member of the religious majority attacked one of the Baptist men, knocking out his front tooth.
One of the most egregious attacks took place in December 2022, when Maria Concepcion Hernández Hernández was assaulted after she visited her plot of land in response to a request from a neighbour who had asked her to remove two trees. Local leaders in Rancho Nuevo, including Mr Benito Rocha, community leader Fermín Hernández Hernández, delegate Octaviano Gutierrez Hernández, Mr Margarito Gutierrez Hernández, Mr Francisco Wenses, and Roman Catholic catechist Juan Hernández Hernández participated in the attack, which led to her hospitalisation in critical condition, after being informed of her presence. Mrs Hernández Hernández, who continues to experience health challenges related to the incident, filed a complaint at the state human rights commission and state public prosecutor’s office before returning home, and yet no action has been taken against those responsible for the assault.
Making matters worse, when the local Baptist pastor, Rogelio Hernández Baltazar, attempted to intervene to stop the attack on Mrs Hernández Hernández, he was also physically assaulted and detained for two hours. Local leaders demanded that he hand over the deeds to ten plots of land that belong to members of the church. When the pastor refused to do so, the authorities threatened to take the documents by force and to confiscate the properties. In March 2024, he and other leaders of the Great Commission Baptist Church were beaten and arbitrarily detained once again. They were held for 48 hours before government officials negotiated their release, which included a heavy fine on the religious minority men.
Finally, after a decade of government inaction, despite multiple opportunities to intervene to uphold FoRB for all, the situation in Coamila and Rancho Nuevo reached a tipping point.
In early April 2024, local leaders in the two villages sanctioned the takeover of five plots of land belonging to members of the religious minority, cutting down trees, removing stones, and destroying crops. On 27 April, 139 Protestants were forced to flee their homes after the same leaders cut off their electricity, vandalised and blocked access to their church and some of their homes, and posted guards at the entry points to the villages. The group, including five infants and 70 children under the age of 17, sought sanctuary in the municipal seat of Huejutla de los Reyes, where they requested government intervention to protect their rights.
Despite the severity of the situation the municipal and state governments still appear reluctant to uphold the law. While some state policy makers, like Deputy Gabriela Godínez Hernández, a member of the Commission for Human Rights and People with Disabilities, have called on the municipal and state governments to take decisive action to protect FoRB in accordance with Mexican law, others, like Deputy Noé Hernández, president of the Commission for Governance, has claimed this is a matter for the municipality, not the state, and appeared to place the blame on the religious minority, telling local media that the situation in Rancho Nuevo and Coamila is not a question of religious intolerance, … ‘but the sudden shock, for example, to those of us who are Catholics, for whom the Virgin is the highest belief, as those who are not [Roman Catholic] break with… the history of life in terms of [religious] beliefs…’
The governor of Hidalgo State, Julio Menchaca Salazar, said the state would facilitate a ‘dialogue’ between the forcibly displaced and those responsible for their displacement, but also implied that the victims were at fault, stating that they refused ‘to contribute financially or carry out their acts of community service’ – ignoring the fact that they have been prohibited from doing so for almost a decade, and, under Mexican law, cannot be required to contribute money to religious activities or institutions.
This is not good enough for the 139 people, including 75 children and babies, now living in an auditorium because they have been forced out of their homes, simply because of their desire to believe and practice a religion of their choice. They have committed no crime.
It is the local authorities in Rancho Nuevo and Coamila who have repeatedly broken Mexican law and committed criminal acts, including violent assault, over the past decade.
It is the municipal and state governments who have failed, consistently, to uphold Mexico’s own commitment to uphold FoRB for those of all faiths and none, and contributed to a culture of impunity.
It is past time for this to change and for Mexico’s leaders, at all levels, to demonstrate that they understand their responsibility to protect fundamental human rights, including FoRB, and to take effective action to do so.
By CSW’s Head of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl
FoRB in Full 