It is a painful memory for the young Mexican — four hours locked up in the jail cell at the age of 14. His crime? Playing football.
“It was forbidden,” Cirilo Ceferino recalls.
He is now aged 21, but the memories flood back as Ceferino surveys the ruins of two schools that members of the Virgin of the Rosary, a fringe religious cult, recently destroyed and set on fire.
Photo: AFP
Ceferino no longer lives in the village of Nuevo Jerusalen — “New Jerusalem” — population 4,000, but goes there regularly to visit his parents.
Founded in 1973, the Virgin of the Rosary, a nominally Catholic cult that the Vatican does not recognize, shuns sports because they require wearing “indecent” clothes.
Men wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts, while women wear long dresses with bright colors and head scarves. Make-up is banned.
At the village entrance a sign lays out the dress code: “Women wearing short skirts or low-cut dresses and without sleeves are forbidden to enter.” Also banned: “Men with long hair who are dressed dishonestly.”
Modern items like cellphones, televisions and radios are forbidden, as well as alcohol and non-religious music. There was no electricity until 2000.
There is a roll call at each of the three daily religious services, and followers must dedicate one day a week to work for the community. Locals raise corn, sugar cane and beans for a living.
The village, located in Michoacan state, about 430km west of Mexico City, has been an offbeat tourist attraction for years.
However, that changed on July 6 when community leader Rosa Gomez, allegedly acting after receiving a vision from the Virgin Mary, ordered a state-run pre-school and elementary school in the town to be destroyed.
The schools were used by the children of about 300 “dissidents” that split with the hyper-conservative majority in 2006, seeking closer contact with the outside world and eager to give their children a state-recognized education.
About 100 community members armed with pikes and mallets heeded Gomez’s call, smashing down the building walls then setting the remains on fire.
Gomez, who goes by the name of Mother Catalina, is the daughter of the late “Pope” Nabor, the founder of Nuevo Jerusalen.
“The Virgin of the Rosary visited me, she wants us to destroy the schools because that is where the devil lives,” Gomez told local reporters at the time.
On a recent visit, one of the sect’s priests who gave his name only as Father Luis said that the villagers acted spontaneously because they did not want the schools.
“There had been protests ... the government did not want to resolve the problem, so it reached the point that the people said, ‘If they do not pay attention to us’ ... ” Father Luis said, trailing off.
Two followers in their sixties, who identified themselves as Santos and Jacinto, said it was the Virgin who did not want the schools.
“There’s already a parish school,” Santos said, referring to the cult’s education center, which is not officially recognized by Mexican authorities.
Nuevo Jerusalen was founded when a peasant named Gabina Romero claimed the Virgin of the Rosary appeared to her with a message for Nabor Cardenas, a priest in a neighboring parish, to found a village of penitents in order to save the world from a pending doom.
Cardenas became “Pope Nabor” and Romero became “Mother Salome,” a clairvoyant who claimed she regularly received messages from the Virgin.
The Catholic Church swiftly excommunicated both of them, but the village nevertheless attracted believers from across Mexico.
One of Nuevo Jerusalen’s attractions is its “cathedral,” a building that can be accessed only with special permission, where followers take turns leading a 24-hour vigil.
“Here, we sing day and night because the Virgin is alive and we cannot leave her alone,” Father Luis explained.
However, over the years rifts have appeared in the community.
Some were caused by rivalries between the clairvoyants who succeeded Romero, with some claiming to have spoken to former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas, who died in 1970, and Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978.
Others simply could not take the strict community rules.
Those who left the cult but stayed in the village, such as Emiliano Juarez, say conservative New Jerusalem residents want to impose their will by force.
“The schools were a problem for them because the things taught there undermined their abuses,” Juarez said.
The ultimate goal, Juarez said, is to kick the dissidents out.
For Father Luis, it is very simple.
“There are rules here and anyone who lives in this town has to follow them,” he said. “If you don’t agree, you can leave. The goal of coming here is because you want to change.”
The dissidents complain that state authorities have taken a hands-off approach. Juarez said that years of complaining about sect abuses have gone unheeded.
Local officials have been mediating between the two groups and Michoacan Governor Fausto Vallejo told reporters an investigation is underway to punish the culprits for the school burning, but no arrests have been made yet.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in