As His Opponents Apply Pressure, Bishop Fights To Mediate Uprising Job Gets Tougher By The Day For Diabetic Monsignor

As opponents demand his removal, Bishop Samuel Ruiz struggles to hold together an increasingly polarized Chiapas state and mediate a yearlong Indian uprising.

The job is getting tougher by the day. The 70-year-old diabetic monsignor faces protests by dissenters who want him to resign and pressure from Mexico City to quit his role as mediator.

The toll shows on his ashen face and the unusual silences at everrarer public appearances.

At the brightly painted 16thcentury Roman Catholic cathedral, parishioners stacked blankets and firewood in front of the diocese doors on Monday, after a riot Sunday left four people injured.

About 500 ranchers and businessmen from the San Cristobal Civic Front, accusing the bishop of supporting the Zapatista rebels, hurled eggs, rocks and sticks at the cathedral. Some demonstrators carried signs depicting Ruiz as a devil. In Las Margaritas, about 100 miles south, graffiti called for his death.

The demonstrators were gone Monday, but parishioners still maintained their vigil outside the diocese.

“The bishop is a great person who has always defended us,” Santana Jerasto Martinez Gonzalez said of Ruiz, who has been the Roman Catholic bishop of San Cristobal for more than three decades.

“We are here to support Don Samuel and protect him from the ranchers,” said the 39-year-old Indian peasant, among some 100 people who spent the night outside the cathedral, huddled under blankets around a bonfire.

“The people with money are against the bishop because they are afraid of the effect on their economic interests,” said Abelardo Sanchez Bermudez, 21, as he helped to form a human chain around the church. “He wakes up the poor people.”

But many here feel otherwise.

“He’s not behind the Zapatistas. He is the leader,” charged Father Luis Beltran Mijangos, a priest who publicly disagrees with Ruiz’s teaching of liberation theology.

Liberation theology interprets the Holy Scriptures in light of the poor. It has spurred rebel movements throughout Latin America in the last 20 years, although the Vatican now opposes it.

“Liberation theology is fomenting hatred and a struggle between classes,” Beltran said.

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO