Adherents of a religious sect in western Mexico are physically blocking school teachers from entering their walled community, setting up one of the most high-profile confrontations between religious and civil authorities in Mexico since the 1930s. 

Local officials in the western state of Michoacan said Wednesday it may be time to call in a large-scale police operation to enforce the right to schooling in a community that has largely ruled itself according to what it considers biblical guidelines for almost 40 years. The New Jerusalem community prohibits formal schooling, television, radio, modern music, dress and fashion.

``I think the next step is to go in and enforce the rule of law,'' said Efrain Barrera, spokesman for the township of Turicato, where the sect's walled-off compound is.

Under Mexican law, grade school education is compulsory, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission and the Roman Catholic Church said Tuesday that the refusal to allow classes in New Jerusalem is a violation of children's human rights.

They called on the government to break the town's blockade, which has been limited to fistfights but could escalate. Members of the sect recently attacked and destroyed school buildings.

``It is surprising that they want to impose beliefs, not a religion, on grade-school children in their formative stage, by taking away the right every child has to attend classes in government-provided education,'' the Mexican Bishops Council said in a statement.

``The local authorities should intervene and resolve the conflict, which, if it isn't taken care of, could escalate,'' the council said. ``This is an issue that cannot wait, this is the moment to act and defend the rule of law.''

The church does not recognize the sect, which was founded in 1973 by a renegade Catholic priest who objected to the abandonment of Latin masses and other modernization moves.

The group has demanded the right to appoint its own teachers, set its own curriculum and mandate robes and headscarves for female pupils, claiming that otherwise the schools would be introducing bad habits into the community. Girls at government schools in Mexico generally wear uniforms, including knee-length plaid skirts.

The group shuns telephones and its leaders were not available for comment Wednesday.

In July, gangs of sect followers used sledgehammers to destroy three government school buildings in the community, then doused them with gasoline and set fire to the school furniture and computer equipment.

On Monday, when the new school year was scheduled to start, gangs of church supporters, including women dressed in the bright-colored robes and headscarves the sect requires women to wear, engaged in fistfights with residents who wanted their children to go to school at improvised classrooms set up after the school buildings were destroyed. About a dozen government-paid teachers showed up, but were also driven off.

``They are damaging about 250 children,'' said Barrera.  ``It is not fair that older people want to reproduce and impose their own ignorance on a new generation.''

There have been periodic reports of deaths, threats and beatings inside the compound, where about 5,000 adherents live in brick houses inside medieval-castle-style walls. But no outside authorities have ever been allowed to conduct official functions like policing or registering births and deaths, a situation long tolerated for a community that voted overwhelmingly for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has governed Michoacan for nearly all of the last eight decades.

``What we are demanding is to be able to enter and investigate what has been happening, because there have been systematic crimes and violations of the law since 1973, when the community was founded,'' Barrera said.

The Human Rights Commission said Tuesday it had already sent inspectors to New Jerusalem and demanded the government send police to guard the schoolchildren and classrooms.

The religion was founded by Nabor Cardenas, ``Papa Nabor,'' a defrocked parish priest who said it was based on messages from the Virgin Mary relayed by an illiterate old woman. Together with supposed clairvoyant Agapito Gomez, who channeled voices, orders and predictions from the spirit world, they ordered the building of the compound, along with towers, walls and multiple church buildings.

Members believe it will be the only place on earth spared from an impending Apocalypse, which they had predicted would occur in cataclysmic volcanic eruptions around the 2000 millennium.

Residents of the New Jerusalem compound cannot use many modern conveniences, while women are not allowed to wear makeup, and must dress in robes and are referred to as ``nuns'' or ``courtesans.''  Residents recite Mass in Latin and use old exorcism and baptism rituals long abandoned by the mainstream church.

Religious conflicts, often between evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, still occur in some parts of rural Mexico, and have sometimes led to thousands of residents being expelled from their towns.

But the last large-scale religious violence occurred in the 1926-29 Cristero war, when harsh anti-clerical laws sparked an armed uprising by Roman Catholic rebels against Mexico's secular government. Tens of thousands of people died. (AP)

<관련 한글 기사>

광신도들 초등학교 파괴ㆍ방화

멕시코 남서부 한 마을에서 현대 문명을 거부하는 사이비 종교 광신도들이 초등학생들의 등굣길을 막고 나서면서 이를 반 대하는 주민들 간에 폭력사태가 빚어졌다.

22일(현지시간) 멕시코 뉴스채널인 '밀레니오TV' 등에 따르면 지난달 멕시코 미 초아칸주에 위치한 누에보 헤루살렌에서는 특정 종교 세력이 마을 내 학교 여러 곳을 파괴하고 교내 기물들을 불질러 태워버렸다.

이들은 금주 초 초등학교가 개학하며 학생들이 등교를 하려 하자 물리적으로 막아 나섰고 이를 문제삼는 마을 주민들과 결국 주먹다짐이 벌어졌다.

양측 간 싸움은 이날까지도 계속돼 여러 명이 다친 것으로 전해졌다.

이 종교를 창시한 사람은 전직 가톨릭 신부로 교계에서 파문을 당했으며 가톨릭 교회는 이 종파를 인정치 않고 있다.

종교 창시자는 1973년 누에보 헤루살렌에 공동체를 세운 것으로 알려졌다.

이 종교는 공식적인 교육은 물론 현대 문명의 상징인 TV나 라디오, 대중 음악, 여성 화장 등을 금지하고 있다.

또 누에보 헤루살렌이 세계 멸망으로부터 구원받을 수 있는 유일한 곳으로 믿으며 엑소시즘(악마퇴치)이나 오래된 가톨릭 의식을 유지하는 것으로 전해다.

멕시코 국가인권위원회는 초등학생들을 학교에 가지 못하게 하는 것은 인권침해 라며 현지에 조사관들을 파견했다.

멕시코에서 초등학교 교육은 의무적으로 실시되고 있다.

현지 당국은 누에보 헤루살렌에 치안력을 증파할 때라고 경고하면서도 폭력사태 가 대화로 풀리기를 희망한다는 입장을 밝히고 있다.

한편 멕시코 TV채널인 텔레비사는 이날 오후 폭력사태로 갈등을 빚은 양측이 폭력을 멈추기로 했다며 내주 초 학생들의 등교가 이뤄질 것이라고 보도했다.