Preachers decide: Repent or die
Indigenous farmer Josue Gonzalez recalled how his pregnant wife and children were taken from their home by cult members in the remote hamlet of El Terron in Panama.
Gonzalez was out working his fields of taro and rice last Monday when the lay preachers of the ‘‘The New Light of God’’ came for the family and dragged them to an improvised church at a nearby ranch.
The family had been chosen by one of the lay preachers who earlier had a vision: Everyone in the hamlet had to repent their sins, or die.
There, the woman, her children and a female neighbour were beaten into repenting. If they didn’t do so convincingly, lay preachers holding cudgels, machetes and Bibles would lay into them.
Gonzalez began a desperate campaign to save them. Outnumbered, he was able to retrieve two children — a 5-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy — from the church.
‘‘I was able to snatch them from the fire they were in,’’ Gonzalez, 39, said on Thursday as he sat, exhausted, in shorts, with muddied feet and plastic sandals, outside a hospital in the neighbouring province of Veraguas, waiting for another of his kids to
Jose Gonzalez, left, follows his 5-year-old daughter, carried by a police officer, as they leave a hospital in Santiago, Panama.
be released.
The fire reference was metaphorical, but authorities reported that some of the estimated 20 victims of the preachers were burned with embers during the rituals.
One other son, 15, managed to escape on his own, despite being beaten by the fanatics.
After getting two kids out, Gonzalez frantically dashed about seeking help to save the rest of his family. But the remote hamlet, nestled in the jungle of the indigenous Ngabe Bugle enclave of Panama’s Caribbean coast, is hours from the nearest clinic, or
police force. ‘‘I looked for help from the authorities, but they didn’t respond. When they didn’t respond, I lost everything,’’ he said.
By the time authorities arrived by helicopter on Tuesday, it was too late for many. They found 14 bound, beaten townspeople in the church building, and a ritually sacrificed goat along with machetes and 10 lay preachers.
Evangelisto Santo, the local chief, said on Friday that among the 10 lay preachers in custody and scheduled to appear before a judge, were Gonzalez’s father and several of his brothers.
Then 2km away, officers found a fresh grave at a local cemetery, from which they extracted a total of seven bodies — Gonzalez’s wive, five of his children, and the teenage neighbour.
‘‘They decapitated Gonzalez said.
While fanaticism sparked the tragedy, the area’s isolation — and the poverty and lack of services for the indigenous Ngabe and Bugle peoples — had a role.
‘‘I need the government to help people in remote areas with little access, where you have to walk so far,’’ said Gonzalez.
Apparently, the sect is relatively new to the area, and had been operating locally only for about three months and there were few warning signs.
The assistant director of the National Police, Alexis Munoz, said the ‘‘New Light of God’’ believers had been ‘‘acting normally. It wasn’t a group that was doing anything against the community.’’
‘‘Then one of the members travelled outside the community, and when he returned a couple of months later, he brought back this idea that anyone who disagreed with their beliefs was against them and action had to be taken.’’
Things reportedly came to a head on Saturday, when one of the church members had a vision.
them,’’
‘‘One of them said God had given them a message,’’ said local prosecutor Rafael Baloyes. That message apparently boiled down to making everyone confess their sins or die.
Diomedes Blanco, a member of the community who helped police in the rescue, said that shortly before the killings, two people in the sect told him about what they were doing.
‘‘The reason for committing that kind of sacrifice was that God had anointed them as prophets,’’ he said two brothers had told him. ‘‘That God had anointed them to do all of those anomalies. The purpose of all of that was to destroy the community. Why? Because the community didn’t want to believe in God.’’
Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies specialising in Latin America at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the sect appears to be a ‘‘syncretic cult’’ espousing a ‘‘hodgepodge of beliefs stitched together’’ with Pentacostalism at its core but also elements of indigenous beliefs and even New Age philosophy — it reportedly talked about the importance of the ‘‘third eye’’ on a now-deleted Facebook page.
The ritually sacrificed goat found at the scene is ‘‘anathema to any Christian practice, seen as idolatry,’’ Chesnut added
–AP