Bishop Ruiz championed Mexico’s indigenous
By Catholic News Service
MEXICO CITY - Retired Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, known as the champion of the poor and indigenous in southern Mexico, died Jan. 24 of complications from long-standing illnesses. He was 86.The bishop headed the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas from 1960 to 2000, and from 1994 to 1998 mediated a commission looking for an end to the conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas state.
For his work with the state’s indigenous population he received death threats and, in 2002, was the recipient of the Niwano Peace Prize for his work “raising the social standing of the indigenous communities of Mexico” and for his work toward “the reclamation and preservation of their native cultures.”
Bishop Ruiz had suffered from arterial hypertension and diabetes for a decade and had obstructed arteries, some cerebral damage and difficulty moving his body. The severity of his illness led to his transfer Jan. 12 to a Mexico City hospital from one in the state of Queretaro.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Bishop Ruiz’s death “constitutes a grand loss for Mexico.”
“Samuel Ruiz strove to build a more just Mexico — egalitarian, dignified and without discrimination in it — so that indigenous communities have a voice and their rights and freedoms are respected by all,” the president said in a statement.
Bishop Ruiz attended every session of the Second Vatican Council and, in the 1960s, began speaking out against Chiapas’ unwritten laws — such as those prohibiting Indians from walking the streets after dark and, even into the early 1970s, forcing them to step off city sidewalks into the gutter whenever non-Indians approached.
The bishop said his faith led him to examine the roots of the injustice and prompted his writings on the exploitation of native Americans and his research into indigenous cosmology and theology. However, his remarks against the powerful landlord class were construed by some, including some at the Vatican, as originating in Marxist class theory, rather than the Gospel.
During Pope John Paul II’s 1990 visit to Mexico, landowners published an open letter, accusing Bishop Ruiz of being a communist and fomenting class hatred.
Bishop Ruiz learned to speak four Mayan languages and often travelled by mule through his diocese, where he was affectionately called Don Samuel or “Tata,” which means father in a Mayan language.
Samuel Ruiz Garcia was born Nov. 3, 1924, in Irapuato, Mexico. He was ordained a priest in 1949 after studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He served as a seminary rector in Leon, Mexico, and was consecrated a bishop in 1960.
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