Rossana Esther Muga Gonzáles has dedicated almost her entire life as a lawyer to international law and strategic litigation. Her training in legal education programs at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in the United States and her field experience in various countries influenced this path. For 13 years, her focus has been on defending freedom of belief. As an external consultant for the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America (OLIRE), she investigates everything from normative and factual restrictions on this right to patterns of victimization and types of perpetrators. Like an artist, she sketches a comprehensive portrait, sometimes of harsh scenes: displacement, intimidation, violence.

Analyzing the context, documenting attacks, and translating the evidence into concrete recommendations for public actors, church networks, and international partners are the core of her work. In other words, it shouldn’t remain merely a diagnosis, “but rather fuel advocacy processes capable of driving real changes in public policies and protection practices with a real impact on the affected communities.”

At the same time, she laments that in predominantly Christian societies like those in Latin America, religious freedom is frequently underestimated.

Muga Gonzales believes that strengthening religious freedom also strengthens rights connected to its exercise, such as freedom of expression and assembly. Furthermore, “in critical moments, such as in social-communist regimes, under the violence of organized crime, or in indigenous contexts where abandoning community beliefs is punished, it reveals how important religious freedom is for dignity and personal resilience.”

Here is part two of my interview with Muga. (Read part one)

Mexico has a similar security problem. Is the same scenario playing out there, or are there variations?

There are common elements with Colombia, but in Mexico, the focus is on how organized crime has practically taken over the entire national territory. We’re talking about the simultaneous presence of several cartels and local armed groups vying for control of routes, illicit economies, and communities, in a context of weak or indifferent state institutions.

In this scenario, the social role of the church — both Catholic and evangelical — is central and, at the same time, highly risky. Parishes, congregations, and Christian organizations are on the front lines of defense for the most vulnerable: they support families of the disappeared, assist migrants, denounce extortion and abuse, expose the corruption that allows organized crime to expand, and maintain community support networks where the state fails to reach. Furthermore, many religious leaders assume informal mediation roles: they intercede with criminal groups to prevent reprisals against communities, seek to stop attacks, negotiate releases, or protect schools and churches.

This visibility and commitment explain the particular vulnerability of Christians in Mexico, especially their leaders. When a parish organizes the community against extortion, when a pastor encourages young people not to join the cartels, or when a Christian organization refuses to legitimize a criminal group’s territorial control, the response can be intimidation, threats, kidnapping, or murder. In recent years, there has also been a growing brutality in the violence against religious leaders: they are not only eliminated, but sometimes the methods used are radicalized, sending a warning message to the entire community.

According to records from OLIRE’s Violent Incidents Database, 2025 saw a worrying increase in the number of murders and serious attacks against Christians in Mexico, with a particular impact on those who exercise pastoral or community leadership. All of this is happening in a country with the largest Christian population in Latin America and the largest Catholic population in the region.

The paradox is clear: in the most demographically Christian nation on the continent, those who actively live their faith in the social sphere are among the most vulnerable to violence. Despite this, worrying indifference persists among the authorities: the specific vulnerability of the religious sector is rarely acknowledged as such; these attacks are treated as acts of general violence, without differentiated policies for prevention, protection, or investigation.

In Mexico, there is the well-known case of indigenous people in communities in Chiapas who cut off basic services, issue fines, or have even burned down the homes of converts to Protestantism. What are the latest developments regarding this particular situation?

What we see in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and some other states is an old conflict that hasn’t disappeared but rather has been reconfigured. In many Indigenous communities, local authorities operate according to customs and traditions that include a strong religious component — sometimes a mixture of their own traditions and expressions of popular religiosity rooted in Catholicism — patron saint festivals, collective rituals, alcohol consumption in certain contexts, mandatory economic contributions, and a lived experience of faith closely linked to community cohesion.

We are not talking here about the Catholic Church as an institution, but about a local framework where elements of traditional religiosity and popular Catholicism are integrated into the structures of Indigenous community governance.

When a family converts to an evangelical denomination and stops participating — not paying dues, not attending ceremonies, questioning certain practices — the tension often translates into sanctions imposed by community authorities: electricity and water cutoffs, fines, community jail, and, in extreme cases, destruction of houses of worship and expulsion from the village. These are not isolated anecdotes from the past, but rather a pattern that continues to be documented today, with episodes of violence and displacement affecting entire communities.

In recent years, these cases have received somewhat more media coverage than before, but they still haven’t generated enough impact to enter the national debate. They are often trivialized as “neighborhood conflicts” or mere internal disputes, without acknowledging the dimension of human rights violations they entail. Furthermore, the new development is that these dynamics now coexist with broader violence linked to the presence of criminal groups in the region. This significantly aggravates the impact of any expulsion: the displaced family not only loses its community and livelihoods, but also finds itself in a more insecure environment, with fewer support networks and very few real possibilities of safe return.

Therefore, in Mexico, the vulnerability of Christians is twofold. On the one hand, they face the violence of organized crime that is widespread throughout the country; On the other hand, there are community conflicts in Indigenous areas where conversion to Christianity — especially to evangelical churches — comes at a very high cost in terms of security, belonging, and access to basic rights. From our advocacy work, we insist that this is not just about religious freedom in the strict sense, but about a whole range of violated rights — housing, education, cultural identity, personal integrity — that are compromised under the guise of community autonomy and in the face of a state response that, even today, remains clearly insufficient.

As a trend in other Western countries, we have seen that in Mexico and Colombia many ministers and believers are disqualified when they try to participate in democratic debate based on their convictions. What are the risks of understanding religion as merely relevant to the private sphere?

This trend is increasingly visible in the region. Formally, we continue to speak of secular states that guarantee freedom of conscience; but in practice, a narrative is taking hold according to which faith is acceptable as long as it remains within the private, domestic, or strictly liturgical sphere. As soon as religious convictions are expressed in debates about education, family, bioethics, corruption, or violence, many ministers and believers are disqualified beforehand, not for the quality of their arguments, but for the origin of their beliefs.

This generates what in human rights we call a chilling effect: a direct prohibition is not necessary for people to self-censor. For example, when religious leaders stop preaching on certain topics “because it could get them into trouble,” teachers prefer not to mention their faith in the classroom, professionals avoid participating in certain public debates, or community leaders think twice before signing an open letter for fear of losing their jobs or being targeted on social media. Legally, they “can” speak, but in everyday life, the message is that it is safer to remain silent. The result is an impoverishment of the public sphere, where relevant voices — precisely because of their community roots — disappear from the debate for fear of the consequences.

In Mexico, this tension has become especially visible in recent weeks. In early November 2025, an initiative was presented to Congress to reform the Law of Religious Associations and Public Worship, with the aim of extending to the internet the historical restrictions that churches face on radio and television. The proposal would have subjected homilies broadcast online, the profiles of priests and pastors on social media, and other digital religious content to the control of a new regulatory authority, with the argument of “harmonizing” religious freedom, freedom of expression, and the secular nature of the State in the digital environment.

Although the initiative was withdrawn after widespread rejection from churches and civil organizations, the debate is revealing: it was presented as a simple technological update, but in practice, it would have created a special oversight regime for online religious expression, with a clear potential for censorship and the inhibition of participation by religious leaders and also by political leaders who publicly profess their faith.

The underlying problem is that state neutrality is increasingly invoked as a pretext to cancel, restrict, or confine religious expression to the private sphere. This stems from a very narrow interpretation of secularism: the state is neutral not when it guarantees that all voices can be expressed on equal terms, but when it succeeds in making religious convictions disappear from the public sphere. Under this logic, any reference to faith in a speech, a homily disseminated on social media, or the participation of ministers in ethical debates is seen as a threat to neutrality that must be contained, regulated, or sanctioned.

From the perspective of religious freedom, this is especially dangerous in countries where outward expressions of faith are already clearly diminished by other factors: violence from organized crime, community pressures, and discrimination in the workplace or in educational settings. In contexts like those of Mexico and Colombia, where Christians suffer threats, murders, and displacement because of their religious commitment, adding a layer of legal or cultural suspicion to any expression of faith in the public sphere ultimately pushes them into a double marginalization: physically vulnerable in their territories and symbolically silenced in democratic debate.

How do you think the efforts of countries like the United States could be more effective in promoting religious freedom in the Latin American region in general, and specifically in Colombia and Mexico?

The efforts of the United States and other international actors regarding religious freedom have significant potential, but also clear limitations. On the positive side, annual reports and special designations provide visibility and structure: they document patterns of violations, name responsible actors, highlight areas of risk, and offer a common language that local organizations can use in litigation, dialogue with governments, or advocacy work.

In Colombia and Mexico, for example, we have seen cases where the inclusion of certain incidents in international reports changes the level of attention they receive from national authorities or diplomatic missions.

However, for this potential to be fully realized, more than just well-written reports aimed at external audiences is needed. An essential part of the work that remains is to generate greater awareness of the issue internally: within religious communities themselves and among governments. In contexts where violence is so widespread and commonplace, many victims perceive their situation “only” as general insecurity or crime, and fail to clearly identify the specific aspects of religious freedom involved.

Similarly, it is not always easy to raise awareness among public officials that, in certain patterns of violence, religious affiliation or the role of a Christian leader is a determining risk factor. Well-oriented international cooperation should invest more in training, exchange, and local capacity building so that churches, civil society, and authorities can recognize this dimension and act accordingly.

Another key aspect is that all international reporting on religious freedom — including reports from the United States and other actors — must reflect the true diversity of the problems facing the religious sector in the region.

In Latin America, violations do not only come from state agents, but also — and very frequently — from non-state armed actors and hybrid configurations of local power.

Therefore, it is not enough to interpret the situation in purely ideological or doctrinal terms. As the cases of Colombia and Mexico show, the vulnerability of churches is not explained solely by what they think or preach, but because their expressions and practices of faith — working with young people, accompanying victims, mediating conflicts, rejecting corruption or illicit crops — become direct risk factors. Only by acknowledging this complexity — where faith intersects with criminal violence, territorial control, and community conflicts — is it possible to address the reality of religious communities in the complex contexts of Latin America fairly.

At OLIRE, we also insist that the ultimate goal of these efforts must be to translate international pressure into concrete changes in public policy and affirmative action for protection. Behind every statistic and legal category are very real people: the religious leader who receives a written threat and doesn’t know if they can continue holding services on Sunday, the nun who accompanies families of the disappeared and begins to be followed by armed men, the Indigenous community that abandons their village at night because it is no longer safe to stay.

For them, the difference lies not in how many reports are published, but in whether that international visibility translates into safe relocations, protective measures, serious investigations, and clear signs that their case matters. That is the point at which advocacy ceases to be abstract rhetoric and becomes real support for the victims.