Latino Pentecostals Protest Immigrant Slaying

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Praise the Lord,

Thought I'd post this here, came across on our Apostolicos email list.
During the Republican National Convention next week, a press conference
will be held regarding the slaying of our Apostolic brother from Nebraska
last year. You'll read the details below, but keep this topic on your
prayer list. God bless.

Bro. Jerry
---

8/12/96                 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS: So. California: Rev. Rick Hermosillo (619) 918-9098
                               Hank Palma      (909) 595-2608
          No. California:      Daniel Ramirez  (415) 326-4251
          Midwest:      Rev. Jorge Montes, Esq.(800) 908-7930
          Mexico City:  Rev. Adoniram Gaxiola  (525) 666-9381
         (Secretaria de Comunicacion Social)

Latino Pentecostals Protest Immigrant Slaying
        SAN DIEGO--An international coalition of Latino Apostolic
clergy and laypersons, together with Hispanic delegates to the
Republican National Convention, has called upon the United States
Department of Justice to empanel a federal jury to investigate the
slaying of an immigrant church member of the Apostolic Assembly of
the Faith in Christ Jesus, Francisco Renteria, at the hands of
police in Lincoln, Nebraska in late 1994.  An FBI report has
languished in the Office of Assistant Attorney General for Civil
Rights Deval Patrick since January of 1995.  "Justice delayed is
justice denied," wrote the pentecostal coalition in its letter to
Patrick urging a full-scale inquiry and federal trial.
        In a tragic case of mistaken identity, Renteria, a member of
the local Apostolic Assembly congregation, while escorting his
widowed mother home from the laundermat, was chased down,
surrounded, pummelled, choked, kicked, hog-tied and fatally injured
by five Lincoln, Nebraska, police officers on the evening of
September 30, 1994; he died comatose the following day.  In the
summer of 1995 nearly all-white juries (with no Latino members and
one Asian American member) bought the defense argument that
Renteria's undocumented status was the real culprit and "sudden death
syndrome" the cause of death, and acquitted the officers of
third-degree misdemeanor charges.  The testimony (mostly given in
Spanish) of family members--who had been horrified witnesses to the
assault--was discounted and even stricken from the record by the
judge.  "Anti-immigrant hostility, police brutality and paramedical
neglect led to the tragic demise of an exemplary saint, while crack
defense lawyers, juror credulity, and public and official
indifference denied justice and insulted the family and church,"
said the spokespersons.
        Coalition spokespersons warned that "a Pandora's box of
immigrant bashing has burst open in the country, claiming the life
of one of our brothers in Christ."  "These times of scapegoating and
violence are indeed troubling for those of us involved in ministry
to the Latino community," church members wrote in their letter to
Patrick.
        Coalition members have called upon political leaders and
delegates gathering at the Republican and Democratic conventions to
quell extremist rhetoric, to disavow proposed draconian measures,
like denying public education to undocumented children and U.S.
citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents,
and, together with the news media, to "repent for bearing false
witness and painting a dehumanizing and false caricature of Latino
immigrants--documented and undocumented alike--as a drain on public
coffers and a threat to the American way of life."  Such rhetoric,
the coalition contends, "renders much more easy and automatic the
criminalization and beating of the dark-skinned and Spanish-speaking
stranger, betrays biblically informed values of hospitality, and
tears at the fabric of family and society."  "When combined with the
heightened adrenaline of front-line officialdom, the combustible mix
is inevitably tragic and senseless," the group warned.
        Coalition members further challenged evangelical groups like
the Christian Coalition and others involved in political activism to
rediscover the gospel message of love towards the beaten-down
stranger, and to champion the welfare and rights of strangers and
immigrants as vigorously as they do those of the unborn:  "When we
are called into eternal accountability with the words,  I was a
stranger and you took me in,  it will be very difficult for
Christians to justify today's hostility and indifference with a
legalistic concern for earthly documents or the lack thereof."

>From its beginnings among Mexican immigrants in 1906 in Los
Angeles, the Apostolic Assembly now counts over 500 congregations in
25 states, has expanded to 15 countries.  The church, which spans
Latino culture across the border, and generally ministers within
Latino barrios and colonias, has developed over several decades a
pattern and network of quiet but profound pastoral support for
Latino immigrants and workers through its programs, ministry and
liturgy and through close ties with a sister church in Mexico, the
Iglesia Apostolica, and allied denominations in Central America.
The Apostolic community numbers well over a half-million adherents
and sympathizers from Alaska and Canada to Panama.