CHOLULA, Mexico — Three men, field laborers by day, huddle on a bench as night descends, a mess of empty bottles of hard liquor strewn nearby. Another man gets a refresher on how to ring the bell in case of emergency. One listens attentively to orders from their leader.
It is time to guard the churches of Cholula.
A small, picturesque city 80 miles southeast of Mexico City, Cholula is said to have a church for every day of the year. There are, in reality, about 80 in all, many dating to the 17th century and filled with paintings and sculptures from that time. It is enough to draw hordes of worshipers — and thieves.
At the Church of Santa María Acuexcomac, an imposing golden frame hangs on the wall by the entrance, empty except for the jagged edges of the canvas where thieves plunged their knives. Angel-shaped shadows, etched by years of sunlight, now appear eerily on walls where sculptures have been snatched, haunting the altar like ghosts.
Theft of religious art is not new here, but an elaborate robbery last October — at least a dozen images were taken, some with the help of scaffolding — left the community on edge.
Add in the increase in gang activity throughout town, and the largely unresponsive and underequipped authorities, and the citizens here, known for their religious fervor, have come up with a grass-roots response: to increase vigilance themselves.
A human surveillance system for churches has been in place in Cholula since colonial times, but as thefts have increased in scope, some churches have doubled up on volunteers, added night shifts and armed their protectors.
“It went from being a tranquil town to entirely the opposite,” said Rufino Arenas, squinting down at a notebook with bell-ringing instructions. He had been living and working in Mexico City but came back at the beginning of January to help protect Santa María Acuexcomac, his childhood church.
Fidela Quia Torres, a stout woman with dark, narrow eyes, has been volunteering at the church during the day. She watches church visitors for suspicious behavior, like picture taking, out of concerns that the photographs will be compiled into a catalog for art traffickers.
In the nearby Church of the Santísima Trinidad, which was almost completely pillaged in 2008, Herminio Toxqui has moved his family into a tiny room behind the altar with two mattresses and a rickety dining table, leaving him ready to ring the bell and summon help from the community at any time if he detects suspicious activity.
And in the Church of San Gregorio Zacapechpan, looted in 2010, mandatory shifts for all able-bodied men in the neighborhood have been put into effect. They are expected to show up ready for battle with armed bandits.
“People know that when they come for a watch, they bring their own weapons,” said the Rev. Patricio Solís Soriano, the church priest.
Even migrants from Cholula living in the United States, typically in Illinois and New York, have gotten involved in community protection efforts. After a handful of paintings that may have been 400 years old were stolen, a group of expatriates in the United States organized a fund-raiser. They bought and sent video cameras that almost successfully blend in with the gold-trimmed arches in San Gregorio Zacapechpan.
Still, the citizen efforts can seem haphazard and disorganized. In several of the churches that have set up closed-circuit camera systems, including San Gregorio Zacapechpan, no one seems to know who has the key to the monitoring center, or sometimes even where these rooms are located.
In the Church of Santa María Tonanzintla, the crown jewel of Cholula’s churches for its 16th-century indigenous Baroque art, a monitor that receives a continuous feed of images from cameras inside is always on, but it is locked away and blocked by an imposing wooden cabinet, so no one can look at it.
Many community members who have gotten involved in these efforts say they have done so to prove their religious devotion and are unaware of how much the artworks they are guarding are worth.
“Even our great-grandparents didn’t know,” said a woman attending Sunday Mass at Santa María Acuexcomac.
Those involved in the thefts clearly have a better sense of how lucrative a business it is. A group of religious-themed 18th-century paintings by the Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera sold for $362,500 in 2010, according to an online listing by Sotheby’s auction house.
Art experts say that it is impossible to know how many of the Mexican paintings sold abroad are stolen, but that global interest in Mexican art was piqued in the 1990s, after the “Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Clara Bargellini, an art history investigator at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, says there is a particular hunger for this kind of art in the southeastern United States. Last October, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned more than 4,000 pieces of looted cultural artifacts to Mexico, including pieces of pottery dating back 1,500 years.
But efforts by Mexican, American and international authorities to find stolen religious paintings and return them to their original place often fail because few of the artworks have been cataloged.
Despite plans by the National Institute of Anthropology and History and the federal attorney general’s office to create comprehensive catalogs, documentation of this type of art remains incomplete and decentralized.
Volunteers in at least half a dozen churches in Cholula complained that the institute had yet to visit them. Most lack access to computers and cameras to document their art and, in case of theft, aid investigations.
The situation not only has left church walls bare, but has spread gloom and skepticism over once-trusting communities.
“Many times, the thieves are already inside; sometimes they are the same ones that have the key to the church,” said Jorge Segovia, who is in charge of an art-cataloging project for the Archdiocese of Mexico.
Now, when new faces enter most churches here, they stir discomfort and raise alertness, a loss of trust and good will that people here lament. The thieves, churchgoers say, took more than just art.
“They are even stealing our faith,” Mr. Arenas said.
Cholula Journal: Looting of Cholula Churches Stirs Locals to Action
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Cholula Journal: Looting of Cholula Churches Stirs Locals to Action
