Confrontation Looming Between Mexican Authorities and Religious Cult

AP reported yesterday on an impending violent confrontation in Mexico between government authorities and a religious sect that is refusing to permit government schools to operate in their walled community.  The sect, founded in 1973 by a renegade Catholic priest who objected to the Church's ending of Latin masses and other modernizations, lives in its own walled compound called New Jerusalem-- located in the Mexican state of Michoacan.  The sect prohibits formal schooling, television, radio, telephones, modern music and modern dress. It has demanded the right to appoint its own teachers, set its own curriculum and require robes and headscarves for female pupils. Last month, sect followers destroyed three government school buildings in the community, burning desks and computers. On Monday, they engaged in fistfights with parents who wanted their children to attend school in makeshift classrooms that had been set up.  The sect members also drove off about a dozen government-paid teachers. The township where the New Jerusalem compound is located, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission and the Roman Catholic Church all want the government to break the compound's blockade.