When members of Iglesia Bautista Refugio de Generaciones go out to evangelize, pastor Esaú Aguilar knows they will have company.
Los halcones (“the falcons”), young men working for local drug cartel bosses, flock right behind them.
In El Refugio, a small town west of Guadalajara, Mexico, the halcones alert criminals when police, rival gangs, or any other group could threaten business. The 7,000-person town is located in the center of the Mexican state of Jalisco, home to one of the smallest evangelical populations in the country (just 4.7%) as well as to the powerful Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, considered a terrorist organization by the American government.
In March of this year, authorities discovered Rancho Izaguirre, a training camp and killing site run by the cartel. This “Mexican Auschwitz,” as the newspaper El País called it, is a 10-minute drive from Aguilar’s rural church.
At the ranch, a 2.5-acre compound with a single small building and a pair of rearing horses painted on its front gates, authorities found ashes and bone fragments, as well as 200 pairs of shoes, hundreds of clothing items, backpacks, and books.
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People searching for missing loved ones can consult an online catalog of the findings. A Bible and a pair of sneakers collected at Rancho Izaguirre led a family to identify their daughter.
The drug cartels impose such fear over large sectors of Mexican society that the site’s discovery brought a kind of strange relief to Aguilar.
“We are in a complicated area,” the pastor said. “When all this happened, we felt a little more at peace. Many soldiers came, and the soldiers are more respected than the ordinary police.”
According to government reports analyzed by the newspaper El Universal, criminal organizations operate in 75 percent of Mexico—making it almost impossible for the country’s churches and ministries not to feel threatened by the cartels.
Most of the time, criminal groups don’t choose churches or evangelicals as primary targets. The cartel leaders “say we are taking care of their families,” said Constantino Varas, president of the Convención Nacional Bautista de México.
But even without gang leaders directly forcing places of worship to close, their presence makes churchgoers feel uneasy.
“In some cases, there were no services because there was no quorum,” said Varas. “Families had to flee because gangs were recruiting all the young people, and there were no people to gather with.”
Last year, churches in at least 10 municipalities in Southern Mexico closed their doors over fears of cartel violence.
Reports spread of criminal gangs kidnapping and extorting pastors.
“These criminal organizations have obvious financial interests. When someone receives donations or has a large amount of tithes, they can become a target,” said Teresa Flores, director of the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Latin America (OLIRE).
Flores said authorities usually don’t treat such violence as religious persecution. Since it’s widespread, it cannot be labeled as “systematic hostility or ill-treatment encountered by an individual or group because of their religious beliefs.”
But criminal activity in Mexico still puts pressure on the country’s evangelical minority.
“Violence leads to changes in worship times or days because people can’t go out at night, for example,” Flores said. “It also causes people to not attend the services because it might be risky; shootings may occur.”
These incidents interfere with the work of religious ministries, which are promoters of peace. “Churches work to give hope and make the community more resilient; they help people navigate this space of violence,” she said.
Chiapas, located along the southern border with Guatemala, is the most evangelical state in Mexico, with a third of the population identifying as Protestant or evangelical. It’s also one of the places where persecution against evangelicalism is more prevalent.
In regions inhabited by Indigenous ethnic groups, who practice a form of Catholicism blended with local spiritual practices, Protestant converts face community retaliation that can turn violent. Some may have basic services like clean water and electricity cut off, and children from evangelical families can be barred from attending community schools.
The persecution has intensified in recent years, as criminal groups form alliances with local leaders who were already exerting pressure on evangelicals, Flores said.
“For many years we’ve had people close to us who speak about this intersection of organized crime and persecution in some communities in that area,” she said. “That alliance is not something public, and these are things very difficult to quantify in a report.”
One ministry worker described how villagers in Chiapas ask missionaries to help them travel elsewhere to access services that they’ve been blocked from, like going to the doctor or requesting documents at a government office.
“In one occasion, the criminals had stolen all the cars in the town,” the worker said. (CT is not identifying her by name because of the safety risks in the region.)
The criminal organizations in these areas leverage the special treatment and accommodations Indigenous communities have been granted by Mexican law to run their communities according to their ancestral practices—called usos y costumbres (“uses and customs”).
Local sources told CT that the cartels illegally take control of ejidos—land designated for communal farming—through threats or bribes.
Currently, the region faces an ongoing territory dispute between the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and the Sinaloa Cartel, with both recognizing the area as a hub for smuggling drugs and migrants bound for the US.
Conflict in the region dates back decades. Paramilitary fighters that once belonged to the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist-oriented guerrilla group, now work for the cartels. And violence is spreading into the local communities, ministry leaders say.
“Before, [the drug traffickers] didn’t mess with the people, but they have been getting involved with society over the last three years,” said one evangelical pastor, who is not being named to protect his safety.
The drug dealers in town demand that local leaders send people to help block highways or collect money from merchants. Those who refuse risk beatings or torture.
The cartel’s requests for volunteers have also reached the evangelical pastor’s church. “We decided not to go, so they imposed a fine,” the pastor said. It’s 800 pesos (around $40 USD) per person per day. The upkeep of the cartel camps also weighs on the community—a monthly fee of 100 pesos to feed the gang members.
More than a fine, people fear that those recruited for a task won’t ever come back.
Criminal organizations in Mexico rely on forced recruitment—kidnapping young people from homes or luring them with false job offers on social media. According to the Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico, at least 145,000 children and teenagers are at risk, most between the ages of 12 and 14.
In rare, more specific cases, the groups sell recruits on the criminal lifestyle with free housing, food, and military training, offering high salaries to former police officers and military personnel. Once in organized crime, they can be assigned to different jobs, like working in clandestine call centers that run frauds of various types or even becoming hitmen for the cartel.
Authorities believe the compound in Jalisco, Rancho Izaguirre, served as a center for forced recruitment.
“Families in our congregations, relatives, neighbors have been affected by the disappearances,” said Moisés Contreras Pelayo, pastor of Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva in Tala (Jalisco), 12 miles east of Rancho Izaguirre. “My neighbor on one side, her son disappeared two years ago, and it is now known that he had been at Rancho Izaguirre.”
In search of her son, the woman joined a group of madres buscadoras, mothers who look for their missing children. One of these groups discovered Rancho Izaguirre and reported it to authorities. The women involved have since received death threats, and one was killed in April.
Up the road from the gruesome site, El Refugio de Generaciones continues to gather 15 to 20 people to worship on Sundays. Pastor Aguilar hands out evangelistic pamphlets, but even with their proximity, he has not heard of anyone involved with the cartels approaching the church.
Aguilar divides his time between church duties and his job at a tomato packaging company—now at risk of closure due to US tariffs on Mexico.
He prays for the young people who get trapped by the cartels.
“It’s a life of slavery and sin,” he said. “The only thing that can free you from it is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
