Negation Aspiration vol. 198

Upon arriving at the hamlet of Alto Terrón—situated in northwestern Panama and lacking both electricity and phone service—investigators found at least 15 people being tortured in a thatch-roofed structure belonging to a sect called “Nueva Luz de Dios” (New Light of God). The victims, including two pregnant women, were bound on the floor before a ritually slaughtered goat. At least one woman was naked, and had likely been raped. Meanwhile, some nine “priests” were exhorting the prisoners to accept “the word of God,” while striking them with knives and machetes.

Satanic rites. Child sacrifices. A messianic leader who slays his own family. These are the wicked and depraved parts of the story that have been making headlines throughout the hemisphere–the sensational angles that may give Trumpistas and Wall Builders fresh fuel for fearmongering, new talking points, under their breaths of course, about “savage brown people” south of the border.

But there’s another side to this tale that makes it even more Conradian, involving as it does traditional people’s cultural degradation, harsh economic conditions, and a hard-line, extremist version of Christianity exported to Panama straight from the good old U.S. of A.

Maybe the Ngäbe-Buglé are the ones who need the wall.

Inside the Religious Death Cult That Massacred Seven in Panama