The victims, members of the Independent Christian Pentecostal Church, filed a complaint with the ombudsman’s office after municipal authorities declared the area to be a ‘Protestant-free’ zone and forcibly closed the Pentecostal church with ‘concrete tubes, chains and padlocks’. The municipal president, Pedro Cruz Gonzalez, called for the destruction of the church building and demanded that the Protestants pay a 7000 peso (approximately £335) fine for ‘not being Catholic’. Tensions escalated when Cruz Gonzalez called for the Protestants to be lynched, imprisoned and tortured. Four men associated with the church were arbitrarily detained and tortured and only released after state and federal intervention.