The Third Convention

The origins of the Third Convention were in the Mexican Constitution of 1917. The Catholic Church held a strong political grasp on Mexico.  The Mexican government resented the power of the Catholic Church.  Also many foreign clergy had used their influence with the Mexican people to fight against the revolutionists during the Mexican Revolution.  The Revolutionists didn’t forget their rivals in the Catholic church and wrote anti-clergy laws into the 1917 Mexican Constitution.   A pro-Catholic uprising in 1926, named the Cristero War, the government came down even harder on all religions and as a result, all missionaries not born in Mexico were removed to the United States.  The removal of the foreign-born missionaries left a dearth of priesthood in the Mexican branches.

The opening of the 1930’s saw the Catholic Church yield to the Mexican Government demands and the anti-Catholic and anti-religion fervor subsided, but foreign born missionaries were still not allowed.  The lack of experienced priesthood and Pro-Mexican Nationalist sentiments, created a very tense atmosphere for some Mexican church members.

 In 1931, after the death of much beloved Mission President Rey L. Pratt who had presided over the Mexico Mission in some capacity since 1906, Antione R. Ivins was called as Mission President.  The Mission headquarters were in El Paso, Texas and had the responsibility of Mexico and all Spanish speaking populations in the Southwestern United States.

Under the leadership of District President Isaias Juarez, a  group of Mexican members met to discuss the the lack of Mexican leadership, Mexican missionaries and Church material written in the Spanish language.  The group wrote a letter to Church Leadership in Salt Lake City requesting a natural born Mexican to be Mission President. Their letter was ignored by Salt Lake City.  This became known as the First Convention.

The group met again in 1932 and having been rebuffed, wrote a second more strongly worded letter and petition asking for a Mexican Mission President.   This meeting became known as the Second Convention.  This time Church Leadership did not ignore the letter, but sent Antoine R. Ivins and Melvin J. Ballard to get the impudent saints back in line.   Ivins told the members that they were out of line and were not following Church protocol.

An uneasy peace was established until 1934 when Antoine R. Ivins was released and Harold W. Pratt, Rey Pratt’s half-brother was called as the new president of the Mexico Mission.   Harold W. Pratt was a Mexican Citizen having been born in the Mormon Colonies.   This and other events were seen as slights by Church Authorities and in 1936 another meeting was called in which Margarito Bautista and his nephew Able Paez called for a mission president with “de pura raza y sangre” (pure race and blood).  This meeting became known as the Third Convention causing a schism between the Church, Margarito Bautista, Able Paez, and over 1,000 members.   

Harold Pratt was released in 1938 and replaced by A. Lorenzo Anderson.  President Anderson served until 1942.  During the tenure of Pratt and Anderson no real headway was made in reaching out to the disaffected members and bringing them back into the fold.

Arwell L. Pierce was called as the new Mexican Mission President in 1942.   Pierce took a different approach.  He listened took the time to listen to both the Third Convention members’ grievances and perceived slights from Church Authorities.

Over the next four years, through much patience and diligent work, Arwell L. Pierce was able to help the Third Convention members realize that their goal shouldn’t be an all Latin Mission Presidency, but instead to have a fully functioning Stake of Zion staffed by Latin members in stake auxiliaries.

Through much back and forth, between The Third Conventionists and Salt Lake City, Arwell L. Pierce was to broker a peace agreement.  Arwell Pierce asked the First Presidency to reverse previous rulings by Church courts excommunicating the leaders of the Third Convention to be lessened to disfellowship, which allowed for an easier transition into full membership. 

President George A. Smith came to Mexico City to address a conference held in Tecalco, bringing bringing both Conventionists and Church Members back together.   The Mexico City conference brought 1,200 Conventionists back into fold.

Most of the dissident leaders came back into the Church.  However, Margarito Bautista, could not reconcile himself with the Church and continued practicing polygamy which eventually had ties to polygamist groups in Utah. 

The first Stake in Mexico City was formed 15 years later in 1961, with Mormon Colonist Harold Brown as Stake President. 

Summary by Ryan Windley.  Source:

A Shepherd to Mexico’s Saints: Arwell L. Pierce and the Third Convention

F. LaMond Tullis

https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/BYUStudies/article/viewFile/6437/6086

Another account of events surrounding the Third Convention can be found in E. LeRoy Hatch’s autobiography, Medico.

I stopped off in El Paso to pay a visit to President Harold Pratt, whom I greatly admired and who followed Elder Antoine R. Ivins as President of the Mexican Mission, under whom I had also served.  For yet another time, I was asked to put my plans on hold.

President Pratt asked me to accompany him and President Ivins to Mexico to talk to a large group of dissident members who were causing trouble in the Church there.  His reason for asking me to accompany them, he said, was that I knew I knew all the members in that part of the mission better than either he or President Ivins.  I had actually advised President Pratt while I was still on my mission in Mexico that I suspected that Margarito Bautista, very outspokenly anti-Anglo, might be stirring up some of the members and actually might be promulgating polygamy.  He and I had a serious blow-up the night before I left my mission over judging in a speech contest in the M.I.A. convention I had organized; but I knew his anger was more deep-seated , that not only did he not like me because I was of Anglo descent, but he also resented the esteem and love the members openly displayed for me when they seated me at the head of their dinner tables and deferred often to my opinion—after all, I was only an elder and he was a high priest.

After I left my mission, Margarito Bautista openly courted many of the leaders and members of the church and had a large following, all of whom were invited to the meeting with President Pratt and Ivins in San Pedro Martir.  The leaders of the movement, known as La Tercera Convencion, angrily called for church leadership to be put in the hands of the Mexican people.  President Ivins tried to explain that they did not yet have the experience necessary to be given leadership positions in the Church, but he promised them that the time would come.  They were openly hostile, refused to listen and even booed and yelled at those two fine mission presidents, and the meeting turned into a complete disaster.  It ended up that a court was held, on which I sat, and the seven men who had assumed leadership roles among the apostate group were excommunicated.  Almost a third of the Church members in the area chose to follow them. 

Sometime later, as I attended medical school I became aware of the problem escalating.  Not all of the members who fell away joined the polygamous cult Bautista formed near Ozumba, but he did exert influence on them.  The situation became of such concern that two of the Apostles traved to Mexico to meet with the people.  Tecalco, the center of the dissident activity, was chosen for the meeting.  President Pratt, the two Apostles, Abel Paez (once a counselor to the great leader, Isaias Juarez, and now one of the leaders of the dissidents) and I sat on the stand.

Someone in the congregation, apparently not in complete sympathy with the group, managed to get a message to President Pratt that two Mexican Government officials were in attendance and they planned to arrest the Apostles for acting illegally in a ministerial capacity if the demands of the apostates were not met.

President Pratt slipped me the keys to his car and note instructing me to take the Apostles with me at the next break in the meeting and drive them by a circuitous route through Cuautla and Cuervanaca to Mexico City.  There I was to locate my brother Seville and a cousin of ours and give them the Apostles’ train tickets.  They were to board the northbound train in place of the Apostles, whom I was to drive to Lecheria, a station north of Mexico City, where the four would exchange places, I carried out his instructions, and the Apostles left Mexico without incident. 

When the rebellious crowd realized what had happened, we were severely criticized for misjudging their motives in inviting the two government officials to that meeting.  But there was no other explanation for the presence of those two men.  They certainly were not interested in the gospel. 

Some of the excommunicated leaders eventually became disenchanted with their situation and made overtures to President Arwell Pierce, who had succeeded President Pratt as Mission President, about returning to the Church, but they refused to accept that they must be re-baptized , a requisite for readmission following excommunication.  Eventually, it was decided to change their excommunication to disfellowshipment wherein re-baptism was not a condition of returning to full membership in the Church.      I, myself, felt the decision was inspired, because in the eyes of other dissident members those leaders saved face, bitterness lessened, and eventually the majority of the seven returned to full fellowship, including Able Paez.  Little by little the members who had fallen away drifted back.

Wounds were finally healed entirely when President George Albert Smith traveled to Tecalco for a special conference.  When he arrived, members and non-members alike thronged the sides of the road leading to the chapel, threw flowers in his path and joined together to sing “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet.”  

Medico My Life As A Country Doc in Mexico

LeRoy Hatch, M.D. pages 25-26