III. Like a Voice in the Desert of Apostasy

Ramos Mexia was ever the stalwart champion of justice and liberty. In tone and temperament he was more like the North American pioneer Roger Williams, Baptist founder of Rhode Island. He stood in sharp contrast to the South American Spanish noblemen of the time, who, fearless and daring, but superstitious and cruel, and armed with sword and spear, were constantly seeking gold and adventure, and were invariably accompanied by the Catholic friar, who ever raised the Roman altar on the fields of carnage and of booty.PFF4 923.1

Don Francisco was notoriously the great “Heretic of the South,” preaching to the masses hungry for truth, reality, and social justice, and teaching that religion is an individual relationship to God, independent of an earthly priesthood, that the Father is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth, and that mere external forms but harm and falsify. ^{6Ibid., pp. 7, 8.}PFF4 923.2

The very fact that a mere layman should occupy himself; with religion was itself considered a heresy. According to current concept, how could there be any truth or true religion without a priest, a temple, and an altar? How could our heavenly Father be invoked outside the orbit of the church with its liturgy, robes, trappings, and incense? How was it possible to worship without the mass, or to be a Christian without the stipulated baptism and confession and all the sacraments? And how could religious morals be inculcated without recourse to the moral pressure of paradise, hell, and purgatory?PFF4 923.3

1. PROTESTS UNFAIR TREATMENT OF INDIANS

According to Carranzas, Ramos Mexia was a member of the Government Council in the early days of the revolution, in 1811, and was a member of the Observers Commission in 1815-1816. Later, after becoming thoroughly immersed in the famous work on the second advent written by the noted Chilean Jesuit, Manuel Lacunza, ^{7See Prophetic Faith, Vol. Ill, pp. 303-324.} he published his own memoirs. Then he represented sixteen Pampas Indian chiefs in the peace treaty signed with the government of Buenos Aires on March 7, 1820, from his establishment at Miraflores. ^{8C. Ricci, Un puritano argentine, p. 10.} And he wrote a letter to Governor Marcos Balcarce protesting the treatment of the Indians by the Catholic officers and by the priests of the Roman faith, and sent with it a copy of his new Abecedario de la religion (The A B C of Religion). ^{9Ibid., pp. 11-15. Historian Adolfo Saldias certifies to the faithfulness of the copy, declaring the original to be in his own archives. Vida y escritos del Padre Castaneda, pp. 201, 202.}PFF4 923.4

Professor Ricci, who brought Ramos Mexia out of the twilight of Argentine history, considers him unique in the annals of South America. ^{10Clemente Ricci, En la penumbra de la historia, p. 7 (also in La Reforma, December, 1912).} Because of his relationship to police administration, he was able to prepare his own exposition of common law in its various religious, social, and juridical implications—which he did. This will be noted later.PFF4 924.1

2. CLAIMED TO BE SPOKESMAN FOR GOD

Ramos Mexia comes into the limelight in the hectic period of South American independence movements, amid the distracting din of threats and battle and savage sorties of primitive ferocity that threatened to level everything substantial before them, and reduce all to ruin. It was during the height of these convulsions that a new national life struggled to see the light of day. And it was in the midst of conflicting voices, by various thinkers, statesmen, warriors, and orators, that the solitary figure of Francisco Ramos Mexia arose-the Argentine Puritan.PFF4 924.2

His was a character that would not bend his convictions before any earthly authority or force that might oppose him, for he considered himself as constituting a voice from on high, clothed with power to speak with authority to the people. He cited the epistle of Romans, from the Vulgate, with impressive emphasis, insisting that “only God is true and every man a liar.” It was this authoritarian character of his declarations that provoked the wrath of the church. From his establishment at Miraflores his voice was heard like the voice of a prophet in the desert, vibrant with the “loneliness of the Panipa,” declaring, “The Omnipotent has sent me to you-the Omnipotent has placed His hand on my shoulder—and since He took the veil from my face, I have never remained silent.” ^{11Ibid., p. 13.}PFF4 924.3