BY RICARDO SANDOVAL
 Herald World Staff

 BETANIA, Mexico -- Al Schreuder stepped to a wooden gate, knocked and spoke
 in smooth Tzotzil -- the language of many Mayan Indians in Mexico's state of
 Chiapas.

 ``Are you alive? Are you here? May I come in?'' Schreuder asked, pausing after
 each question. ``I'm coming in now.''

 The Mayan greeting is a deferential approach that was seldom used by
 Presbyterian missionaries when Schreuder arrived in Chiapas 20 years ago from
 Michigan. But Christian missionaries in Chiapas have had to bend in ways that
 would probably shock the Spanish priests who converted Mayans 500 years ago
 with a heavy-handed ministry.

 Schreuder's style is a big departure from stern Protestant missionaries of a
 century ago.

 ``It's not like Hawaii,'' Schreuder said as he recalls the arrival of Bible-thumping
 missionaries in the Pacific Islands in the late 1800s. ``There is no tearing down of
 native cultures.''

 Leaving native traditions intact is the best way missionaries have found to reach
 would-be converts in Mexico.

 Most Indians in Chiapas are devoutly Catholic, but in many villages Roman
 Catholicism is mixed with pre-Colombian spiritualism. That compromise 500
 years ago enabled Catholic missionaries to make converts among tribes that had
 resisted waves of violent attacks from Spain's conquistadors.

 But since the 1930s, Protestant missionaries have regarded Mayan Catholicism
 as a weak form of Christianity and taken it upon themselves to bring God to
 Chiapas.

 In recent years, Protestants have won more converts among Mayans who grew
 tired of the local Catholic casiques -- autocratic political leaders or merchants
 who sell goods used in church rituals. Today, Schreuder counts 300,000 Chiapas
 Mayans and mestizos -- people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood -- as members
 of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico.

 News reports say much of the violence that grips Chiapas stems from struggles
 between Catholics and Protestants. But the truth in Chiapas is often murky, and
 what appear to be religious fights are often economic clashes.

 For example, over the last two decades, Catholic political leaders tied closely to
 Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party have expelled 30,000 Protestant
 converts from the municipality of San Juan Chamula mainly because they had
 become Protestants.

 ``They are more upset that Protestants preach against alcohol. That means
 people won't buy beer from the Catholic merchants, or buy candles for the rituals,''
 said Maria Elena Fernandez Galan, a researcher with the Center for Indigenous
 Studies.

 Schreuder doesn't shy away from criticizing fellow Protestants when he thinks
 they overstep boundaries. ``They come in with loudspeakers and want to teach
 Mayans how to sing hymns in English. For many people here, that's going too
 far.''

 Conflicts are not limited to Protestant and Catholic differences. Pedro Arriaga
 Alarcon is a victim of a complex mix of religion and politics in Chiapas. Two years
 ago the priest was appointed to lead the parish that includes Acteal. But he's
 never seen the inside of his church or stayed in his parish home.

 Pro-government Catholics accuse Arriaga of being another Zapatista instigator,
 like his boss, Bishop Samuel Ruiz. They petitioned the government to bar him
 from their parish and replace him with another priest backed by conservative
 Catholic merchants in San Cristobal.

 That move forced the 53-year-old Arriaga onto the back roads of Chiapas, praying
 in clapboard temples with other Catholics -- followers of Ruiz -- also expelled from
 the parish.

 ``Jesus walked. And [Ruiz] won the hearts of the people because he walked and
 rode on a donkey back to almost every small village in this state,'' Arriaga said.
 ``He never tried to impose an absolute Catholicism like you'd see at the Vatican.
 He respected the Mayan traditions.''

 Arriaga, like the Protestant Schreuder, believes in ``inculturation'' -- manipulating
 religious doctrine to fit the ways of local tribes. Many people of the two faiths are
 trying to find ways to cooperate around that idea, such as a joint translation of the
 Bible for Tzotzil Mayans.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald