Latin American Episcopal Conference
The catalyst for the formation of Las Abejas was a land dispute that occurred in 1992, but the roots of the organization go back to the work of the progressive Roman Catholic Church in Chiapas, particularly under the leadership of Bishop Samuel Ruiz. Bishop Ruiz, who was influenced by Liberation Theology and in particular by the meeting of Latin American bishops (the Latin American Episcopal Conference) in Medellin, Colombia in 1968. The Catholic Church and its pastoral workers, under Bishop Ruiz's leadership, began to focus on defending the dignity of the poor, with an emphasis on encouraging peasants to find in the Bible a message of liberation from oppression. The pastoral workers introduced the language of human rights as a way to denounce what many saw as systems of oppression.