'Stronger than Ever' : Remnants of the Third Convention
Journal of Latter-day Saint History
10
1, 8-11
1998
In the mid-1930s Mexican Mormons held a series of conventions to express dissatisfaction with estrangement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. After the Third Convention many Latter-day Saints in the Central Valley of Mexico separated from the LDS Church and remained independent for nearly a decade. Historians had previously reported that a schism within the Third Convention led by the author Margariot Bautista had fizzled and nearly disappeared. The author reports his surprising ethnographic discovery during the summer of 1996 of a thriving community of 700 followers of Bautista in Ozumba, Mexico calling themselves El Reino de Dios en su Plenitud.