The secret guard of La Luz del Mundo: A training camp in Mexico reveals the church leader’s iron grip
A security operation discovered a site in Michoacán where a group of men from the megachurch were being trained in military tactics
El Pais Internationa/September 25, 2025
By Zedryk Raziel and Erika Rosete
A security operation arrived at dawn at a plot of land in the municipality of Vista Hermosa, Michoacán, believing they would be facing a cartel. Residents had reported a training camp for organized crime, a specter that remains vivid in the minds of Mexicans after the discovery of the sinister ranch in Teuchitlán in Jalisco. The scene fit all the characteristics. Security forces arrested 38 men and seized what appeared to be high-powered firearms and tactical gear. What puzzled them was that the detainees did not identify themselves as cartel hitmen, but as members of the evangelical church La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World).
The men were training to be part of a special corps created to protect the church’s leader, Naasón Joaquín García, and his immediate family. This is the Jahzer Guard, which traces its origins back to another tactical group, the Jericho Guard, formed by Samuel Joaquín, Naasón’s father. Until the raid at the training camp in Michoacán, very little had surfaced about the praetorian guards of La Luz del Mundo. It represents a new thread in the enigmatic web of corruption surrounding the sect, which has already begun to unravel. In the United States, Joaquín has been sentenced in California for child sexual abuse and now faces a new indictment for organized crime and human trafficking in New York.
One of the survivors of the apostle’s abuse, Sharim Guzmán, told EL PAÍS that these guards serve to protect the church’s leaders and their families wherever they are, and to watch over their homes; they are also tasked with guarding temples and congregant neighborhoods, chiefly Hermosa Provincia, a district in Guadalajara (the capital of the state of Jalisco) created in the apostle’s own image — a sort of cultural and political power center of the church.
Apart from their security duties, according to Guzmán, the guards also took part in the criminal activities of the evangelical leaders — for example, kidnapping people, especially women, and keeping them in safe houses. “When a problem arises, they solve it. At first, it was protecting the apostle, like his bodyguards, but with Naasón’s arrest, they’ve gone crazy. They don’t know how to control the problem, so they’ve started tracking down and hiding the victims, to keep them from speaking out,” he tells EL PAÍS.
Guzmán, who has also reported the apostle’s sexual abuse in both the United States and Mexico, explains that from a young age, boys in the congregation are invited to participate in groups where they are taught martial arts. Joaquín himself was part of these organizations as a child, according to photographs from the time obtained by this newspaper. “We were always told that La Luz del Mundo was the church of God and that everyone would want to harm the apostle, like Jesus, and that’s why he had to be guarded and protected. So you normalized it. Obviously, you never questioned the fact that those guards were armed,” says Guzmán.
The whistleblower maintains that the apostle’s praetorian guard includes men who currently serve or once served in the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office or the State Security Secretariat, and that they bring the training they received in those institutions into the church’s security forces. There are even former soldiers among them. At least one of those detained in Michoacán, Ángel Aragón Ruiz, boasts on Facebook about his time as a member of the Mexican Air Force, a branch of the Army. A video obtained by this newspaper shows a recent parade held as part of Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations, in which the apostle’s guards demonstrate their combat skills.
The weapons seized by security forces in Michoacán were replicas of real rifles, similar in weight and function but incapable of firing. Among those captured were 18 men from Nayarit, six from Guadalajara, three from Mexico City, two from Michoacán, and one each from Guerrero, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Puebla, the State of Mexico, Colima, and Sonora, along with one U.S. citizen. A man from Colombia managed to escape, according to authorities consulted by EL PAÍS.
Reports of ranches used by drug cartels as training and extermination sites have become increasingly common in Mexico since the discovery of the camp in Teuchitlán, described as the “Mexican Auschwitz.” In Michoacán, however, Security Secretary Juan Carlos Oseguera Cortés has denied that such sites exist in his state. Despite his claims, alerts are raised daily, partly due to the proximity of those already uncovered — for instance, the recently discovered La Vega ranch in Jalisco is just over 16 miles from the ranch in Teuchitlán.
This Wednesday’s discovery was disconcerting for several reasons, Oseguera told EL PAÍS. First was the shock of finding not cartel hitmen, but evangelical worshipers training like soldiers — or paramilitaries. The arsenal, too, was unexpected: five replica long guns, 14 replica handguns, 22 dummy knives (for hypothetical hand-to-hand combat), tactical helmets, backpacks, boots, cartridges, radios, rifle scopes, flashlights, and binoculars.
Not everything was a prop. Authorities also seized a real nine-millimeter handgun with ammunition, five knives, and a vehicle, as well as computers and notebooks. The police chief declined to share details about the information found in these materials so as not to hinder the investigation. Both the detainees and the confiscated items were placed under the custody of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
