The New Jerusalem

Check out more episodes of Mexicalia on VICE here: http://www.vice.com/mexicalia In July, Nueva Jerusalén, a small town of about 3,000 in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, was all over the news. A group of what the media dubbed "religious fanatics" had destroyed a public elementary school with sledgehammers, apparently on the orders of the Virgin of the Rosary (an avocation of the Virgin Mary). Photos circulating all over the internet featured angry men, women wearing colorful headscarves and long dresses singing prayers, and a town that looked like a medieval theme park. According to the articles we read, Nueva Jerusalén's inhabitants believed the apocalypse was fast approaching and that they would be the only ones to survive it, and therefore they had adopted some fairly odd rules for living. For instance, sex was banned since it should be strictly for procreation, and if the apocalypse was around the corner, why bother having babies? The public school-hating Catholics also apparently had visions of the Virgin Mary a lot. The more we read about this place, the more questions we had, and, inevitably, we decided to load our gear into a car and film a documentary about the place for VICE. Read the full article on VICE.com here: http://www.vice.com/mexicalia/new-jerusalem Check out the Best of VICE here: http://bit.ly/VICE-Best-Of Subscribe to VICE here! http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE Check out our full video catalog: http://bit.ly/VICE-Videos Videos, daily editorial and more: http://vice.com Like VICE on Facebook: http://fb.com/vice Follow VICE on Twitter: http://twitter.com/vice Read our tumblr: http://vicemag.tumblr.com