The Mystery Ranch

The Light of the World illuminates rural Texas.






If you take a spin on the interstate, cruising east along I-10 past Seguin, you will see something rather curious and unexpected. Off to your right, in place of the usual cow pastures, mesquites, and cacti, arises a bizarre vision. A Shrine Circus with minaret domes, perhaps? An Algerian village abducted by aliens and plopped down in the vastness of central Texas?


We've passed it dozens of times and had fun speculating as to its nature and origin. Finally I decide to investigate this mystery - armed with a single clue: an ornate sign along the highway proclaiming the Silver Wolf Ranch.



Information about the ranch is not easy to find, but I did run across an archived article in the San Antonio Express-News:


"KINGSBURY — Almost every day, at least a few of the 27,600 motorists who drive Interstate 10 through this speck of a ranching community pull over to check out a curious fenced ranch just off the highway.

Easily visible from the interstate, twin white domes of a massive structure poke up like mushrooms from the private 340-acre forested reserve. A giant bronze bison statue stands in plain view, as do live stick-legged emus and ostriches.

But tourists never get through the well-appointed limestone facade entrance that beckons them into the Silver Wolf Ranch. As they have for 10 years since the property came under new ownership, polite Spanish-speaking workers shoo away the camera-toting motorists with the same unrequited promise: The ranch is just about to open.

The land, a 40-minute drive from San Antonio, remains just as enigmatic to immediate neighbors left to ruminate — sometimes darkly — about relentless construction activity, howls of unseen wolves, reports of gun-carrying guards, and especially the tint-windowed SUV caravans for which the gates do occasionally open.

“I don't know nothing; I don't want to get involved,” said neighbor Jesse Weinaug, who owns a cattle ranch next door. “They don't come over here. I don't go over there. It ain't none of my business.”

The property, it turns out, is the private playground of a Mexican family that has grown immensely wealthy and politically powerful while ruling as a dynasty over the controversial religious denomination known as Iglesia La Luz del Mundo, or the Light of the World Church.



The Pentecostal-like denomination's supreme leader, the iconoclastic 71-year-old Apostle Samuel Joaquin Flores, is viewed as a messianic figure to be worshipped as a direct link to God and obeyed by church faithful in Mexico and abroad.

Some of Joaquin's nine grown children, themselves considered quasi-divine royalty, have transformed their Texas land into a lavish private zoo-themed family retreat for their father's enjoyment on the scale of some owned by American pop stars or Saudi oil sheiks.

The Guadalajara, Mexico-headquartered denomination, which claims 5 million members worldwide, a figure disputed by some religion researchers, is not without some tenacious allegations of wrongdoing against Joaquin involving abusive treatment of followers."

The Silver Wolf Ranch remains as mysterious as ever, but (at least so far) there have been no threats against neighbors or any hint of confrontation. Texans are wont to mind their own business, and the Light of the World people aren't acting like Branch Davidians or the infamous "Republic of Texas."

Image via Wikipedia

La Luz del Mundo headquarters, Guadalajara

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