By early 1993, the sense of tension in both Kirinda and Biguhu had risen to an alarming level. The threat of violence was palpable, and yet the fault lines in the communities had not yet taken a clearly ethnic form. Instead, the divisions remained more class-based and political. The gang of unemployed youths who threatened the peace of Kirinda identified with the MDR and continued to focus their anger against the Hutu elite, who were identified with the MRND and CDR. The key to understanding how the genocide became possible in these communities lies in explaining the diversion of public discontent and anger from the pro- Habyarimana Hutu elite to the Tutsi and other Habyarimana opponents. Ultimately, during the genocide in Kirinda, it was the very youths who had once harassed and robbed the Hutu elite who carried out the slaughter of local Tutsi under the Hutu elite's direction. In Biguhu, this ethnicization of community conflict was never fully accomplished, so that the community surrounding the parish never became a center for the genocide. Instead, Biguhu's Tutsi were lured outside the community and killed there. The structures of power in the two communities helped to determine their readiness to participate in the genocide, and the churches played an important part in shaping those structures. While the church as such in Kirinda did not instigate the killings there, church personnel were intimately involved, church structures facilitated the organization of the community, and the church helped lend moral authority to those who carried out the massacres.