Paul KeenanThe Church has an opportunity to do more for crime victims
When Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto visited Pope Francis on June 7 and extended an invitation for the Latin American Pontiff to visit his nation, news wires crackled with speculation as to the timing of the visit (the consensus is for later in 2015).
At the same time, however, questions as to the Pope’s safety in one of the most violent nations on earth naturally surfaced, albeit that Pope Benedict XVI had been safely received in March 2012.
Perhaps in anticipation of such speculation, President Pena keenly announced during his audience that, following years of conflict with Mexico’s notorious drug cartels, the murder rate in Mexico is decidedly down, showing a 24% decline in the first three months of 2014 over the same period two years ago during the Pope emeritus’ visit (the same year Mr Pena assumed power).
The effect of the president’s announcement (designed as much to calm potential investors for the country’s oil industry as planners of a papal trip) was to prompt a collective arching of sceptical eyebrows in his native Mexico amid joy at the invitation.
The source of this scepticism lies not in any outright lie uttered by Mr Pena, but rather in an act viewed locally as political sleight-of-hand.
Though independent observers concur with the lowering of the country’s murder rate, other categories of crime not cited by Mr Pena show alarming increases as the under-pressure drug cartels turn attention to other criminal sources of finance.
Kidnappings
For example, Mexico’s own crime collation agency, the National System on Public Security, revealed earlier this year that kidnappings and extortion have shown rises in 2014 of 11% and 4.5% respectively over the same one-month period in 2013.
The Stop Kidnapping association, which tracks such crimes nationally, estimates that a person is abducted in Mexico every three hours and has offered its own measure for the months January to May 2014, revealing an increase to 1,542 abductions so far this year from 947 last year, a 63% increase. (The US State Department says that “kidnapping for ransom is an established criminal activity in Mexico”.)
These crime statistics categories and their increases offer a glimpse into something of an altered reality at play in Mexico today.
Tackled by law enforcement agencies and the military on headline-grabbing categories of drug running and inter-gang violence, the cartels have demonstrated their unwillingness to be at a financial loss through becoming ever more inventive in their criminal pursuits.
For those cartels with territory touching the US border, this has resulted in increased exploitation of desperate migrants arriving from across Central America with hopes of crossing into the States.
Where previously migrants sought out and paid a ‘coyote’ guide to get them safely across the desert, now cartels are charging a toll for the same migrants to cross their territory event before reaching the border. Those who cannot pay, meanwhile, can be persuaded to act as drug mules, carrying with them large parcels of narcotics on the cross-border stage, or can be held for ransom from family members back in the unfortunate migrant’s home country (so many of these have become the source of Mexico’s all-too-frequently uncovered mass graves).
A consequence of the cartels’ endurance, and one not alluded to by Mr Pena in lauding murder reductions, has been the emergence, early in 2013, of the fuerzas autodefensas (self-defence forces), bands of ordinary citizens who have become fed up with government inaction and downright collusion and who have taken up arms to deal with the crisis themselves. Most notably, in February of this year, an army of civilians marched through the state of Michoacan, bringing their fight to the dominant Knights Templar cartel.
The success of the pressures they brought to bear (not only on the criminals) are hard to dispute. One by one since the Michoacan march, Knights Templar leaders have fallen in police raids, no doubt spurred by the authorities not wishing to be seen as impotent.
Contention
A measure of this contention can be seen in the government offer to subsume the well organised fuerzas autodefensas into regular police ranks.
As an aside, on June 25, Mexican media reported on the capture of the son of Servando ‘La Tuta’ Gómez Martínez, noting that La Tuta is now the only Knights Templar leader still at large. Just ahead of this, on June 18, Michoacan’s governor, Fausto Vallejo, stepped aside citing ill health, a day after his own son was photographed meeting La Tuta. Vallejo, viewed by many in the state as having his own strong links to the Knights Templar stands accused of allowing the state to become fertile ground for the cartel throughout his tenure.
And where does the Church come into play in all of this?
While fully cognisant of the dangers posed by the cartels – no fewer than 15 priests have been murdered over the last few years for daring to speak out against criminal activities – the Church locally has not covered itself in glory through any collective ‘heroic witness’ against the cartels.
Aside from a pastoral letter in 2010 on the issue, the Church itself stands accused of doing little else on the issue beyond quietly accepting drugs money via donations and collections. (In 2005, Bishop Ramon Godinez of Aguascalientes declared that drugs money was “purified” upon entering a church, causing outrage in Mexico.)
The bishops have, rather, focused their pastoral attentions on broader roots of Mexico’s ills, turning a caustic eye in June on President Pena’s planned reforms in areas such as education, tax, politics, energy and telecommunications. The bishops have asked, not unreasonably, how such reforms will ‘trickle down’ to those most in need in the country.
Their questioning stance is a clear demonstration of what Pope Francis referred to as the bishops’ “commitment to those most in need, those deprived of resources, the unemployed, those working in inhuman conditions, those without access to social services, migrants in search of a better standard of living, farmers” during the Mexican bishops’ ad limina visit to Rome in May.
Challenge
At the same time, however, the Pope indicated clearly his knowledge of “the multiple forms of violence currently plaguing Mexican society”, perhaps offering a challenge to the bishops to ‘broaden their base’.
That challenge has now been reinforced by a legal change passed by Mexican legislators on June 19. Where previously clerics faced criminal sanction for politicking from the pulpit, an amendment now frees bishops and priests to direct their congregations during election times while keeping as a criminal offence the specific act of instructing people who to vote for.
Thus a path has been opened for the Church in Mexico to tackle the crime issue, by pointing out to congregations clearly hungry for change those political candidates who will be tough on the cartels over those, like Fausto Vallejo, who are seen as too close to the drugs barons.
Will the courage of the 15 now spread?