HomeNewsHave Mexico's Cartels Stopped Respecting the Catholic Church?
NEWS

Have Mexico's Cartels Stopped Respecting the Catholic Church?

JALISCO CARTEL / 11 JUL 2022 BY PETER APPLEBY EN

Despite Mexico ranking as the second-most devout Catholic country on the planet, clerics have found no salvation from extortion, beatings and even murder by organized crime. 

The murder of two Jesuit priests and a tour guide inside a church in Chihuahua on June 20 sparked a national outcry. While up to twelve people have been arrested in connection with the crime, the suspected gunman remains on the loose.

The murder suspect, José Noriel Portillo Gil, alias "El Chueco,” was known as a leading member of the Salazar, a powerful cell of the Sinaloa Cartel in northern Mexico. He allegedly killed the three men after tour guide Pedro Eliodoro Palma ran inside the church of Father Javier Campos and Father Joaquín Cesar Mora to seek protection from the crime boss.

The murders sparked a massive manhunt and prompted authorities to offer a 5 million peso reward ($250,000) for information leading to El Chueco’s capture.

SEE ALSO: Sinaloa Cartel Leader Hunted After Killing Priests, Baseball Players and US Tourist

However, what happened in Chihuahua was no isolated incident. Mexico has repeatedly topped the list of the most dangerous countries to be a Catholic priest. Between 2008 and 2016, Mexico placed first every year, according to a report from the Catholic Media Center (Centro Católico Mulitmedial). In 2021, at least four church representatives were killed, Vatican News reported, bringing the total of priest murders to seven since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018.

After the Chihuahua slayings, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, publicly complained about twice being stopped by criminal groups at informal “checkpoints” set up along freeways in the northern state of Jalisco. Another senior church official concurred. Sigifredo Noriega Barceló, the bishop of Zacatecas, one of the bloodiest states in Mexico, told the press that he had experienced the same.

At the start of July, Mexican newspaper Excelsior reported on the widespread extortion of churches in Mexico by criminal organizations. The report cited data from the Catholic Media Center, which found that 1,400 churches annually — some 12 percent of all churches in the country — had fallen victim to some form of crime, mostly robbery and extortion. Priests who resisted or refused were threatened or beaten.

But not all criminal groups are accepting of this practice. In a bid to stem violence toward religious leaders, a video purportedly issued by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación - CJNG) called for cartels to stop the harassment of religious groups, their leaders and followers, and to keep the war “between themselves.” The request, published on July 7, is reminiscent of the 2012 truce called by the Knights Templar (Caballeros Templarios) in honor of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Mexico.

InSight Crime Analysis

Recent events have underscored how respect from certain local criminals towards the church has gradually been erased.

Historically, representatives of the church have played an important role as spokespersons for local communities and as mediators in conflict in Mexico, with varying levels of success.

Last year, the former Vatican Ambassador to Mexico, Franco Coppola, helped negotiate a ceasefire in Aguililla, Michoacán, the scene of intense fighting. However, the ceasefire was broken within 24 hours.

In Chilapa, a rural community in the southern state of Guerrero, two bishops reportedly helped reduce murders from 117 in 2017 to 14 in 2021 by entering into dialogue with the Ardillos, a local criminal group which has repeatedly targeted Indigenous communities.

Yet the continued extortion of churches and priests suggest that, at the local level at least, religious institutions make for tempting targets.

One member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the Mormon Church, told Excelsior that criminal “codes” governing interaction with churches, including respecting funerals, have been disregarded.

SEE ALSO: Church Leaders in Mexico Struggle to Stem Michoacán Bloodshed

But according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a leading expert on organized crime in Mexico, there is little to suggest that the country’s major cartels are orchestrating attacks against churches.

“We cannot allege that major crime groups that operate in organized ways [like the CJNG or Sinaloa Cartel] are those extracting rents from churches or religious groups as a formal strategy,” said Correa-Cabrera. “Cartels have diversified, but it isn’t proven that those groups focused on attacking religious groups are the same that sell drugs."

Instead, local cells that operate on behalf of these large groups — such as El Chueco’s Salazar gang — may find that extorting churches is worth the effort. 

To further complicate the picture, Correa-Cabrera pointed out how Mexico is awash with smaller, local groups who falsely claim that they are part of larger criminal organizations.

In the wake of the Chihuahua murders, Bishop Noriega Barceló told newspaper Milenio that a “social pact” including the voices of cartel leaders must be constructed if the country’s plague of violence is to end.

Other church voices took a far more critical position, suggesting that the security strategy pushed by President López Obrador has resolved nothing.

The Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), an organization of Catholic Bishops, released a statement in June criticizing the government’s security stance, saying “it is time to review the security strategies that are failing." They also asked for an open dialogue between all members of society, including its criminal elements, to move toward peace. 

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

GENDER AND CRIME / 11 JUL 2023

In Mexico, increased militarization and the “war on drugs” have contributed to rising gender-based violence.

BRAZIL / 15 DEC 2021

A recent study of credit card cloning around the world revealed some startling disparities in the risks customers face across…

GULF CARTEL / 29 JUL 2022

Mexican authorities crushed 23 "narco-tanks," while 630 armored vehicles have been confiscated since 2018.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…