Drug cartels control Mexico’s southern border: Cardinal Ramazzini

Along with bishops from the United States and Panama, Ramazzini condemned the “death and destruction” on the Mexican border with Guatemala.

“I can’t understand how the Mexican government lost control of that side of the border,” Ramazzini said at a news conference in Panama City.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

Bishop Álvaro Leonel Ramazzini Imeria Guatemalan cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, on Thursday, August 22, expressed one of the most serious criticisms of the Mexican government’s actions in the current conflict in the state of Chiapas.

“We are in an area where the drug cartels have total control. I cannot understand what the Mexican government has failed to do to get to this point where they are losing total control of that side of our border.”

Further on, Ramazzini, appointed cardinal by Pope Francis in 2019, said:

“Today, crossing the Mexican border in Chiapas poses a very serious danger to us; not only because these cartels kidnap people, force them to pay ransoms and, in many cases, involve them in the war that the Jalisco New Generation And Sinaloa cartels fight each other.”

Part of Ramazzini’s accusation can be found in the video that appears after this paragraph, produced by the television channel of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Panama.

Excerpt from the press conference of the 10th meeting of bishops and pastoral migration agents. August 22, 2024. Audio available in Spanish only.

The full video is available, in Spanish only, on the Facebook page of FETV, the television channel of the Roman Catholic Church in Panama.

Later in his message, Ramazzini makes clear how difficult it is for him to see the suffering that drives thousands of people to the U.S.-Mexico border. He estimates that journalists on both sides of the Mexico-Guatemala border, and a few days ago the former Roman Catholic bishop of Tapachula, Mexico’s southernmost metropolitan area, have found dozens of people dead and in violence.

Cardinal Ramazzini regretted that, in his view, the media is not adequately reporting the situation that he described as “painful and dramatic” at the border between Motozintla in Mexico and Huehuetenango in Guatemala, as Cardinal Ramazzini explains in the video after this paragraph, in which the Cardinal goes so far as to claim that criminal organizations “do what they want” without the Mexican authorities intervening.

Excerpt from the press conference of the 10th meeting of bishops and pastoral migration agents. August 22, 2024. Audio available in Spanish only.

While Ramazzini acknowledges that the situation in Darien, Panama, is very difficult because of the dangers posed by the jungle in that region of Panama, he estimates that the situation at the border at Motozintla, Mexico, and Cuilco, Guatemala, is untenable.

He made it clear, as can be seen in the video that appears after this paragraph, that attacks by criminal drug organizations in Mexico not only affect migrants from other countries who cross there in the hope of reaching the border with the United States, but also the Mexican civilian population.

Excerpt from the press conference of the 10th meeting of bishops and pastoral migration agents. August 22, 2024. Audio available in Spanish only.

Motozintla, Mexico is located just under 80 kilometers or 50 miles west of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Both cities, like others in that area of ​​the shared border, are connected by Guatemala Highway 7W, which begins in Huehuetenango and, upon crossing to the Mexican side, at the town of La Mesilla, becomes Highway 190, which in turn connects Motozintla to San Cristóbal de Las Casas, as can be seen on the map that appears after this paragraph.

In the past year, the number of homicides in the state of Chiapas has increased dramatically. According to data from Mexican authorities, Chiapas and Tabasco are the two states in Mexico where the number of homicides has increased the most between 2023 and 2024, as shown in the graph below, from TResearch International de Mexico, which corresponds to yesterday, Thursday, August 22.

For the state of Chiapas, the graph reports a 139 percent increase in homicides compared to 2023.

Ramazzini, Bishop of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, made his appeal at the 10th meeting of bishops and migration pastoral agents of the Latin American and Caribbean Ecclesial Network on Migration, Displacement, Refugees and Human Trafficking, which Ramazzini himself chairs.

The network supports various projects that provide support to people who, for political or other reasons, seek asylum in the United States. The website is available here.

It was only in July of this year that the network published the document available in Spanish in the box after this paragraph. There you can read the account they offer of how terrible the situation is for migrants trying to reach the US-Mexico border.

Decalogue of requests to representatives, delegates, ministries and institutions of Colombia and other countries in the region, CLAMOR. Only available in Spanish.

Roman Catholic bishops from the United States, Mexico, Central America and other regions attended the 10th CLAMOR meeting from August 19 to 22 in Panama City, the capital of one of the countries most affected by the global crisis in the so-called Darien Strait, through which people from all over the world try to reach the Mexico-United States border.

The press conference was also attended by the Archbishop of Panama, José Domingo Ulloa Mendietathe Bishop of El Paso, Texas, Mark Joseph Seitzand the Costa Rican priest Gustavo Meneses Castroresponsible for the so-called Pastoral of Mobility at the Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops of Costa Rica.

The fact that Ramazzini is a cardinal, even though he holds a small diocese on the border with Mexico, reflects the Pope’s attitude Francis‘s view on migration during his eleven-year pontificate. He has sought to support dioceses in various countries that are dealing with the current global migration crisis.

Pope Francis elevated Ramazzini to cardinal in October 2019, when Ramazzini was already 72 years old, in a manner similar to how Francis himself later elevated the bishop of San Diego, California. Robert McElroya promotion previously reserved only for the leaders of the archdioceses in that American state, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Recently, Los Angeles Press has reported on the scale of the violence in Chiapas, as well as the ability of criminal organizations to set up even illegal “checkpoints” on the Mexico-Guatemala border, just a few meters or yards from those of the National Guard and other federal authorities in Mexico.

We also reported how the former bishop of the diocese of Tapachula, the current Archbishop of León, Guanajuato, Jaime Calderon Calderonused his last message to the Diocese of Tapachula to denounce the violence on the Guatemala-Mexico border and, above all, the inaction of Mexican authorities, both federal and state, in what until a few months ago was his diocese in Chiapas. The story is only available in Spanish after this paragraph.

On Wednesday, August 21, Cardinal Ramazzini himself, his Guatemalan colleague, Bernabé SagastumeBishop of San Marcos, Guatemala, Rodrigo Aguilar MartinezBishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and responsible for the Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, and José Guadalupe Torres CamposBishop of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and head of the Pastoral Service for Human Mobility at the Mexican Bishops’ Conference, published an appeal to postpone the special elections that will be held in the coming days in several municipalities of Chiapas and, above all, to stop the wave of violence that is plaguing this state in Mexico.

They pointed out that there are no conditions for holding special elections in Mexico. They called on the perpetrators of the violence to stop and the Mexican government to disarm and dismantle criminal organizations.

The statement appears in Spanish as an image before this paragraph or can be read on the Facebook account of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

The following story, available only in Spanish, is about what Pope Francis has done on migration during his tenure.