Drug cartels exercise ‘total power’ at Mexican border

Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, has warned that drug cartels control the border between Mexico and Guatemala, sparking outbreaks of violence that have sent hundreds of Mexicans fleeing to his diocese.

Speaking to reporters in Panama after the 10th meeting of bishops and migration pastoral agents from North America, Central America and the Caribbean, Cardinal Ramazzini questioned the Mexican government’s inaction as rival drug cartels contest territory in the southern state of Chiapas.

“We are in an area where drug cartels have complete control,” the cardinal said Aug. 22. “What I really cannot understand is what the Mexican government has failed to do, to reach this point where they are losing complete control of the border.”

His comments followed an Aug. 21 joint statement from the dioceses of Huehuetenango and San Marcos, Guatemala, and San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, which described seven communities in Chiapas “turned into a battlefield by the territorial dispute between criminal groups, who force (local) men to go to the front lines, man checkpoints and close roads. They and their families face a terror they could never have imagined.”

The statement continued: “They are being used as human shields for a system of death that no government is willing to listen to or address at its roots.”

The declaration was signed by Cardinal Ramazzini; Bishop Bernabé Sagastume of San Marcos; and Bishop Rodrigo Aguiar Martínez of San Cristóbal de las Casas. Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of Ciudad Juárez, director of the Mexican bishops’ ministry of human mobility, also signed the document.

Bishop Martínez read the letter again on August 25 and announced that Caritas would organize a collection of household items for displaced people in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas, where he is apostolic administrator.

The prelates’ call for peace and government intervention comes as communities along the Guatemala-Mexico border continue to empty due to the conflict between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

According to Mexican media reports, five candidates have been killed and at least 200 others have been forced to abandon their candidacies in violence ahead of the June 2 presidential election.

The diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas warned at the time that conditions did not exist in parts of Chiapas to hold elections. The diocese reiterated that statement on August 24, the day before special elections were held in the municipality of Chicomuselo, where fighting was particularly intense.

“This situation forces (residents) to vote according to the interests of the cartels that are fighting over the territory and that have caused the forced displacement of residents,” the statement said. “This exodus of the population means that the election would not be representative of the residents of the municipality.”

Catholic sources have told OSV News of people fleeing forced recruitment by drug cartels. At least 500 of the displaced have fled to Guatemala. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said it was providing consular assistance to displaced Mexicans in Guatemala.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who advocates a non-confrontational security policy of “hugs, not bullets,” has repeatedly stressed that the region would be “very soon … pacified.”

Catholic priests in Chiapas are asking out loud why the president is not taking stronger action.

“We ask ourselves: What has to happen before the government accepts that there is insecurity and fulfills its duty to provide security?” Father Heyman Vázquez Medina said during a peace march on August 17 in Suchiate, a town on the border with Guatemala.

“We agree with the policy of ‘hugs, not bullets,’ when citizens are respected,” Father Vázquez continued, according to the newspaper El Universal. “But when there are deaths, kidnappings, extortions and cartel conflicts that put people’s lives at risk, the government must act to ensure the security of society.”