Following the report of clashes between cartels for control of the Sierra de Chiapas, bordering Guatemala, the Catholic Church issued an urgent call to the federal and state governments to reestablish the rule of law in the municipalities of said entity, since the dispute between criminal groups is aimed at drug, arms and migrant trafficking, which has caused bloodshed, terror and forced displacement of the population.
The bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Tapachula and archbishop-elect of León, Guanajuato, Jaime Calderón Calderón, together with 15 other priests, accused President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the governor of Chiapas, Rutilo Escandón Cadenas, of being complicit and indifferent to this situation.
In the statement that was signed by each of them, they denounce that violence in the municipalities and communities of the Sierra Madre has prevailed for two years, and they accuse the rulers of giving the order to the Mexican Army and the National Guard not to intervene to protect the citizens.
“How long are you going to live trying to hide a sad and painful reality that we are carrying day by day?” the religious asked in the letter.
“To the backwardness and ancestral poverty that they have suffered, they now have to add: living kidnapped in their communities, paying the right of protection to the cartel that corresponds to them depending on where they live, being forced in shifts to be at the checkpoints that prevent free transit called filters – under penalty of being fined and attacked if they do not comply with this imposed duty -, paying very high prices for the scarce merchandise that is sold in the businesses that from their profits must take the quota that gives them the right to keep their work and, most recently – July 20 and 22, 2024 -, being intimidated, threatened and forced to participate as human shields in the confrontations of the drug cartels,” says the statement.
Religious ask for intervention of the security forces
The religious asked the security forces to intervene and defend the population from their aggressors, since men, women, children and older adults are living a situation of slavery and submission in the 21st century.
“We don’t need them having detachments that live among our people only as spectators,” they claimed.
“The cartel people have control over the population as they please; and on the other hand, the presence of detachments of the National Guard and the Mexican Army that do nothing for the population that they see suffering day after day.”
They admitted that the cartels also control the communities through people from the same places, to whom, by paying a salary, they have made them forget the suffering and death of their own brothers.
“The poverty and abandonment of decades, together with the ambition for easy money, has been the breeding ground that is leading to this situation of desperation, suffering and slow death of our brothers from the Foranía Sierra,” the letter continued.
They call on the community not to remain silent about the situation of violence
The Catholic Church also called on the people of the same communities that work for money for the drug cartels, subjecting, threatening and handing over their own brothers, so that they repent and “mend their ways.”
The inhabitants of the Sierra also asked not to remain silent about the situation of violence and the outpouring of blood to which organized crime has subjected them.
“Organized crime threatens us and wants to silence us so that, beyond our diocesan territory, no one knows or believes what we are living and suffering day by day. Let us find a way to tell our life, to say our word, to make known what we live.”
“Many of us have relatives and acquaintances beyond our community and our State of Chiapas, let us not remain silent, let us ask them to help us make known the sad and painful story of our life, of our family, of our communities,” the religious asked.
Source: informador
