As the first anniversary of the killings of two Jesuits in the Sierra Tarahumara region of Chihuahua state approaches, Jesuits in Mexico issued communiques regretting the ongoing violence and impunity troubling not only Chihuahua but much of Mexico, especially in rural areas far from the reach of Mexican security forces.
Security conditions have not much improved in the region since Javier Campos Morales, S.J., and Joaquín César Mora Salazar, S.J., were murdered on June 20, 2022, in the parish church in Cerocahui, Chihuahua, according to Javier Ávila, S.J. A prominent defender of Indigenous people and human rights in Mexico, Father Ávila continues the Jesuit mission in the Sierra Tarahumara, where he has lived for five decades.
Despite the heightened presence of Mexican military in the aftermath of the Jesuit murders, “violence is still very present” in the region, Father Ávila said. “It continues with the same impunity.” A struggle among armed groups for control of illegal logging in Sierra Tarahumara is the latest engine of conflict, he said, explaining that the death in March of the main suspect in the slaying of the two Jesuits has unleashed renewed in-fighting among criminal elements in the region.
Fathers Campos and Mora had worked for decades with the Rarámuri Indigenous community in the Sierra Tarahumara region. The two elderly priests were murdered while trying to defend a local tour guide.
A reminder of the government’s failure to wrest control of rural areas from drug cartel operatives and other criminal groups vying for supremacy in Chihuahua, Michoacán and other Mexican states came on June 5 when a church in Santa Anita, Guachochi, Chihuahua, was raked with automatic rifle fire. In front of the church, a van was set ablaze and one man shot to death and decapitated, according to local media. Community members fled their homes to escape the attack.
And on May 22 another Catholic priest was murdered in Michoacán. The body of the Rev. Javier García Villafaña was discovered inside his bullet-riddled car on a highway near Huandacareo. Mexico’s bishops called on authorities to find those responsible for the murder.
Security conditions are indeed poor in the countryside where drug and human trafficking routes are guarded by well-armed cartel operatives, but they are hardly any better in Mexico’s cities, Father Ávila said. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reports that levels of violent crime have reached historic highs during the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, released on May 25, Mexico has endured a record 156,136 murders since Mr. López Obrador became president, a figure that already surpasses the homicide numbers of his predecessor. More than 18 months remain in Mr. López Obrador’s term. The homicide numbers likely represent a significant undercount of the true problem: An additional 42,000 people have been reported missing since Mr. López Obrador took office.
Despite the heightened presence of Mexican military in the aftermath of the Jesuit murders, “violence is still very present” in the region, Father Javier Ávila said.
The Jesuits of Mexico released a statement following the attack on Santa Anita deploring the violence and demanding that appropriate government agencies intervene to restore “tranquility and peace” to the communities of the Sierra Tarahumara, acknowledging “the desire for peace and on the need to rebuild the social fabric in the Sierra Tarahumara.”
Along with the Mexican bishops conference and Mexico conference of religious superiors, the Jesuits of Mexico will be sponsoring a series of Masses and events to remember the service and sacrifice of Fathers Campos and Mora, culminating in a Mass on June 20.
At 3 p.m. that day, the organizers request that bells be sounded at churches across the country for one minute “in memory of all the victims of violence in Mexico and as a cry for justice, as an endorsement of our commitment to build peace. During that minute, we invite each person to remember and pray for the victims of violence and to pray for peace.”
Fathers Campos and Mora had worked for decades with the Rarámuri Indigenous community in the Sierra Tarahumara region. The two elderly priests were murdered while trying to defend a local tour guide, Pedro Palma, who rushed into the church to escape the wrath of a local operative for the Sinaloa cartel, José Noriel Portillo Gil, known as “El Chueco,” “the crooked one.” According to reports, Mr. Palma made the mistake of asking an intoxicated Portillo to tone down a dinner party he was hosting at a tourist hotel in Cerocahui.
The drug lord, well known to local authorities and a suspect in the murder of an American tourist in 2018, was in the midst of a homicide spree that, incredibly, had been provoked by the loss of a local baseball team that he sponsored. The two priests were attempting to protect Mr. Palma when all three men were gunned down, “at the foot of the Sacred Heart, on the altar of the church of Cerocahui,” according to a Society statement.
At 3 p.m. on June 20, the church requests that bells be sounded across the country “in memory of all the victims of violence in Mexico and as a cry for justice, as an endorsement of our commitment to build peace.”
“These violent deaths, this martyrdom, shakes us deeply and calls for multiple actions,” the Jesuits said in a statement announcing commemorative events this month, “even more so because there is still no justice, for them and for so many people who have been and are victims of violence; they are already years of injustice and impunity in Mexico.
“But beyond the pain, on this first anniversary, our commitment to build peace and memory increases.”
After the murders in Cerocahui, the Mexican government offered a $250,000 reward for the apprehension of Mr. Portillo, and he began months on the run. His body was discovered on March 23 near the border between Chihuahua and Sinaloa. He had been killed, execution-style, by persons still unknown.
That end to the drama in the Sierra Tarahumara satisfied no one. Mr. Portillo’s death “in no way can be considered a triumph for justice, or a solution to the structural problem of violence” in the Sierra Tarahumara region, the Jesuit province in Mexico said in a statement released on March 23.
“The lack of an adequate legal process in the murder case would only imply the Mexican government has failed in its basic duties and confirm that the authorities do not have control of the territory,” the Jesuits wrote.
The church must continue “to accompany the people, to be close to their pain, their sadness, and their hopes, too. We can’t leave them.”
Both the Society of Jesus in Mexico and the national conference of bishops have been highly critical of the “hugs not bullets” security policies of Mr. López Obrador. Since his six-year term began in 2018, nine Catholic priests have been murdered across Mexico, according to Mexico’s Catholic Multimedia Center.
The murders last June led to a stronger security presence around Cerocahui. Father Ávila is concerned that the development may eventually prove a source of friction between the church and local criminal elements.
But at least in Sierra Tarahumara, Father Ávila believes church workers so far are not being directly targeted by criminals. Like his Jesuit brothers, he said, they fall victim to violence because of mischance and Mexico’s general environment of impunity and crime.
At 28 per 100,000 in 2021, Mexico has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. But, according to Human Rights Watch, about 90 percent of crimes in Mexico are never reported, a third of reported crimes are never investigated, and only 16 percent of investigations are “resolved”—either in court, through mediation or through some form of compensation. That means authorities resolved just over 1 percent of all crimes committed in 2021, according to the national statistics agency.
Rarámuri leaders who have spoken out against criminal encroachments on their Indigenous lands have been assassinated, Father Ávila said. Others have surrendered land and withdrawn from confrontations because of the threat of violence.
The church, he said, must continue “to accompany the people, to be close to their pain, their sadness, and their hopes, too. We can’t leave them.” That role may indeed in the end put church workers at higher risk.
In a recent joint statement, Jesuit and other church leaders say they are not ready to resign themselves to the hopelessness of more violence in Mexico. “We believe that God today challenges any justification for indifference,” they said. “We feel called to be an active part in the rehabilitation and help of wounded societies, such as ours….we will continue with our commitment to the construction of peace; we will continue to denounce impunity.”
Hearts and visions must be changed—and, more practically, security plans and policies offered by the government—before peace can be restored in Mexico, Father Ávila said, adding that the church in Mexico stands ready to host forums and dialogue aimed at restoring the nation’s “broken social fabric.”
“These are paths that we are starting and we are going to follow them,” he said.
