By Diego López Colin
Rodrigo Aguilar Martínez, bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, warned in a letter posted on Facebook on Sept. 23 that the south of the country “torn apart by violence” due to clashes between criminal gangs.
Videos from Sept. 23, which have gone viral on social media, show a convoy of pickup trucks, believed to belong to the criminal organization known as the Sinaloa Cartel, crossing the streets of Chiapas towns as a crowd of citizens covered the streets.
According to local media, citizens in Mexico’s southern region are forced to help or even join the ranks of organized crime, while clashes between drug cartels affect more than 200,000 citizens in the region.
In view of this, Aguilar said that “criminal gangs have invaded our territory and we are in a state of siege, under social psychosis, with roadblocks through drug traffickers, who use civil society as a human barrier” putting the lives of citizens and their families at risk.
In the letter, the bishop accuses organized crime of “committing kidnappings and disappearances, threatening, harassing other people, seizing natural resources, persecuting other people and dispossessing them of their property, the fruit of our work. “
The prelate pointed out that this scenario has created shortages of food, especially basic cereals and other goods, as well as medical care and medicines.
Aguilar denounced that there is “social, political, mental and other gang tension, so that other people side with one gang of criminals or another. “
The bishop reproached the government at all levels for having “ignored the judicial processes of civil society” and called for “urgently” to address the “cases of violence and mistrust that destroy the lives of our people. “
In addition, he demanded that the government “immediately factor in and execute arrest warrants against the leaders of these criminal gangs” and “restore the social order that harms civil society. “
At a press conference on Sept. 25, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the incidents of violence in Chiapas are “a challenge very limited to a single region” and that the videos released are a strategy of his policy. to make it seem that “drug trafficking dominates Chiapas and Mexico. “
The diocese of Tapachula, located at the southern tip of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala, has pledged to help the rest of the region “as soon as the roads open to reach them. “For now, Monsignor Jaime Calderón Calderón expressed his closeness and encouragement “in those moments of suffering and scarcity” and lamented that “it is young people who suffer the most. “
This article was first published through ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted through CNA.