A young couple embrace during a memorial Mass in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Feb. 14. Catholic students and teachers gathered at a schoolyard for the service in memory of 16 teenagers who were killed by gunmen at a high school party in January in the border city. None of the victims were involved in gang or cartel activities. CNS photo/Tomas Bravo, Reuters

By David Agren
Catholic News Service

MEXICO CITY (CNS) — The Mexican bishops’ conference has released a pastoral letter calling on the government to reconsider its strategy of depending heavily on soldiers and federal police to combat powerful narcotics trafficking cartels.

The letter also asked the government to halt a wave of violence that has claimed more than 18,000 lives over the past three years.

“Security is not directly or principally related to the ability to use force, the number of police officers, the degree of militarization or the purchasing of weapons,” the letter said. “With the passage of time, the participation of the armed forces in the fight against organized crime has provoked uncertainty in the population.”

“It’s very clear this environment of violence and insecurity in which we are living denotes a sense of the loss of God,” it said.

The letter, released Feb. 15, also asked citizens to denounce crimes and criminal behavior and asked Catholics to do more to help the victims of violence.

It attributed the inability to decrease the violence to numerous causes, including crises of legality and morality, political polarization after the contentious 2006 election, a lack of educational and employment opportunities for young people and “a weakening of the social fabric.”

“The pain and anguish and the uncertainty and fear of so many people present challenges for us. What additionally worries us is the indignation and natural anger, the rage, the hatred, the rancor, the desire for revenge and the willingness of people to take justice into their own hands,” the letter said.

Mexico has been involved in a crackdown on the narcotics trafficking cartels that have been fighting turf wars over lucrative smuggling routes to the United States and fomenting an increase in addictions at home by developing domestic markets for drugs.

The federal government has dispatched more than 40,000 soldiers and federal police officers to battle the cartels in regions such as Chihuahua in northern Mexico, Sinaloa on the Pacific Coast and Michoacan to the west of Mexico City, but results have been mixed and public support appears to be declining.

A survey released Feb. 15 by the Mexico City polling firm Buendia y Laredo found 60 percent of respondents said violence had increased over the past six months, and 56 percent of respondents said the federal government’s crackdown on narcotics trafficking had made the country “less secure.”

A local craftsman assembles a coffin at his shop in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He makes about 40 coffins a week, a substantial increase from two years ago when thousands of soldiers were first deployed to the city. Hit men have since killed more than 4,300 people in Ciudad Juarez, making it one of the most violent cities in the world. CNS photo/Tomas Bravo, Reuters

New problems also have emerged, such as an increase in allegations of human rights abuses against the military and evidence that the cartels have diversified into other illegal activities such as piracy, extortion and kidnapping.

Violence has failed to diminish in many of the regions rife with cartel activities over the past three years. For instance, Ciudad Juarez, which neighbors El Paso, Texas, has been the scene of mass slayings such as the Jan. 31 shootings of at least 16 young people at a birthday party.

Massacres, beheadings, torture
News reports of massacres, beheadings and torture attributed to the cartels have become common, with details of the executions becoming increasingly cruel, the letter said. Other crimes and social problems have soared, the letter added, noting the murders of women, family violence and riots in prisons, where inmate populations have swollen with the arrests of so many cartel members.

The letter outlined the history of Mexico’s challenges with violence and organized crime and how the country has shifted from being a marijuana producer and transit point for drugs flowing from South America to the United States to being a country with a growing number of substance abusers.

The problem with the cartels is not new, the letter said, but it urged new solutions. It discarded any talk of returning to the old practice of local governments and the cartels brokering informal agreements that allowed the cartels to carry out illegal activities so long as violence was kept to a minimum and bystanders were left alone.

The letter instead urged the federal government to treat the violence in Mexico as a public health issue. It called for combating the cartels and violence through solutions such as fixes to the legal system that would eliminate impunity, better cooperation in law enforcement and intelligence-gathering among the federal, state and municipal governments and structural reforms to improve the country’s long-underperforming economy, which the bishops said fails to provide enough legal and legitimate forms of employment.

The letter, signed by Bishop Gustavo Rodriguez Vega of Nuevo Laredo, president of the Mexican bishops’ social ministry secretariat, expressed embarrassment that “there are baptized men and women . . . in the ranks of organized crime.” It acknowledged shortcomings in the bishops’ prison ministry, a lack of outreach to high-risk youth and a failure in “the accompaniment of innocent victims.”

“Confronting the violence . . . is the re-sponsibility of all Mexicans,” said Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo in a statement issued after the release of the letter. “We all must act now.”

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