Cardinal from Guatemala: Drug cartels have “total power” on the border with Mexico

MEXICO CITY (OSV News) — Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, has warned that drug cartels control the border between Mexico and Guatemala, sparking outbreaks of violence that have caused hundreds of Mexicans to flee to his diocese.

Speaking to journalists in Panama after the 10th Meeting of Bishops and Pastoral Coordinators for Migration of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, Cardinal Ramazzini criticized the Mexican government's inaction in the face of rival drug cartels' territories in the southern state of Chiapas.

“We are in an area where the drug cartels have total control,” the cardinal said on August 22. “What I really cannot understand is what the Mexican government has failed to do that has allowed it to get to the point where it has completely lost control of the border.”

Guatemalan soldiers use a stack of sandbags as a trench as they take part in an operation to protect Mexican citizens who fled to neighboring Guatemala amid armed clashes between criminal groups battling over drug smuggling routes and other crimes in Cuilco, Guatemala, July 26, 2024. (OSV News Photo/Reuters)

His comments followed a joint statement issued August 21 by the dioceses of Huehuetenango and San Marcos in Guatemala and San Cristóbal de las Casas in Mexico, which described seven municipalities in Chiapas as “being transformed into a battlefield by the territorial dispute between criminal groups, forcing (local) men to go to the front lines, man checkpoints and block roads. They and their families are subjected to a terror they could never have imagined.”

The statement added: “They are being used as human shields for a system of death that no level of government wants to listen to or fight 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, head of the Ministry of Human Mobility of the Mexican bishops, 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 the capital of the state of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where he is apostolic administrator.

The prelates' call for peace and state action comes at a time when people along the Guatemala-Mexico border continue to flee their homes due to the conflict between the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

According to Mexican media reports, five candidates were killed in the violence ahead of the presidential elections on June 2, and at least 200 others had to give up their candidacy.

The diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas warned at the time that conditions for holding elections were not present in parts of Chiapas. The diocese repeated this statement on August 24, one day before a special election in the municipality of Chicomuselo, where fighting was particularly fierce.

“This situation forces (the residents) to vote in favor of the cartels that are fighting for the territory and have caused the forced displacement of the residents,” the statement said. “Due to this exodus of the population, it means that the election would not be representative of the residents of the municipality.”

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

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who advocates a confrontational security policy based on the principle of “hugs, not bullets,” has repeatedly stressed that the region will be “pacified very soon.”

Catholic priests in Chiapas wondered aloud why the president had not acted more forcefully.

“We ask ourselves: What must happen for the government to accept the insecurity and fulfill its duty to ensure security?” said Father Heyman Vázquez Medina during a peace march on August 17 in Suchiate, a town on the border with Guatemala.

“We agree with the policy of 'hugs instead of bullets' when citizens are respected,” Father Vázquez continued, according to the newspaper El Universal. “But when there are deaths, kidnappings, extortions and cartel conflicts where people's lives are in danger, the government must act to guarantee the security of society.”