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Two Jesuit priests heard gunshots coming from their church in the mountains of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
When they arrived they found a local tourist guide bleeding out at the altar. Standing over him was the local boss of the country’s most powerful organized crime group, the Sinaloa cartel.
One of the priests began giving the last rights to the wounded man, but the gunman shot him before turning and opening fire on the second cleric.
By then, a third priest had arrived. The drug boss, known as “El Chueco” or “The Crooked One”, confessed his sins to him, and then he took the bodies away in a pickup truck.
News of the murders caused outrage across Mexico and the world. Pope Francis weighed in, decrying the high number of homicides in the country. The Catholic dioceses of Mexico demanded the government review its security strategy in light of the murders.
The Mexican government promised swift justice, but three weeks after the murders, El Chueco remains on the loose.
The brazen murders of the Jesuits has highlighted growing violence in rural Mexico and the risks which the country’s Catholic priests face every day as they tend to their communities.
Homicides have surged in rural regions throughout the country as criminal groups wage wars to take over greater swaths of territory. And priests are caught in the crossfire.
They have few security assurances in these regions and often walk a fine line between speaking out in defense of their parish, and avoiding the deadly anger of powerful crime groups which operate in open defiance of the authorities.
El Chueco, José Noriel Portillo Gil, too, has long enjoyed such impunity.
In 2018, Portillo shot dead an American tourist, prompting state officials to promise they would spare nothing to capture him. Instead, the narco-trafficker continued to run his cartel, terrorize residents and openly commune with local mayors and police chiefs, according to a source who knows him.
This level of impunity is not new to priests who work in rural regions across Mexico.
Eighty per cent of murders, disappearances and extortions of priests have gone unsolved, according to December report by the Catholic Multimedia Center.
The report found that extortion, and attacks against churches, have increased over the three years since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office. The leader, popularly known as Amlo, came to power promising “hugs not bullets”, which he promised would reduce soaring murder rates in the country. Instead, experts say, the approach has only emboldened criminal groups to become more violent and expand territorial control across the country.
Last year, three priests were murdered in Mexico. One was abducted, shot dead and left by the side of a road in the state of Guanajuato. Another was killed in the state of Durango after he got caught in the crossfire of a gun battle on his way to his church. A third was beaten to death inside his church in the state of Morelos in September.
When prominent clergy demanded a change in security strategy following the most recent murders in Chihuahua, López Obrador demurred.
“What do priests want?” he asked in a morning press conference, in response to the demands. “That we resolve problems with violence?”
Father Luis Gerardo Moro, leader of the Jesuits in Mexico, said his community did not believe in violence. “We are demanding a minimum respect for humanity,” he said, responding to the president’s remarks.
Meanwhile, homicides have soared throughout rural Mexico. And cartels have become ever more bold. Three weeks ago, in the state of Chiapas, cellphone videos showed scores of heavily armed men taking over the streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in a blatant display of force in the city.
In the state of Guerrero, seven members of one family were shot down in their own home earlier this week. And a little over two weeks ago, gunmen shut down streets and set buses on fire in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, after their leader was captured.
Catholic priests often find themselves on the frontlines of these turf wars between criminal factions.
For Father Carlos Aurelio Ramírez Moreno, in the state of Michoacán, that means avoiding checkpoints controlled by the Jalisco New Generation cartel, Mexico’s most feared organized crime group which is trying to take over the town where Ramírez works.
The town has taken up arms to defend itself against the cartel, and Ramírez has encouraged them – putting him squarely in the sights of the Jalisco gunmen. He said his flock had no other choice but defend themselves, because the government will not come to their aid.
“If they drop their weapons, they’ll be vulnerable,” Ramírez said. “They know they cannot depend on the government.”
Cartel spies keep tabs on him, and less than a month ago, a gunman fired on his vehicle as he was leaving the town. He escaped harm, and remains undeterred, he said.
He reported the attack to the Federal Mechanism for Protection of Human Rights Workers and Journalists, which is charged with protecting him, but he expects little help from López Obrador’s government.
“This leader is a [Pontius] Pilate who washes his hands,” Ramírez said. “He doesn’t have the character to execute the rule of law.”
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