Catholic Church calls a truce to violence in Mexico

Bishops from the Catholic Church have made similar calls in Chiapas and Guerrero. Official data records more than 28 thousand homicides in 2024 in the country.

The call from the Catholic Church is more relevant given the recent execution of an alleged a financial operator for the cartels in a shopping mall in Polanco, Western Mexico City.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

This Thursday, one of the auxiliary bishops of Mexico City, Francisco Javier Acero Pérez, called for a truce to violence affecting Mexico these days.

It is not the first call that the bishops of the Catholic Church have made in this regard. Over the last weeks, both in Chiapas and Guerrero, the Catholic bishops made calls to reduce the rates of violence suffocating their flock. Back in September, the Roman Catholic dioceses of Chiapas, called during a massive rally in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, for peace.

In Chiapas, the call is notable because, as the note linked before this paragraph (available only in Spanish) shows. Their calling happened a few days before the priest Marcelo Pérez, of the diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, was executed after presiding over a mass in a chapel near his home, as reported at the time by Los Angeles Press in the story linked after this paragraph.

Even before, the Guatemalan cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini talked about the drug cartels running the border between his country and Mexico. He did so during a meeting of the bishops of Central America, Mexico, and the United States in Panama City, as can the story linked after this paragraph tells.

A little later, the bishops of the state of Guerrero, also in southern Mexico, called on federal, state, and municipal authorities to restore the rule of law in there.

The story, linked after this paragraph, proved how the rates of violence, measured by the number of homicides, are much higher in that state than in states with similar populations in the United States.

There we stressed how back in 2014, Guerrero had the highest homicide rate of the thirty-two states in Mexico with 47.9 homicides for each one hundred thousand inhabitants. Back in 2022, the most recent available, the reported rate was of little over 38.4 homicides for each 100 thousand inhabitants (see the rate for each Mexican state from 1990 up to 2022, in Spanish, here).

For the sake of comparison, Guerrero has a population of roughly 3.5 million inhabitants, similar to Utah or Connecticut in the United States. However, Utah scores 2.5 homicides for each 100 thousand inhabitants, while Connecticut ranks at 4.2.

In a similar vein, the Mexican province of the Society of Jesus, the so-called Jesuits, and the Mexican Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops, set the so-called National Dialogue for Peace and repeatedly call to address the root causes of violence.

Last November, the leaders of this Dialogue met with the minister of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and some of her closest collaborators to set up a channel allowing to exchange information to pacify the country, as noted in the story after this paragraph.

The story is available, only in Spanish, after this paragraph.

The call made by Francisco Javier Acero Pérez, an Augustinian friar who was promoted to auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Mexico in 2022,happens at a time when violence in Mexico City is on the rise.

Earlier this year, in February, the country's capital appeared among the states with the highest increase in homicides from 2023 to 2024, as summarized in the graph after this paragraph, from TREsearch International de México after the official data.

Already in August, many though the country's capital had found a way to contain the rise in homicides. Nothing spectacular, but it was a two percent reduction from 2023 to 2024 at the time.

However, in the most recent graph by TREsearch International de México, from December 5th, Mexico City reported an increase of around 74 percent in the number of homicides from 2023 to 2024.

Likewise, a comparison between the graphs from August and December, Mexico City returned to being one of the most violent states in the country, as it returned to fourth position only behind Tabasco, Chiapas, and Baja California Sur.

Despite the official narrative, linking violence and homicides to malfeasance from the opposition, those four states are ruled almost completely by Morena, the so-called Movement of National Regeneration (Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional), linked to former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his successor, current head of State, Claudia Sheinbaum.

The Catholic Church’s call is more pertinent in Mexico City because of the execution, this week, of a character allegedly linked to the financial activities of drug cartels in Mexico. The execution occurred at a shopping plaza in the Polanco neighborhood, in western Mexico City.

In that sense, the call to have a day of truce on Thursday, December 12th, the day devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, could be useful if it achieves its goals and the Catholic Church itself is able to do contribute to a reduction in violence in Mexico.

One measure could be the Catholic Church promoting respectful dialogues. This week, we reported on how Acero Pérez's superior, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, faced the wrath of the Catholic far right led by Eduardo Verástegui for attending an academic activity at the Opus Dei college in Mexico City, the Universidad Panamericana.

Acero and the promoters of this activity, the Academy of Catholic Leaders, bet on reducing political polarization and violence. In that sense, among the first who should be aware of the importance of moderating their speech are those closest to Verástegui who attacked Cardinal Aguiar Retes for having participated in a round table with Ricardo Monreal Ávila.

The Catholic far right following Verástegui’s lead accuses Congressman and former governor Monreal of being a “mason” or a “franc mason” which, according to Verástegui, and his followers, merits exclusion from any dialogue with Catholics, as told in the story linked before this paragraph.

Verástegui and his followers also chastised Mexican senator Luis Colosio Riojas, whom the Mexican extreme right abhors for holding opinions different from theirs on issues such as the recognition of human rights and the 2030 Development Agenda.

It is hard to figure out if there will some support for auxiliary bishop Acero Pérez’s at the Mexican Episcopal Conference after that entity elected a new president, the bishop of Cuernavaca, Morelos, Ramón Castro, as reported in the story after this paragraph.

The organizers of this proposal run the microsite https://liderescatolicos.mx/1diadetregua/, where there is more information.

The total number of homicides on the official record during 2024 stands, as of yesterday, Thursday, December 5th, at 28, 574.