The relationship of the diocese of Chilpancingo with the Ardillos criminal group is not new. It is as old as the one maintained by different groups of the Catholic Church with groups or bosses criminals for decades. How can we forget, for example, the relationship of Arellano Felix brothers with the church (even one of the brothers was or is, I don't know what became of him, a priest) so much so that even after they assassinated Cardinal Posadas Ocampo, they were received, on two occasions, at the Apostolic Nunciature by Girolamo Prigione. Previously, their relationship had been strengthened with the financing that the Arellanos made of the Río seminary in Tijuana, which even helped them to falsify a baptism certificate to try to give them an alibi to justify that they had not been at the Guadalajara airport. when Cardinal Posadas was assassinated in May 1993.
But those are distant times. However, despite everything that has changed in the Catholic Church, inside and outside the country, since then, there are those who continue to insist on trying to play a role that does not belong to them, now, for example as peacekeepers with drug trafficking in the mountains of Guerrero. I wonder what can be pacified with groups that want to continue preserving their de facto power and their illegitimate activities.
It is not about pacifying or not, what the diocese of Chilpancingo has is a special relationship with the Ardillos cartel and wants a negotiation that allows them to maintain the control they have over an entire region of the mountains today in dispute with other groups, including the Familia Michoacana and the Tlacos. When it is said that the problem for reaching an agreement is that the Ardillos do not want to lose the lands “that cost them lives,” it is saying that it is accepted that those territories are theirs and they are leaving aside not only the laws, but also the lives that that criminal group has snatched.
It is not new. The bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, Salvador Rangel Mendozafor years has been hand in hand with the drug traffickers, celebrating masses for them and justifying their actions while denouncing the security forces. Perhaps he does it with good intentions, but defending a criminal group against others, and them against the authorities, has never been a good recipe for the pacification of a territory.
Bishop Rangel said in 2018 and has been rigorously repeating it to this day that “Guerrero is in the hands of drug trafficking. There is an official government, but I believe that other people order things. I even dare to say that those people (that is, the drug traffickers) talk to me about a supermafia above and that is the danger we run…above the local things, you know, there are international groups.” It may be true, but the way out is not to recognize the de facto power of criminals.
The bishop, since then, accepted having met on several occasions with the leaders of the strongest drug trafficking groups in the entity, because they, he says, “ask him for his intervention to agree on their way of working.” When these agreements are broken by one of the groups, that is when, he says, violence occurs.
In 2018, before the elections, two priests from his diocese were murdered when they came from a party with the Ardillos, where they displayed themselves (there were photos) even with the firearms of the drug traffickers. Bishop Rangel then accepted that Father Germán, one of those murdered, did take the photo with the weapons and the criminals, but “this does not mean that the father was colluding with organized crime.” In an interview that he then had with Pascal Beltrán del Río, he explained to him that Father Germán had to officiate masses where criminals operate and “from coming and going so much he became friends with them.”
That friendship reached the bishop, who publicly thanked them for their gifts. The Ardillos, in his land, in Tanicuilco, municipality of Quechultengo, gave him in December 2017 a staff and a silver pectoral, as well as a ring with precious stones. In reciprocity, the bishop celebrated a mass for them.
The Ardillos' relationships are many, in Guerrero and Morelos, but their territory is being disputed by the Nueva Familia Michoacana and the Tlacos, among other criminal groups. They control Chilapa, Mochitlán, Quechultenango, Tixtla, Zitlala, Ahuacotzingo and Acatepec in Guerrero. One of the Ortega Jiménez brothers, leaders of the Ardillos, Bernardo was a candidate for the PRD in the 24th district, and before that he was municipal president of Quechultenango, local deputy and no less than president of the government commission of the state congress in a legislature local.
They were originally part of the Beltrán Leyva and then the Rojos, but they broke with them and approached the Guerreros Unidos. In addition to drug trafficking, they dedicate themselves to assaulting trucks delivering beer, bread, and soft drinks, as well as extortion and robbery. They currently control a good part of the poppy production in La Montaña allied with the successors of the Beltrán Leyva family. But the emergence of fentanyl has weakened them and broken part of their alliance system.
By the way, Pope Francis has a very harsh speech regarding criminal groups and has made it clear on many occasions, such as when two Jesuit priests were murdered in the Tarahuamara mountains. What would he have talked about with Xóchitl Gálvez and Claudia Sheimbaum, in the meetings he held with each of them separately, during this week?
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