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| Bishop Alonso Gerardo Garza Trevino of Piedras ... |
DD for Borderland Beat
story reported in Zocolo
The international press has taken notice in the last month on the violence in Mexico. It's attention was drawn by the murder and disappearance of the 57 students at the teachers college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. The huge demonstrations across Mexico and then internationally demanding the return of the missing boys kept it in the news.
But it was just in the last couple of weeks that the press started recognizing that the rage and fury of the demonstrators and that was simmering in much of the populace of Mexico was not just the result of the massacre in Iguala. Iguala was just the straw that broke the camels back. (NYT, WSJ, Financial Times, Washington Post)
The feeling of insecurity of the people due to the indifference, ineptitude, and corruption of their government to provide security is rooted in the tens or hundreds of thousands of missing and dead all of Mexico in the last decade. There is no way to know an actual number of dead and missing because most of the bodies were either buried in mass graves, dissolved in acid, or reduced to ashes by incineration.
Mass graves are being found across Mexico on a daily basis. Many missing persons are never reported because the families fear the government was involved in the disappearance and fear retaliation if they make a report.
The federal government, in an attempt to project an image that is it doing something to provide security has sent tens of thousands of military and federal police into the states of Michoacan and Guerrero. From statements by government officials it seems the federal government believes that if the case of the missing students can be resolved the public will be placated.
The Catholic Church this past week seems to have joined the chorus demanding that the federal government address insecurity all across Mexico - not just in Guerrero.
After a meeting of Bishops from across Mexico with the Secretary of Interior Osorio Chong the Bishop from Piedras Negras Coahuila said Coahuila and Tamaulipas "are much ahead of other states in the county in the number of disappearances, even above Guerrero."
“ It is sad to say it, we did not want to have the first places in this field, but these states of the border overcome many others and it is very lamentable, only that here is not so famous, because it was not in only one event in which there were so many missing persons and so many dead persons, but I believe that yes we take the front to many states of the country and I hope that changes ”.
Speaking of the meeting with Osorio “ We presented him our views of it being a problem all across Mexico and it was a big contrast to what he thinks of the situation principally of safety. We questioned him strongly on these situations that are so difficult because it crosses the country. Then we asked him everything what is Government government doing so that this is solved promptly.”
The federal official explained that insecurity is mainly concentrated in Guerrero and Michoacan, the bishops stated that the problem is a threat in the rest of the country.
Then, as is typical of of Mexican culture to not place blame for a problem directly on a person you are having a meeting with the prelate said;
"Perhaps in the Church as bishop I do not find out and know if it happens, but in the Government they (the leaders) are human as all of us, perhaps those who are next to them make things up, I am saying perhaps, cannot be sure of that. But definitively the Government has to take cognizance of the reality."