Jesuit priests Javier Campos Morales,
78 years old
,
and Joaquín Mora, 80, have been murdered this Monday inside the church of the Cerocahui community, in the Sierra Tarahumara (Chihuahua) when they gave shelter to a man who was being persecuted.
Some armed guys burst into the temple with bullets and murdered the three.
Despite the pleas of the only priest who was saved from the fire, the criminals threw the bodies into a truck and they are missing.
The main suspect is a criminal leader in the area, José Noriel Portillo, alias
El Chueco,
according to the local press.
The region is besieged by organized crime's control of the land and forests, with thousands of displaced people at gunpoint, and the absolute impunity suffered not only by this marginal and poor area of northern Mexico, but by many others throughout the world. country.
Uno de los principales líderes de la comunidad jesuita que trabaja en la sierra Tarahumara desde hace décadas, Javier Ávila, cuenta a este diario cómo el horror que vive el pueblo mexicano ha tocado las puertas de la iglesia. “Vivimos constantemente amenazados y hostigados. Pero nunca habíamos llegado a este extremo”, explica Ávila desde el otro lado del teléfono. La mañana de este martes, se encuentra de camino a Cerocahui, acompañado de un escolta, para reencontrarse con la comunidad, a la que intentaron proteger desde el momento en el que sucedieron los hechos: “Esto sucedió ayer a medio día [el lunes], pero quisimos ser muy discretos porque temíamos que se fueran contra la población. No fue hasta que se comenzó a dar la noticia, que nuestros superiores en la capital decidieron enviar un comunicado”, explica. “Con este doble asesinato Dios nos está permitiendo hacernos pueblo, y sentir su dolor”, señala el sacerdote.
Ávila narrates what happened, according to what the witnesses of the massacre have told him.
There was one more priest, who managed to save himself from the crime and who begged the criminals not to take the bodies.
"The man who shot was completely shaken," he recounts.
And when he tries to explain the crime he can't contain his anger: “This will never be understood, because it doesn't make any sense.
It is the fruit of an official closure in the face of a very tragic reality.
The country, not only the Tarahumara area, is covered by a rude, alarming impunity.
It hurts a lot, but it's a reality.
There has been no one, in any six-year term, who says: "Enough is enough," Ávila denounces.
According to the testimonies he has collected, a man ran into the church this Monday with the sun still high.
He was being followed by some guys who wanted to kill him.
The priests Campos and Mora ran when they heard the shots.
One of them went to help the person who had just been murdered and a hit man did not hesitate to shoot him with bullets that ended his life.
Another priest tried to approach the criminal, "calm him down," explains Ávila.
And, without any mercy, he was also riddled.
After the massacre, and following the same pattern as the narco, they looked for a way to dispose of the corpses.
Thus, to swell the figures of the more than 100,000 disappeared that the country has.
They have not even allowed the clerics to offer them a proper burial.
The Diocese of Tarahuamara has requested in a statement that the authorities do everything possible to rescue the bodies and that the violence of recent years cease: “Anyone could say that they were in the wrong place and at the wrong time;
however, this has not been the case, since both priests were fulfilling their duty to help and physically and spiritually aid a person who was losing his life”.
The Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus has requested that its clerics be protected from the violence they have historically suffered in the country.
“We demand that all protection measures be adopted immediately to safeguard the lives of our Jesuit brothers, sisters, lay people and the entire Cerocahui community.
Facts like these are not isolated.
The Sierra Tarahumara, like many other regions of the country, faces conditions of violence and neglect that have not been reversed.
Every day men and women are arbitrarily deprived of life, as our brothers were murdered today,” they say.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed the events at his press conference on Tuesday and recognized the violence suffered by the State of Chihuahua due to the onslaught of organized crime.
“We are now attending to this matter.
It seems that there is already information about the possible perpetrators of these crimes,” the president reported.
In Mexico, according to the organization Centro Católico Multimedial, some 30 priests have been murdered in the last decade.
The wave of violence has also reached churches and temples that are often a refuge for the citizens themselves.
Javier Campos Morales, with 50 years of mission in the Tarahumara, according to Ávila,
he was the superior of the Jesuits in the region.
He was born on February 13, 1943 in Mexico City, grew up in the capital of the State of Nuevo León and later entered the Institute of Sciences in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1959, at the age of 16, to be ordained a priest in 1972. A year later he began his mission as local superior, pastoral and episcopal vicar in the Sierra Tarahumara.
He was a parish priest in the communities of Norogachi, Guachochi, Chinatú and in Cerocahui.
“He was a very pastoral guy.
He knew the Tarahumara like his hand, he went through it all.
He was very close to the people,” Ávila recalls.
Joaquín César Mora Salazar was born on August 28, 1941 in Monterrey, Nuevo León.
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1958, also at the age of 16.
He was ordained a priest in 1971. From 2000 he served as parish vicar in the municipality of Chínipas, until 2006. Since 2007, he served as cooperating vicar in Cerocahui.
Ávila says that he talked a lot with him, asking him for advice because of the repeated threats, abuses, disappearances of people, displaced people from his land.
“He was very worried about the invasion of organized crime.
Because of so much impunity”, says the priest.
The double crime of the Jesuits has placed the Sierra Tarahumara in the center of the terror of drug violence.
And it has reminded a country that endures the bloodiest figures in its history, between 90 and 100 murders a day, that there is not a corner of Mexico that is safe.
As much as from the presidential stage, López Obrador boasts of a "containment" in the homicide figures.
Impunity, which borders on 95% of cases, and massacres like the one on Monday, sends a powerful message: whether more people are killed or not will depend on the will of the criminals.
“The people are not listened to”, concludes Ávila.
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