Greed, ambition and phone calls: this is how the bishops negotiated with drug traffickers in Guerrero

In mid-January, the four bishops of the State of Guerrero met in Ciudad Altamirano, in the Tierra Caliente region, seat of the diocese of one of them, Monsignor Joel Ocampo.

Like every year, they met in a Pastoral Meeting with other religious, a meeting to share ideas and problems.

But the meeting had another objective: to engage in a face-to-face dialogue with the leaders of the criminal group La Familia Michoacana, Johnny Hurtado Olascoaga, alias El Pez, and his brother, Alfredo, alias La Fresa, to try to lay the foundations for a truce with the opposing criminal group, Los Tlacos, who dominate part of the Central region and the mountains.

Despite the attempt, they failed.

The frustrated negotiation of Tierra Caliente contrasts with the agreement reached in the capital so that Los Tlacos and another criminal group with interests in the area, Los Ardillos, stop fighting over local transport routes, a situation that has been confirmed by priest Filiberto Velázquez, belonging to the diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa.

Asked about this matter, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said this Thursday: “We see it very well.

Nothing but agreements that mean granting impunity, privileges, licenses to steal.”

As the bishop of Chilpancingo, José de Jesús González, explained by surprise this Wednesday, the negotiation between Tlacos and Familia failed because of “the greed, the ambition to have money and power” of the leaders on both sides.

González did not give more details.

“They wanted that and they couldn't… They asked for a truce, with their conditions, but those conditions were not to the liking of some of the participants.

It was a question of territories, which do not let them go.

It has cost them lives, work and they do not let them go.

So we have to look for other ways to offer this situation,” he argued.

Sources close to these negotiations consulted by EL PAÍS explain that the mid-January meeting, the last in a series of smaller meetings, took place “beyond Arcelia”, also in Tierra Caliente, territory of La Familia Michoacana.

The bishops spoke first with El Pez and La Fresa and then called by cell phone the leader of the opposing group, Onesimo Marquina, alias Necho, who was in the Tlacotepec mountain range, with a priest he trusted, as these sources have explained.

Apparently, the conversation was fruitless.

The same sources detail that the negotiation failed because La Familia and Los Tlacos did not agree on several points.

“The Family wanted Necho to give them Las Tunas, a community that is part of San Miguel Totolapan, but very close to Heliodoro Castillo,” explains one of the sources.

The municipality of Heliodoro Castillo is the base of Los Tlacos, while San Miguel Totolapan is part of the domain of La Familia.

The disagreement extended to other issues.

“They also did not agree on the distribution of Iguala, because La Familia wants half, which right now belongs to Los Tlacos with other groups.

And the same thing happened with Taxco.

Necho agreed to give up the municipality and also promised not to get involved in the fight for Morelos,” explains this source.

One of the four bishops noted after the meeting that on the La Familia side he had noticed more openness and, on the Los Tlacos side, more closedness.

At the meeting, the four insisted to the criminal leaders on two points, first, that their fights did not affect the population.

Second, that the weight of his extortions was reaching a limit.

Los Tlacos and La Familia have been fighting for years in areas of the center and the mountains of Guerrero, in the case of Taxco, Iguala and communities near Tlacotepec, the municipal seat of Heliodoro Castillo.

The battle over transportation routes in these two municipalities has worsened in recent months, a problem that is weighing down other parts of the State, such as Chilpancingo or Acapulco.

In the mountains, the confrontation is reminiscent of a guerrilla war, with Los Tlacos defending communities and La Familia trying to gain ground, using explosives launched with drones and surgical raids.

While the negotiations between these two groups ran aground, the problems in Chilpancingo worsened.

The capital was burning due to the fight between Los Tlacos and Los Ardillos, who are based in Quechultenango, towards the La Montaña region.

Both have businesses in the capital and any reason can set off a spark, like last week, when Tlacos and Ardillos murdered six bus and taxi drivers in the city.

Many schools closed and transportation stopped waiting for conditions to improve.

With open fronts in several regions of the State, Necho, the head of Los Tlacos, sought a rapprochement with Celso Ortega, leader of Los Ardillos.

He did it through the priest Velázquez, who manages a Human Rights center in Chilpacingo, as this newspaper has learned.

Velázquez provided Necho and Ortega with the opponent's telephone numbers and, in telephone conversations, they resolved the dispute.

At least temporarily.

It remains to be seen how long the truce lasts and if the agreement can be replicated in the mountains, Iguala and Taxco.

Subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in this country