Mexican Churchmen Broker Truce Between 2 Warring Drug Cartels

Catholic clerics from Mexico reportedly helped arrange a truce between two warring cartels, which painted the state of Guerrero in Mexico's south red with blood.

The Associated Press reported that the development was the latest in a string of attempts made by Catholic bishops and priests to get cartels to talk to each other in the hope of reducing turf battles across the country. The implicit assumption was that the cartels would divide up the territories where they charge extortion fees and traffic drugs without having to kill people.

According to the Rev. José Filiberto Velázquez, a Catholic priest who had knowledge of the negotiations but did not participate in them, said that the talks involved the leaders of the notoriously violent Familia Michoacana and the Tlacos Gang, also known as the Cartel of the Mountain.

"The armed conflict that existed in the area where the attacks have occurred has ceased," he said, but also acknowledged that the agreement "hangs by a thread" and depended on the will of the gang leaders.

The priest was referring to an area deep in the mountains where earlier this week a grisly video was posted on social media showing cartel gunmen shooting, kicking, and burning the corpses of about 15 of their enemies who local media identified as gunmen of the La Familia cartel.

(Photo: ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Bishops Brokering Deals

Last week, Chilpancingo-Chilapa Bishop José de Jesús González Hernández and three other bishops in Guerrero state talked with cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a peace accord in a different area.

The prelate said at the time that those talks failed because the drug gangs refused to stop fighting over territory in the state, which shut down transportation in at least two cities and led to dozens of killings in recent months.

"They asked for a truce, but with conditions," González Hernández said of the talks, held a few weeks earlier, referring to dividing up territories. "But these conditions were not agreeable to one of the participants."

Government Inaction to Curb Cartels

Meanwhile, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said last week that he approved of such talks, while critics said that they illustrated the extent of the government's inability to confront and dismantle the cartels, which left ordinary Mexicans to work out their own separate peace deals with the gangs.

"Priests and pastors and members of all the churches have participated, helped in pacifying the country," he said a day after the existence of the negotiations. "I think it is very good."

However, he added that he would not approve of "any agreement that meant granting impunity, privileges or licenses to steal."

A parish priest from a town in Michoacan state that has become cartel territory said that López Obrador's recognition of church intervention was a sign that the government was not reliable in curbing the cartels.

"It is an implicit recognition that they can't provide safe conditions," the priest said on the condition of anonymity for security purposes."Undoubtedly, we have to talk to certain people, above all when it comes to people's safety, but that doesn't mean we agree with it."

Many average Mexicans have quietly agreed to pay protection payments to drug cartels for fear of being attacked or having their homes or businesses burned. The church has also suffered at the hands of cartels - as priests have also been killed - but some gang leaders talk with their church counterparts.