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The warning left Margarita Galan with no choice but to abandon her mayoral bid in a Mexican town where three candidates have already been murdered ahead of June elections.
“You stop. That’s it,” said the message to the 27-year-old chef, she told AFP in her home in Michoacan, one of Mexico’s most violent states.
Criminals in the town of Maravatio, like other areas across Mexico, are using threats and bullets to ensure their favored candidate is elected on June 2, when the country will also choose a new president.
Maravatio, an agricultural town of 80,000 inhabitants, tops the list.
On February 26, two aspiring mayors — Miguel Reyes and Armando Perez, both 58 — were gunned down in attacks just hours apart.
In November, Dagoberto Garcia, who also aspired to be mayor, was found dead.
Reyes and Garcia belonged to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s ruling Morena party, Perez to the conservative National Action Party, and Galan to the small opposition Citizens’ Movement party.
Five candidates remain in the race.
The spate of killings has left residents of Maravatio living in fear.
Two men in a car have been hanging around for hours at the rallies of the new Morena candidate, Mario Perez.
At night they stop the vehicle, roll down the window and stare at the meeting, without a single police officer in sight.
“That car’s not normal,” a member of the campaign team said. “Those things make us nervous.”
At the end of a recent rally, Perez surrounded himself with supporters for photos, and the two men slipped away into the darkness.
Perez, a 34-year-old dentist who hopes to end the Party of the Democratic Revolution’s almost quarter-century control of the district, avoids talking about insecurity in public.
He has not requested official security protection, unlike 96 other candidates in Michoacan.
Perez told AFP his goal is to offer young people opportunities so they have alternatives to darker paths.
During a political gathering on a dusty street, one of his supporters, 45-year-old teacher Liz Monroy, admitted she was “afraid to participate” because she feels politics is synonymous with insecurity.
It’s no exaggeration: on May 10, near Galan’s house, a shootout erupted between the bodyguards of two mayoral candidates from a nearby district who crossed paths, apparently due to a misunderstanding.
Michoacan state, Mexico’s main avocado-producing region, is the scene of constant fighting between organized crime groups, including the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Without a single dominant cartel, more than a dozen gangs are battling for control of activities such as methamphetamine trafficking and extortion.
They are increasingly seeking to “impose candidates” in the region, said electoral crimes state prosecutor Victor Serrato, who has received 39 complaints from candidates, mostly for threats and extortion.
“The criminals choose a candidate” and tell the others “you don’t have permission” to run for office, said Antonio Plaza, a 47-year-old aspiring state lawmaker in Michoacan.
He said in one municipality, “a gang summoned all the parties, except one, and let them know: this person is going to win here.”
Spiraling criminal violence has seen more than 450,000 people murdered since the government of then-president Felipe Calderon launched a controversial military offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
The homicide rate has almost tripled to 23 cases per 100,000 inhabitants since then.
As well as drug trafficking and extortion of avocado farmers, criminal gangs in Michoacan are involved in myriad other activities including illegal logging.
In the Tierra Caliente region, where hundreds of soldiers have been sent to monitor the elections, one cartel even set up stolen antennas to charge for internet services, according to the state prosecutor’s office.
Despite the real dangers, candidate Maria Salud Valencia refuses to abandon her bid to be a local mayor in Michoacan.
The 60-year-old teacher, who has official protection, said she has “fear, but also courage” to keep her going.
“If they’re going to kill me, let it be for defending my people,” she said.
Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have discovered a chacmool statue in the city of Pátzcuaro, Mexico.
A chacmool is a distinctive form of Mesoamerican sculpture representing a reclining figure that may represent slain warriors carrying offerings to the gods. Individual chacmools exhibit significant variation, with heads that can face either to the right or left, and in some cases, upwards.
The original name for these sculptures is unknown, with the name “chacmool” given by Augustus Le Plongeon in 1875 based on a sculpture he and his wife unearthed in the Temple of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichén Itzá. Le Plongeon interpreted “Chaacmol” from Yucatecan Mayan to mean “paw swift like thunder.”
Archaeologists recovered a chacmool statue in Pátzcuaro during construction works, which according to the researchers was found out of context from its original location and placed in construction fill for the development of the city.
The statue is carved from basalt and measures 90 centimetres in length by 80 centimetres in height, with a preliminary study placing the date of the statue to the Late Post-Classic Period (AD 1350 to 1521).
According to an INAH representative: “These images that we know by the Mayan name of chacmool were ritual tables in pre-Hispanic times. It has been speculated that they were used in sacrificial and offering ceremonies.”
Because of the discovery, the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico, through the INAH Michoacán Centre, has undertaken an archaeological rescue project to expand explorations in the immediate area of the statue to identify any further archaeological remains.
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Teen who texted 911 rescued after she was trafficked to California from Mexico
In texts received in Spanish and translated to English, the girl tried to describe her location, though she did not know where she was
Authorities rescued a 17-year old girl after she was trafficked to Ventura county, California, from Mexico two months ago and texted 911 for help.
In the messages, the girl, who did not know where she and her captor were, was able to identify landmarks and provide other identifiable information, authorities said. As the 911 dispatcher corresponded with the girl, other communications center team members delivered real-time information to authorities who were responding to the search.
After approximately 20 minutes of searching the area of Casitas Springs, a community located about 86 miles from Los Angeles, authorities located the girl. She was evaluated and transferred to Ventura county child family services until she can be reunited with her family. Authorities did not disclose whether the girl will remain in the US or return to Mexico.
The suspect has been identified as 31-year-old Gerardo Cruz from Veracruz, Mexico. Booked at the pre-trial detention facility, Cruz has been charged with human trafficking, forcible rape, lewd acts upon a child, luring and sexual penetration with force. He remains in custody with bail set at $500,000.
In its announcement, authorities hailed the ability to send text messages to emergency call centers, adding, “This incident also utilized integrated translation technology as the call taker only spoke English and the victim only spoke and wrote in Spanish. The call taker was able to quickly interpret and text back a response in English, which was quickly re-translated to Spanish for the victim.”
California is one of the largest sites of human trafficking in the US, according to the state’s office of the attorney general. Since 2015, between 20 and 30% of human trafficking cases in California that are reported annually to the National Human Trafficking Hotline involved children under 18 years old.
As Mexico, U.S. head to polls, Trudeau still aims to host trilateral summit in 2024
OTTAWA –
Canada has yet to set a date for the North American Leaders’ Summit, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s still aiming to host the gathering this year.
The summit has happened most years since 2005, and hosting duties rotate between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico for meetings that focus on transnational issues such as immigration and drug trafficking.
Canada agreed in January 2023 to host the next summit, and Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Alicia Barcena said in February that it would take place in Quebec in April.
“Canada has not yet confirmed the date or the location of the next summit,” Global Affairs Canada wrote in a statement.
Mexico heads to the polls on June 2, while the U.S. election takes place Nov. 5, and Trudeau said Thursday it’s been tricky navigating that schedule.
“It’s a little more challenging to pull together the Three Amigos summit, but we still intend to hold it in 2024,” he told reporters in Caraquet, N.B.
“Getting together to work on common issues is a huge priority. We continue to work bilaterally on a number of issues.”
While it is important that the summit happen, it’s also understandable “that it might just get pushed out a little bit,” said Bruce Heyman, U.S. ambassador to Canada during the Obama administration.
“It’s going to be important that Canada, Mexico and the U.S. find ways to protect this relationship, which I think under Trump 2.0 would be very, very difficult.”
Heyman said the summit is a “critical format” to get countries on the same page around issues such as manufacturing, the environment and supply chains. He said the looming 2026 review of the trade deal that replaced NAFTA shouldn’t affect the next summit.
Yet he argued that a meeting before November would help countries set plans to limit the effect of policies that could harm relations if Donald Trump is elected in the U.S. on his pledges to implement trade and border restrictions, and to scrap certain environmental protections.
“Some things that we agreed to as a country can be rolled back under an adversarial-type administration,” Heyman said. He advocates putting U.S.-Canada issues into laws and treaties that would “future-proof” policies and make them harder for a Trump administration to repeal.
“It’s important to do that, but we’re running short on time to be able to implement those things,” he said.
Canada chairs the G7 next year, meaning it will host a series of ministerial meetings in 2025 and a leaders’ summit for the bloc, which represents like-minded rich countries.
The Mexican Embassy in Ottawa noted that whichever president Mexico elects will be a new leader who takes office in September, and so it “could be complicated” to hold a summit during the summer months.
The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa says it looks forward to working on numerous issues when the summit does take place.
“This includes work to deepen our economic co-operation, promote investment, and reinforce competitiveness, innovation, and resilience; combat the climate crisis; champion expansion of legal pathways and other humane measures to address irregular migration in the region; and combat arms and drug trafficking, as well as trafficking in persons,” a spokeswoman wrote.
Heyman noted that the trilateral summit has always been more ad hoc than meetings like the G20 or NATO military alliance. For example, Mexico delayed its hosting of the 2022 summit into January 2023.
During Trump’s four years as president, he refused to have the summit take place. Former prime minister Stephen Harper postponed the 2015 summit amid tensions over the Obama administration delaying construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Canada similarly postponed a 2010 summit, while Mexico had the 2011 gathering postponed after the death of a politician.
In late February, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador threatened to boycott the summit “if there is no respectful treatment” of Mexico. He cited Ottawa’s decision to reimpose a visa requirement on Mexican citizens, as well as a New York Times report about a preliminary American probe into alleged gang ties with his affiliates.
On March 8, Lopez Obrador said he figured it was too late to have the summit ahead of the two elections.
“I believe that it will no longer be my responsibility to attend the summit,” he said in Spanish at a press conference. “But whoever replaces me will surely attend, because we need to maintain our economic and commercial relations with Canada and the United States.”
The North American Drought Monitor reports that nearly 70% of the country is facing drought conditions, while the figure for Canada is closer to 40%. An El Niño pattern regime is widely credited for causing widespread precipitation deficits throughout North America.
MEXICO CITY – A combination of wildfires, agricultural burns and a persistent wind flow out of the south is causing air quality issues along the Gulf Coast from Texas through Florida with high-level haze occasionally impacting visibilities.
Firefighters in Mexico and countries in Central America are fighting dozens of wildfires that are producing large plumes of smoke, which are visible on satellite imagery.
On Friday, Mexico’s national forest commission reported 168 active wildfires have burned over a quarter of a million acres, and there is no apparent relief in sight.
The North American Drought Monitor reports a staggering 82% of the country is unusually dry, with nearly 70% under drought conditions.
Drought statuses that are considered to be extreme or exceptional lead to widespread crop losses, water shortages and make vegetation conducive for fires.
A recent national pickle shortage in the U.S. was tied directly to poor agricultural conditions in Mexico, with the possibility that other fruits and vegetables might suffer a similar fate over the next several months.
Air quality observation sites around Brownsville and South Texas have had some of the poorest readings in the nation, with levels dipping into the ‘unhealthy’ range, but according to the local National Weather Service, the region is in a unique situation.
“There are three reasons for that. One, of course, is the burning. But number two is the persistence of the southerly flow. It is part of the same pattern, producing a lot of the flooding and windstorms in East and Southeast Texas. The other thing is, with the very warm water temperatures of the eastern half of the Pacific and the southwestern Gulf, it’s producing additional moisture that particles to condense onto,” the NWS stated.
NWS meteorologists warned that not all of the smoke that is being observed in the Lone Star State are from wildfires, yearly agricultural burns are also taking place, with farmers preparing fields for future crops.
Forecast models show off-and-on plumes of smoke impacting communities around the Gulf Coast through the weekend, but the FOX Forecast Center warns that impacts are entirely dependent on local weather conditions and, for most, will just be a phenomenon that is barely visible in the sky.
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Mexico’s presidential frontrunner Sheinbaum’s lead narrows slightly, poll shows
The April 25-29 survey by polling firm Parametria showed Sheinbaum of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) with 44% support, well ahead of Xochitl Galvez, candidate of a right-left alliance of three parties, with 31%.
A survey in February by the same firm showed Sheinbaum with 49% support and Galvez with only 29%.
The poll gave a third contender, Jorge Alvarez Maynez of the opposition center-left Citizens’ Movement (MC), backing of 8%, a three-point increase over the February survey.
It showed 17% of respondents offered no preference.
The face-to-face poll of 800 people had a 3.5% margin of error.
Francisco Abundis, head of Parametria, said the increase in Maynez’s support was notable and suggested he may ultimately capture a double-digit percentage of the vote in the election.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old scientist who has been a close ally of the current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for decades, could become the first woman to rule the country.
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Mexico Is Fighting Over 100 Active Wildfires Amid a Heat Wave
Mexico’s national weather service issued an alert that at least 12 states would experience temperatures higher than 45°C (113°F), with large swathes of the rest of the country expected to see temperatures higher than 30°C.
The heat wave has increased demand for power, prompting the country’s grid operator to declare the system in a state of emergency on Thursday evening for the second time this week. That means the available power was below adequate levels. On Wednesday, operator Cenace also declared the system in a state of alert.
Mexico’s national forest commission (Conafor) said the wildfires spread across 75,474 hectares (186,500 acres). It also said that 30 of the fires were in protected natural areas.
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Rolling Blackouts Hit Several Cities as Heat Wave Scorches Mexico
The electrical grid in Mexico has been strained after soaring temperatures, leading to blackouts on Tuesday.
There were rolling blackouts in multiple cities across Mexico on Tuesday, as people in several states reeled from soaring temperatures and the national energy authority briefly declared a state of emergency.
A heat wave has scorched Mexico in recent days, bringing temperatures in multiple states into the triple digits. Mexico City on Tuesday reached a high of 92 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature recorded there on May 7 in over 20 years.
Mexico’s energy authority, Cenace, announced a state of emergency for the national grid early Tuesday evening, meaning that available power had dropped below adequate levels. It said less than an hour later that the system had returned to normal.
But local news media outlets reported on blackouts in municipalities across the country throughout the evening. Social media users uploaded photos and videos of darkened city skylines.
Local officials confirmed several blackouts in the state of Mexico, including in San Mateo Atenco and Metepec, near Mexico City. And during a blackout in the city of Nuevo Laredo, near the Texas border, they asked people to avoid driving.
In a statement, the national energy agency attributed the electricity shortage on Tuesday afternoon to a series of factors, including a drop in wind and solar power generation. Some power plants were also offline at the time, it said. The statement did not mention the heat wave.
An increase in nighttime demand later required rolling power interruptions across Mexico, the agency said. Electricity was gradually being restored starting at about 8 p.m., in a process that was expected to last until 11 p.m.
Mexico has experienced blackouts before, including during extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or heat waves. During power failures in the country last June, local officials reported hundreds of heat-related deaths even as federal and state governments underplayed them.
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For some residents of Mexico’s Cancun, beach seems world away
The sun-kissed beaches and turquoise waters of Mexico’s Caribbean resort of Cancun attract millions of visitors, but schoolteacher Yazmin Teran is lucky if she enjoys them a few times a year.
Like other Mexicans living on the fringes of the major tourist destination, she feels her working-class suburb and the luxury hotel zone are worlds apart.
In 2023 alone, 32.7 million visitors touched down at Cancun airport — 63 percent of them foreigners, according to official data.
Few are likely to visit Villas Otoch Paraiso, where Teran lives.
A quick internet search shows that the housing development, established in 2007 and home to about 40,000 people, is considered to be “Cancun’s most dangerous neighborhood.”
Teran remembers how excited she was when she arrived in Cancun 15 years ago from the southern state of Oaxaca so her husband could work in the tourism sector.
“You see the beaches, the tourist places and the hotel zone on television and you say ‘wow!’ the 41-year-old said.
“But when you come here to Cancun you realize that it’s not all like that,” Teran said.
“Those of us who live and work here hardly have time to go and enjoy the beach and sea,” she said, adding that such visits happened “about five times a year.”
Families without cars must make do with limited public transport.
And although the beaches are public, in practice access is restricted to hotel guests.
– High prices, low incomes –
“Going to the beach can be expensive,” said Teran, a community leader who organizes activities to help children and the elderly.
“We have to find a way to get there, buy things once we’re there or bring our own lunch,” she added.
She estimates that a family needs about 500 pesos ($30) to spend a day at the beach in the hotel zone.
The average monthly salary in Cancun is around 7,500 pesos (450 dollars), according to the specialized portal Talent.com.
In high season, a single night in a five-star hotel on Cancun’s luxury hotel strip can cost $2,000.
When Villas Otoch was built its affordable homes attracted construction and tourism workers from impoverished southern Mexican states such as Chiapas or Tabasco, as well as countries such as Guatemala or Cuba.
Seen from above, the symmetrical blocks of 14,000 identical homes measuring just 35 square meters give an impression of order.
At ground level, the street furniture is decaying and drug dealers who work in the tourist zone are also present.
According to local authorities and media, violence has increased since 2018 due to increased flows of weapons and turf wars between the country’s two most powerful drug cartels.
– ‘Last frontier’ –
Every day when their parents go out to earn a living, many children are left alone — 40 percent of them do not go to school, said Sofia Ochoa, a cultural manager who has been working in the neighborhood since 2022.
Some children stay inside while others play in the streets or are recruited by gangs.
Shootings and sexual abuse involving children are common, Ochoa said.
“Many don’t know the beach” and adjoining area, which to them “seems like the last frontier — very far to reach,” she added.
Ochoa and residents organize events to revive public spaces in Villas Otoch, such as parks that were at once time abandoned to gang members.
Rosalina Gomez, 36, came to Cancun from the southern state of Chiapas fleeing poverty and an abusive father.
Her main experience of Cancun’s tourism industry has been her job as a cleaner at the airport.
“Sometimes tourists give you clothes, a tip, a soda or say thank you because the bathroom’s clean. That’s what I like the most,” she said.
Gomez, whose 15-year-old daughter Perla del Mar has cerebral palsy, last visited the sea four years ago.
“I don’t feel comfortable going to have fun at the beach knowing that I have a bedridden daughter,” she said.
She hopes that her 17-year-old son Ricardo, who is studying food and beverages, will be able to get a job in tourism.
“Once he finishes his studies, I’ll stop working and dedicate myself to her — if God allows us,” she said.
35-41 Storms Forecast for 2024 Hurricane Season in Mexico
By:BanderasNews
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico – Meteorological experts anticipate an above-average hurricane season for Mexico in 2024. The country’s vulnerability stems from its location between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, both of which are expected to see heightened cyclonic activity.
Due to the ‘La Niña’ phenomenon, the probability of tropical cyclone formation in the Atlantic Ocean exceeds 50% of the historical average, which is 14 systems. Historically, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Quintana Roo, and Veracruz are most susceptible to landfall.
The Pacific season is anticipated to bring:
8-9 tropical storms
4-5 Category 1 & 2 hurricanes
3-4 major hurricanes (Category 3-5)
Civil Protection and National Meteorological Service personnel will closely monitor weather developments to provide timely warnings and minimize potential catastrophes. Residents are urged to stay informed, prepare for potential cyclone impacts, follow official instructions, and take necessary precautions to safeguard lives and property
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Quintana Roo, Oaxaca and San Luis Potosí recorded the strongest economic growth among Mexico’s 32 federal entities, or states, in 2023, according to data published by the national statistics agency INEGI.
Fourteen states recorded economic growth above the 3.2% annual figure for the Mexican economy as a whole last year, while growth was below that level in 18.
The economies of three states — Tamaulipas, Zacatecas and Nayarit — contracted in 2023.
Quintana Roo, the Caribbean coast state home to tourism destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, was the only state in the country to record double-digit annual growth last year. Its economy grew 10.2% last year, according to INEGI data.
Oaxaca ranked second with annual growth of 8.3% in 2023, while San Luis Potosí ranked third with an economic expansion of 7.9%.
Rounding out the top five fastest-growing state economies in 2023 were Aguascalientes and Campeche, both of which recorded 5.2% growth.
What are the strongest state economies in Mexico?
The other states that recorded growth above the 3.2% national figure were:
- Tabasco, 5.1%
- Sonora, 4.9%
- Yucatán, 4.8%
- Colima, 4.4%
- Hidalgo, 4%
- Durango, 3.9%
- Mexico City, 3.8%
- Querétaro, 3.5
- Michoacán, 3.5%
Puebla and México state recorded 3.1% economic growth last year, while the economy of Nuevo León — a significant beneficiary of nearshoring investment — expanded 3%.
Six Mexican states — Baja California, Chihuahua, Veracruz, Morelos, Baja California Sur and Jalisco — registered growth of 2%-2.9%, while the economies of five states — Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Chiapas, Guanajuato and Coahuila — grew at a rate between 1% and 1.9%.
GDP in Sinaloa increased by a modest 0.6% in 2023.
Among the three states where GDP declined last year, Tamaulipas recorded the sharpest contraction, with the economy of the northeastern state shrinking by 1%.
The economy in Zacatecas declined 0.9%, while GDP in Nayarit fell by 0.1%.
What factors helped Mexico’s fastest-growing economies in 2023?
Hugo Félix Clímaco, president of the Oaxaca College of Economists, spoke to the newspaper El Economista about the factors that helped Quintana Roo, Oaxaca and San Luis Potosí record strong economic growth in 2023.
Tourism, public investment and the broad coverage of government social programs all benefited the economy of Oaxaca last year, he said.
The federal government has invested significant amounts of money in infrastructure projects in Oaxaca, including the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec — whose modernized railroad began operations late last year — and the new highway between Oaxaca city and the state’s Pacific coast.
Clímaco said that the 8.3% growth recorded in Oaxaca last year was also a product of its “very small [economic] base.”
“… So when a large public investment is made, like that on highways, the interoceanic corridor and the upgrade of the coking plant at the Salina Cruz refinery, it has a very big impact,” he said.
While Oaxaca recorded strong economic growth last year, Clímaco noted that there are many economic challenges in the southern state including high levels of poverty and the highest rate of informal workers in the country.
He also noted that the Oaxaca economy added far fewer jobs in 2023 than that of Quintana Roo, even though the former state has a much bigger population than the latter one.
Just over 9,000 additional jobs were created in Oaxaca last year whereas the figure for Quintana Roo was over 37,000.
The economy of Quintana Roo is heavily dependent on tourism, and thus the double-digit growth the state recorded last year can be attributed in large part to the strong performance of that sector, although it also received significant government resources via spending on projects such as the Maya Train railroad and the Tulum airport, which opened in December.
The number of visitors to Quintana Roo increased 8% to 21 million last year, while the state’s tourism revenue jumped 12% to US $21 billion.
“The challenges for Quintana Roo,” Clímaco said, “are ones of equity, greater inclusion and sustainability.”
“… While it is a tourism paradise, its greatest challenge is preserving this paradise. The environmental impact of the Maya Train can’t be denied, nor can the impact of establishing hotels in the Riviera Maya, sometimes with the destruction of mangroves,” he said.
With regard to San Luis Potosí, Mexico’s third fastest-growing state economy last year, Clímaco said that the state is benefiting from nearshoring investment and manufacturing activity. Located in the industrial-focused Bajío region, San Luis Potosí received over US $1.1 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) last year, making the state Mexico’s ninth largest recipient of FDI.
German automotive manufacturer BMW was among the foreign companies that announced new investments in the state last year.
Clímaco said that manufacturing contributes to 37% of GDP in San Luis Potosí, and noted that the state also has a large agricultural sector.
“One of every five residents … works in the agricultural sector,” he said.
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Abducted retired Catholic bishop who mediated between cartels in Mexico is located, hospitalized
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A retired Roman Catholic bishop who was famous for trying to mediate between drug cartels in Mexico was located and taken to a hospital after apparently being briefly kidnapped, the Mexican Council of Bishops said Monday.
The church leadership in Mexico said in a statement earlier that Msgr. Salvador Rangel, a bishop emeritus, disappeared on Saturday and called on his captors to release him.
But the council later said he “has been located and is in the hospital,” without specifying how he had been found or released, or providing the extent of his injuries.
Uriel Carmona, the chief prosecutor of Morelos state, where the bishop disappeared, said “preliminary indications are that it may have been an ‘express’ kidnapping.”
In Mexico, regular kidnappings are often lengthy affairs involving long negotiations over ransom demands. “Express” kidnappings, on the other hand, are quick abductions usually carried out by low-level criminals were ransom demands are lower, precisely so the money can be handed over more quickly.Earlier, the council said Rangel was in ill health, and begged the captors to allow him to take his medications as “an act of humanity.”
“Considering his poor health, we call firmly but respectfully to those who are holding Msgr. Rangel captive to allow him to take the medications he needs in a proper and timely fashion, as an act of humanity,” the bishops’ council wrote before he was found.
It was unclear who may have abducted Rangel. The hyper violent drug gangs known as the Tlacos, the Ardillos and the Familia Michoacana operate in the area. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the crime.
If any harm were to have come to Rangel, it would have been the most sensational crime against a senior church official since 1993, when drug cartel gunmen killed Bishop Juan Posadas Ocampo in what was apparently a case of mistaken identity during a shootout at the Guadalajara airport.
Prosecutors in Guerrero state confirmed the abduction but offered no further details, saying only they were ready to cooperate with their counterparts in Morelos. Morelos, like Guerrero, has been hit by violence, homicides and kidnappings for years.
In a statement, Rangel’s old diocese wrote that he “is very loved and respected in our diocese.”
In February, other bishops announced that they had helped arrange a truce between two warring drug cartels in Guerrero.
Rev. José Filiberto Velázquez, who had knowledge of the February negotiations but did not participate in them, said the talks involved leaders of the Familia Michoacana cartel and the Tlacos gang, which is also known as the Cartel of the Mountain.
Bishops and priests try to get cartels to talk to each other in hopes of reducing bloody turf battles. The implicit assumption is that the cartels will divide up the territories where they charge extortion fees and traffic drugs, without so much killing..
Earlier, the current bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, José de Jesús González Hernández, said he and three other bishops in the state had talked with cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a peace accord in a different area.
Hernández said at the time that those talks failed because the drug gangs didn’t want to stop fighting over territory in the Pacific coast state. Those turf battles have 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” about dividing up territories, González Hernández said of the talks, held a few weeks earlier. “But these conditions were not agreeable to one of the participants.”
In February, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he approves of such talks.
“Priests and pastors and members of all the churches have participated, helped in pacifying the country. I think it is very good,” López Obrador said.
Critics say the talks illustrate the extent to which the government’s policy of not confronting cartels has left average citizens to work out their own separate peace deals with the gangs.
One parish priest whose town in Michoacan state has been dominated by one cartel or another for years said in February that the talks are “an implicit recognition that they (the government) can’t provide safe conditions.”n condition of anonymity for security reasons, said “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.”
For example, he said, local residents have asked him to ask cartel bosses about the fate of missing relatives. It is a role the church does not relish.
“We wouldn’t have to do this if the government did its job right,” the priest said.
In February, Rangel told The Associated Press that truces between gangs often don’t last long.
They are “somewhat fragile, because in the world of the drug traffickers, broken agreements and betrayal occur very easily,” Rangel said at the time.
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