Barranco: the strategy is not working

Arturo Sanchez Jimenez

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday June 26, 2022, p. 3

The cunning and absurd murders of the Jesuit missionaries Joaquín Mora Salazar and Javier Campos Morales – massacred on Monday along with the tourist guide Pedro Palma by assassins in the temple of Cerocahui, Chihuahua – have caused deep indignation in the Catholic Church and other cults. , who demand that the security policy be reevaluated because it is not having an effect, according to Bernardo Barranco Villafán, an expert on religious issues and a contributor to this newspaper.

In a telephone interview, he assures, the religious they are living in their own flesh this situation of instability that is experienced at the level of the capillaries of society, especially in remote areassuch as the Tarahumara region, where the work of the Society of Jesus dates back to the 17th century.

He states that the deaths of the two priests have led the Church to ask that the security policy be reconsidered. It is not enough to proclaim that the causes of violence that are found in poverty, marginalization and exclusion are being attacked, which are probably policies that will have a long-term effect, what society demands is protection in the short term. The claim that the churches are making is that the security policy be reassessed, because it is not working.

It is “a position assumed by different religious classes that in a certain sense are outsiders and they get out of the perverse game that the opposition has of blaming any defect on the federal government and Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Church in this case represents a third party that is not in this game and says: ‘President, this is not working’”.

helplessness

The murders of Mora Salazar and Campos Morales They show the reality of the country. If the criminals are capable of murdering two priests in such a cold and brutal way, who are not only bearers of sacredness in the region, but are figures of high moral weight, what are they not capable of doing with the rest of the population that does not has these badgesconsiders Barranco.

When asked about the voices that point to the Church allowing it to operate and even collaborate with criminal groups in different areas of the country, he warns that these are “very delicate statements that whoever makes them would have to prove them.

This is not the first time this has been raised. In Guerrero, the bishop (of Chilpancingo, Salvador) Rangel negotiated with organized crime during the electoral campaign the possibility of allowing the population to vote. This created a lot of confusion in the political society. In the absence of the State, the Church, which is present in these remote and abandoned places, has a role of mediationExplain.