In Mexico “citizens are at the mercy of organized crime and that anywhere in the world is called a Failed State,” was the lapidary sentence expressed by the rector of the Universidad Iberoamericana Torreón-Monterrey-Saltillo, Juan Luis Hernández Avendaño.
The phrase, which emerged in the context of pain over the cunning and barbaric murder of two Jesuit priests and a tour guide in the Sierra Tarahumara by a hit man from the region, is not just a manifestation of mourning. It is a declaration based on the theory of the State and formulated by a political scientist, a teacher in Political Sociology and a doctorate in Political Science, supported by rectors of the Jesuit educational system in Mexico.
The PP.JJ. Javier Campos Morales and Joaquín César Mora Salazar fulfilled their Christian duty to rescue and give aid to a dying man who had been shot at the doors of his church, in Cerocahui, Chihuahua. Barbarism came to them for that act of mercy, in eloquent demonstration that criminals do not understand hugs, but bullets.
The crime went around the world, and raised the indignation of the Vatican, in the voice of Pope Francis himself, who expressed his condolences for the tragedy: “How many murders in Mexico!”, but to President López Obrador this comment, those of the Jesuit community and the Mexican Episcopate did not move him.
“We are not going to change the strategy, let them continue with their smear campaigns, attacking us with their sold or rented press,” said the President of Mexico.
Do Vatican News, Vatican Radio or L’Osservatore Romano constitute press sold or rented, which have reproduced the Mexican Episcopate’s condemnation of the cunning crime and the demand for justice and clear action by the Mexican State to straighten the course of security in our country?
Are they smear campaigns when the Catholic Church asks the Mexican authorities to convene a national dialogue to undertake “intelligent and comprehensive actions in order to achieve peace through joint participation”?
Pope Francis has said that “Violence does not solve problems, but rather increases unnecessary suffering”, true. But it was not an accolade to “hugs, not bullets” as a security strategy. On the contrary, it is a call to the government to act so that the violence against people by organized crime ceases.
The duty of the State is to provide security to the population. For that, it has a monopoly of force, and is committed to complying with and enforcing the law.
The law is not complied with by avoiding the burden of responsibility, nor by consenting to criminals, their relatives and lawyers; much less by ordering the release of criminals, instructing the armed forces to turn the other cheek or outright flee in the presence of those who violate order and attack good people.
One does not act with a State vision if the most important thing is to play baseball right in the middle of a security crisis. His so-called “security strategy” is just a set of electoral handouts, a patronage instrument that has not touched one iota the ability of organized crime to co-opt.
“Causes are being addressed,” says the President, but we continue to see more and more young people enrolled in hired assassins at the service of the cartels. This federal government does not fight crime, as if it hoped that evil and crime would magically disappear, but the world and reality do not work through magic or spirituality. The presidency must act by operation of law, not by falsely enlightened ideologies.