Cash, status lure youths to drug trade in troubled parts of Mexico

By David Agren, Catholic News Service

APATZINGÁN, Mexico (CNS) -- Father Javier Cortés vividly recalls being approached recently with an unusual request by a group of teenagers in this agricultural town 300 miles west of Mexico City. There, La Familia Michoacana, a quasi-religious drug cartel, dumped four human heads at a prominent public monument during Holy Week as a warning to its rivals.

"Some young people said, 'Father, I've come so that you will bless me because I'm going to kill Zetas,'" he said, referring to the gang of rogue former soldiers and police officers that La Familia members consider their mortal enemies.

Father Cortés, who is rector of the local seminary, rebuked the plan and refused to bless the killing spree.

Such violence has become common, however, and has contributed to more than 19,000 deaths since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006 and promised to crack down on violent drug cartels. The violence increasingly is claiming young lives as well. Authorities blame the cartels and gangs affiliated with them for massacres such as the January murder of 15 youths at a birthday party in Ciudad Juárez and the Palm Sunday murders in Durango state of 10 young people who were returning to their communal farm.

But the request made of Father Cortés highlighted an even more disturbing trend in drug-related violence, as young people are increasingly recruited by the cartels and lured into the seemingly easy money of the drug trade.

"We're talking about a lost generation of young people that is falling into the networks of narcotics trafficking," said security expert Pedro Isnardo de la Cruz, who teaches at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

He attributed the recruitment of young people to a combination of factors that include Mexico's long-underperforming economy, family breakdowns and the seduction of the cartels.

Church leaders and young people concurred and said such factors are at play in Apatzingán, the hub of an economically neglected region of downtrodden communal farms and lemon groves known as Tierra Caliente, or Hot Earth.

Read more here.

Mexican drug cartel peddles meth, preaches religion

I travelled to the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán last month to speak with local Catholic officials about the Aug. 1 raid on an Apatzingán parish that nabbed a cartel kingpin that federal officials say was responsible for sending truckloads of meth from clandestine labs to the United States. Church officials in Apatzinagan obviously objected to raids on religious events and being expected to play the role of detectives for the Federal Police and Army - whose intelligence gathering is woefully inadequate.

We also spoke about the supposed religiosity of "La Familia Michoacana," a drug cartel known for its acts of charity and piety - along with acts of gratuitous violence such as beheadings. La Familia leaders often speak of "imposing order," condemn the consumption of the very products they manufacture and smuggle, and even preach a homespun version of the gospel from their very own religious text. The cartel also has been the focus of an intense crackdown by federal officials - and, frankly, an embarrassment for federal officials, who had to send reinforcements to President Felipe Calderón's home state in July as a response to La Familia counterattacks.

Here's my dispatch on La Familia's supposed religiosity, published by Canwest News Service.

Mexican government apologizes for federal police drug raid during Mass

By David Agren
Catholic News Service

MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- The Mexican government apologized after federal police burst into a parish and interrupted Mass in the western state of Michoacan to apprehend a drug-cartel suspect.

An Aug. 4 statement from the Secretariat of Public Security apologized to the Mexican bishops' conference, Bishop Miguel Patino Velazquez of Apatzingan, and the faithful "for the circumstances in which the operation had to be carried out." The statement said that the raid in an Apatzingan parish was undertaken to avoid gunfire and a "violent incident."

The Aug. 1 raid resulted in the arrests of 33 alleged members of a cartel known as La Familia Michoacana and the seizure of cash, weapons, fragmentation grenades and luxury vehicles. The detainees include Miguel Beraza Villa -- known as "La Troca" (the Truck) -- a cartel lieutenant that Mexican and U.S. authorities allege was responsible for transporting tractor-trailers full of synthetic drugs such as "ice" and "crystal" from the cartel's clandestine laboratories to the United States via Tijuana, Mexico.

The bishops' conference had criticized the raid as a show of disrespect for the sanctity of Mass.

"We make an energetic protest against the lack of respect and the violence exercised on the part of the forces responsible for guaranteeing the security of all persons in our nation -- principally in the state of Michoacan -- by interrupting a religious act ... at the moment in which holy Mass is celebrated," the bishops said in an Aug. 3 statement signed by Auxiliary Bishop Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez of Guadalajara, conference secretary-general.

"Nothing explains this kind of action inside a religious place and much less in these moments where Mexico is noted internationally as an insecure and violent country," the bishops said.

The Aug. 1 raid marked the first time that police officers have burst into a parish to arrest suspects linked to organized crime, said Father Mateo Calvillo Paz, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Morelia, which is in Michoacan.

The raid also highlighted the increasing vulnerability of church officials and the faithful of being caught up -- inadvertently or not -- in the ongoing federal crackdown on drug cartels.

The raid continued a high-profile crackdown on drug traffickers in President Felipe Calderon's home state, where some 5,500 federal police and soldiers have been dispatched to fight organized crime. By the end of July, violence from organized crime had claimed more than 250 lives in Michoacan and more than 3,500 lives nationwide, according to the newspaper Reforma.

Federal police, arriving in armored vehicles and accompanied by two Black Hawk helicopters, raided Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Apatzingan Aug. 1, interrupting a Mass being celebrated in advance of a "quinceanera." Local media reported that an estimated 250 attendees and the priest -- identified as Father Vicente Soto by the Michoacan news agency Quadratin -- were held in the parish for six hours.

Media photos of the parish showed dislodged furniture and other minor damage to property. Attempts to reach Father Soto through the Diocese of Apatzingan were unsuccessful.

Father Calvillo said police "took advantage of the Mass to assault a large number of 'narcos'" and avoid bloodshed, but showed ignorance of the importance of the Mass.

Mexico's bishops, he added, "have rejected all types of protection or calls for arming themselves. It would be a false testimony."

The threat to the well-being of prelates due to the increase in organized crime violence has been the source of some disagreement within the church. Father Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, told reporters in July that three bishops in Michoacan had been threatened, but both Father Calvillo and a spokesman for the Diocese of Tacambaro told Catholic News Service that the statement was false.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency lauded the Aug. 1 arrests as key accomplishments in Calderon's battle against organized crime.

Security expert Pedro Isnardo de la Cruz of the National Autonomous University of Mexico said La Familia has shown a surprising resilience that "reflects poorly" on the president's war on organized crime, has demonstrated a "great ability to corrupt" local governments, and also appears to be receiving financing from unknown sources beyond Mexico.