More from Michoacán

A poll published Nov. 3 in the Reforma newspaper gives PAN candidate Luisa María Calderón a six-point advantage in the Michoacán gubernatorial contest. Left unanswered is how the Nov. 2 assassination of La Piedad mayor Ricardo Guzmán Romero as he campaigned for Calderón will impact the Nov. 13 election in Michoacán, where the quasi religious drug cartel La Familia Michoacana and a splinter group, Knights Templar, are disputing the state.

It's probable, as happened in Tamaulipas after the assassination of PRI gubernatorial frontrunner Rodolfo Torre Cantú, voter turnout will plunge – something which favours the PRI (witness the low participation in the State of Mexico) as the party gets its mostly poor "voto duro" to the polls with inducements and coercive tactics and the middle classes stay home.

The Reforma poll showed Calderón – a former senator best known for crossing swords with "Jefe Diego" and the sister of President Felipe Calderón – receiving 39 percent support, six points better than PRI candidate Fausto Vallejo. The PRD campaign of Sen. Silvano Aureoles was running a distant third with 28 percent support. More importantly for Calderón the poll showed her campaign gaining ground: Support increased by 10 percentage points from the last Reforma poll in September, while the PRI and PRD campaigns lost ground.

A Calderón victory would bolster the president as he attempts to establish some sort of lasting political legacy for the PAN, which has struggled in local elections during his administration and appears set to be voted from power on the federal level in the July 1, 2012 national elections.

The results could prove disastrous for the PRD. The party has been beset by infighting and its plans to name the 2012 presidential candidate from a poll is expected to generate discontent among the losing side – be it 2006 candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador or Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard. The party already has lost the stronghold states of Baja California Sur and Zacatecas. Michoacán, where the party also has been rife with infighting, appears to be next.

The PRI is running competitive in Michoacán, but its campaign has yet to capture any serious momentum – spare the moments when the party's presidential frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto showed up for a day of campaigning.

One observer, parish priest Jesús Alfredo Gallegos Lara – better known as "Padre Pistolas" – cast some doubt on the Reforma poll, saying the survey was done by telephone in a state where "many of the ranchos don't have phones." The PRD, he told me, draws most of its support from the ranchos.

PAN mayor shot dead

A sign in the Cherán, Michoacán, town plaza strikes a rebellious note. The town rebelled against illegal loggers clear-cutting the local hills with the help of armed criminal groups earlier this year – and ran off the local mayor, too. Michoacán electoral officials want there to be a vote in Cherán, but locals say they won't allow political parties to participate.

The PAN mayor of La Piedad was shot dead while campaigning Nov. 2, casting doubt on the ability to hold general elections across the oft-violent state of Michoacán in 10 days time – and also casting doubt on the ability to hold federal electoral races next year in the pockets of Mexico where organized crime violence has been rife.

Ricardo Guzmán Romero was fatally shot while campaigning for the PAN candidate in the pork-processing town of La Piedad, PAN officials said via Twitter. The circumstances of the assassination remain uncertain, but PAN youth president Jhonathan García, who was witness to the shooting, said via Twitter that the mayor was shot in the abdomen. Press reports say Guzmán was passing out pamphlets when attacked.

Michoacán Gov. Leonel Godoy scheduled a press conference for 9 p.m. local time. Guzmán became the fourth Michoacán mayor to be assassinated since Godoy took office in early 2008, Michoacán news agency Quadratín reported.

Voters in Michoacán go to the polls Nov. 13 in an election Luisa María Calderón, sister of President Felipe Calderón, hopes to win for the PAN. Public opinion polls vary. An Agencia Mendoza Blanco y Asociados survey shows a tight, three-way PAN-PRI-PRD contest, while Gabinete de Comunicación Estratégica gave Calderón 39-36 lead over PRI candidate Fausto Vallejo. PRD candidate Silvano Aureoles Conejo trailed with 25 percent support, setting up a potential embarrassment for the PRD, which had dominated Michoacán politics for the past decade.

The assassination marked the latest difficulty for Michoacán's electoral process, which will renew the governor's office, local congress and 113 municipal governments. The state electoral institute reports the withdrawal of 51 candidates, according to the newspaper El Universal. The PAN-New Alliance coalition, meanwhile, was unable to find candidates in at least 10 municipalities.

Residents of Cherán, where locals ran off illegal loggers, organized crime, the police and the mayor, refuse to allow political parties to run candidates, even though the electoral institute insists on there being a vote.

Violence, of course, predates the election in Michoacán, where La Familia Michoacana and a splinter group, the quasi-religious Knights Templar, are disputing the state. Michoacán native Felipe Calderón sent troops to Michoacán shortly after taking office – the first such deployment of his administration.

Padre Pistolas

Father Jesús Alfredo Gallegos Lara is better know as Padre Pistolas, a Michoacán priest famed throughout the region for packing heat and singing ranchera and mariachi music. He also has become famous for promoting public works projects - all to the dismay of his superior, the Archbishop of Morelia. The archbishop once suspended Father Gallegos, but politicians from all sides - who regularly seek out his endorsement, including PAN gubernatorial candidate Luisa Calderón, the president's sister - have urged Padre Pistolas to run for public office, knowing his popularity, moral authority and pull with the local population surpasses that of anyone else in church.

I visited with Padre Pistolas recently - hoping, course, he wouldn't pull out his Colt 45 and, say, "Vaya con Dios, muchacho!" He's folkloric, but also very dedicated to his work - and has done more to improve life in the rundown pueblos he serves than any other public figure. The story ran in The Globe and Mail (click the title of this post to read it.)

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.

Mexico's drug war turns political

My latest for World Politics Review on how the Mexican government's war on drugs has become a partisan political issue.

Disgraced priest's legacy lives on in Michoacán

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

COTIJA DE LA PAZ, Mich. - Rev. Marcial Maciel, the disgraced founder of a Catholic order known as the Legionaries of Christ, was born in 1920 in this deeply religious community, billed as the cradle of illustrious men. Cotija has produced seven bishops, an estimated 300 priests and even a saint, San Rafael Guízar y Valenica, since its founding by Spanish settlers in the late 1500s.

But of all the prominent native sons, not one has reached the stature of Maciel, says local historian Javier Valencia - in spite of recent acknowledgement by Legion officials that their founder had led a double life in violation of Catholic teachings.

"[Maciel] is the greatest man Cotija has produced - and Cotija has produced many important people," said Valencia, who had known the priest since childhood, prior to Maciel's death last year.

That perception of Maciel is common in Cotija. Maciel is widely viewed as a local benefactor who plowed money into charity projects and public works that helped boost the stature of a municipality that had failed to keep up with other nearby communities economically.

He is also regarded as the product of a conservative Catholic town whose residents stayed loyal to the "madre patria," or homeland. Valencia said that Cotija never embraced independence or revolution and produced many of the generals who took up arms against the government in a Catholic uprising - known as the Cristero Rebellion - that opposed anti-clerical measures of the 1920s.

LIVING LEGEND

To this day, fading portraits of San Rafael Guízar y Valencia - Maciel's great-uncle - adorn many doorways lining the road into town. "This home is Catholic!" proclaim signs on windowsills, a warning advising missionaries that they shouldn't bother knocking.

Few in Cotija speak ill of Maciel or care to pass judgment on the misdeeds that have made headlines for more than a decade - fathering a child and allegedly sexually abusing young men, among other things.

"They're lies," said Elena Mejía, 87, who once worked as a domestic helper in the Maciel home.

Others were even more curt.

"You won't get me to say a bad word," said one man in the town center before storming off.

In 2006, the Vatican - which had previously been accused of turning a blind eye to allegations against Maciel and the Legion - stripped Maciel of the right to practice his ministry in public. The Legion itself admitted on Feb. 4 that its founder had fathered a child. Maciel and others in the Legion categorically denied any wrongdoing, but he had long been accused of sexually abusing young men in his religious order and was alleged to have absolved his accomplices in confession - a violation of canon law punishable by excommunication. He died in January 2008 and is buried in Cotija.

Even those who have heard the stories about Maciel - and don't entirely dismiss the allegations against him - refuse to change their perceptions.

"It really doesn't matter to me," said local historian Elena Silva Trejo, whose father used to make Maciel's suits. "There are two sides to every coin. You have to look at them both."

The other side of the coin, she said, is the legacy of charity and public works projects brought about by Maciel and the Legion in Cotija and towns well beyond.

The projects started out small in Cotija. Maciel - who would never permanently live in Cotija again after finishing his seminary studies but would visit frequently - gave away serapes and small figurines of Christ, according to Silva Trejo. Some residents recall him giving away cash.

As the Legion grew in stature and wealth, the projects grew too.

The Legion, according to religious observers, was founded with practically nothing in 1941, but flourished as Maciel courted the wealthy - a group that was largely not being ministered to by existing orders.

The Legion founded elite and expensive private schools - the Instituto Cumbres and Universidad Anáhuac, to name two - and expanded abroad.

It supported charity projects such as the Mano Amiga schools for children in poor barrios, but was still primarily associated with wealth, status and exclusivity.

A feature in the Feb. 9 edition of the magazine Milenio Semanal even alleged that those who would not join the Legion out of conviction would do so out of fear. "Confronting the Legion implied, until recently, ostracism in a country where financial security passes more through contacts than through talent."

Legion priest Rev. Michael Barry, a Maryland native who has worked in Cotija for the past five years, said that Maciel promoted the view of working with leaders who would use their resources to do good works.

LEGACY REMAINS

Still, critics would quickly begin to deride the Legion as "The Millionaires of Christ." And some of the Legion's money flowed back into Cotija.

Maciel helped pay for the restoration of an old sanctuary in a hamlet known as El Barrio, which had been home to the final Mass in 1929 before soldiers in the Cristero Rebellion laid down their arms. The Legion later built a large retreat center on a hill overlooking Cotija.

Today, a steady stream of visitors affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ helps boost the local economy, according to Alberto Contreras, a municipal government official.

In recent years, a Legion foundation worked with the Michoacán governor to build a museum, cultural center and a health clinic that offers doctors appointments for just 10 pesos. A private university that charges low tuition fees was also built with Legion money.

These projects haven't been forgotten. "He did a lot for this place," said campesino Juan Espinosa, who was selling green beans in the town plaza when interviewed. "There have been so many works."