Mexico, anti-narcos Jesuit killed in Chiapas. The black year of priests on the front line against the link between crime and institutions

“The truth doesn’t live inside a government building, it doesn’t live behind a desk. The truth is that Pantelhoa Chicomuselo. The government must go there. But we know that he will only do it with the National Guard…”. Marcelo Perez he was a Jesuit, famous for his social activity and his fight against the interests of narcos in Chiapas. The phrase was aimed at the effectiveness of the right of the new police agency, which was supported by the former president Obrador. Last Sunday, the priest left his home to celebrate mass in the Cuxtitalli area, which Guadalupe. The liturgy was never held because, once he got into the car, Pèrez was flanked by a couple of motorcyclists who shot him several times, killing him.

The murder is the result of organized crime, but many remember that the institutions did not even like the Jesuit for his criticism of the policies in Chiapas. The religious activist’s campaigns date back to 2014, when he was the protagonist of a kind of pilgrimage – to reject the violence of narcos in the area – that crossed 12 towns until he reached the capital of Chiapas, San Cristobal. Pèrez had also founded the “Movement in Defense of Life and Land” which included residents 13 cities and the rural areas of Chiapas and in 2021 he proposed the creation of a commission made up of both representatives of the diocese of San Cristobal and civil authorities.

There is another side to the story: in the same year the Jesuit was hit with an arrest warrant, because he was accused of being involved in the disappearance of 19 people, linked to a clan The Herreras. For the supporters of the clergy, the command was a kind of “warning” for his activities in the area. Pèrez was moved to another church but he continued his complaints, so much so that he asked for protection in those years because of the death threats he received; tensions arose with the state authorities, as Pèrez denied that the measures taken against him were mild. At a parade held on September 13thPèrez had criticized the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office as “contradictory”, after he himself was the subject of a warning for the case of Los Herrera.

Last Sunday, eight guns took the life of the parish priest. There Search he confirmed that he had established protective measures for the Jesuits, the fact is that the victim was alone in the car at the time of the ambush. The killing of Pèrez shows how the 2024 It was a dark year for the priests on the front lines: on July 17 Filiberto Velázquezanother priest working in Chiapas, recounted an ambush he narrowly escaped after armed men tried to block his path with a van. The August 18th it got worse Isaiah Ramirez, who had disappeared three days before; his body was found near the San Fernando Bridge, the Jalisco. In the 2023 The execution of which he was the victim had caused much emotion Monsignor Faustino, archbishop of Durango. His father’s murder had happened just the day before Javier GarciaAugustinian priest who worked in a parish in Capacho, in Michoacán.

Office ofUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, after the murder of Pèrez, that the authorities will conduct a “rapid, thorough and effective investigation”. But many are desperate; a few days after the appointment Claudia Sheinbaum as the first female president of Mexico, The deadly ambush of an activist priest in Chiapas seems to be a clear message to the government and the Church: it will not be considered for those who intend to stop the violence and the connection between criminal interests and institutionalized people: or even if he wears a cross.