Persecution: Priests' murders rattle Mexican city gripped by violence
Christopher Sherman
POZA RICA,
Mexico (AP) -- In this eastern Mexican oil town already weary of
rising gangland violence and extortion, the abduction and murder of two
priests this week sank many residents only deeper into despair.
The
killings in Poza Rica, in the troubled Gulf state of Veracruz, also
came at a moment of heightened tension between the Roman Catholic Church
and Mexico's government.
Church leaders are
increasingly frustrated by authorities' inability to protect their
priests under President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration, and the
church is openly opposing his proposal to legalize gay marriage by
encouraging the faithful to join demonstrations around the country.
"This,
in combination with the recent protests of gay marriage coordinated by
the church, I think we're seeing a new low point in the relationship
between the church and the PRI," said Andrew Chesnut, chairman of
Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, referring to Pena
Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. "I think the
overarching picture is that ... the open-season on priests has just
proliferated with the intensification of the drug war."
When
Alejo Nabor Jimenez and Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz were found bound and
shot to death outside Poza Rica on Monday, it brought to 14 the number
of priests slain in Mexico since Pena Nieto took office in late 2012. At
least 30 have been killed since 2006. And on Thursday church officials
made a public plea for the life of yet another priest, who was
reportedly kidnapped from his parish residence in the western state of
Michoacan and has not been heard from since.
What
exactly happened to Nabor and Suarez, and why, remains murky.
Investigators have interviewed their driver who was abducted alongside
them and escaped, but he has not spoken publicly.
Veracruz
state prosecutor Luis Angel Bravo cited robbery as the apparent motive
and said the priests had been drinking with their killers before they
were abducted. That allegation infuriated the church, which saw it as
the latest example of state authorities smearing victims in
cursory-at-best investigations.
Bravo
dismissed suggestions that a drug cartel may have been involved,
although the Zetas and the Jalisco New Generation gangs are battling for
control in Veracruz, including in Poza Rica.
Locals
have gotten accustomed to hearing about grisly murders. The city of
195,000, has recorded 41 killings in the first eight months of this year
- more than three times the toll for all 2015.
Only this time it wasn't faceless strangers assumed to be cartel operatives, they were priests, respected community leaders.
"In
the newspaper there are two or three dead every day," said a man who
runs a business with a clear view of Our Lady of Fatima church, where
the priests lived. "Usually you say, 'if they killed them, it was for a
reason.'"
Like many people interviewed by The
Associated Press in Poza Rica, the man spoke on condition of anonymity
for fear that speaking openly could make him a target for violence.
Ministering
to an increasingly terrified flock, people say, Nabor threw open the
doors of his church after taking up the post six years ago. Those who
knew him say he was close to the congregation, sharing his phone number
widely and urging people to drop in at any time.
Even
at age 50, the senior priest was fond of encouraging parishioners to
"seek me out at any hour you want - for me there is no rest," church
secretary Juan Carlos Garcia said.
The
30-year-old Suarez was a fresh face in town. He arrived just a month
earlier to replace another priest who died this year of natural causes,
and had taken over the church's youth programs.
Friends
and parishioners were outraged by the suggestion that the priests had
been partying with their killers and expressed deep skepticism about the
credibility of the investigation so far.
At Suarez's funeral, Rev. Lorenzo Rivas, who attended seminary with the young priest, said his only vice was volleyball.
"He was not a person who liked alcohol," Rivas said.
Bravo, the prosecutor, later appeared to walk back his comments somewhat, saying he did not mean to criminalize the victims.
Also
at the funeral, one woman slipped a note to a reporter urging an
investigation of what she called unspecified government persecution of
bishops in Veracruz for opposing the gay marriage proposal.
Veracruz
has been governed for decades by Pena Nieto's party, and current Gov.
Javier Duarte is widely reviled for alleged corruption and for crime
rates that have spiked on his watch.
The wary
relationship between church and state in Mexico dates back to severe
restrictions placed on the church and confiscation of its properties in
the 19th and early 20th centuries when the government pushed
secularization fearing the church's influence on society. Its political
marginalization allowed the PRI to concentrate its political power and
hold the presidency uninterrupted for 71 years.
The
day the priests disappeared in Poza Rica began normally. Nabor visited
other churches before returning to Our Lady of Fatima for the 6:30 p.m.
Mass.
As Sunday evening wore on, longtime
caretaker Jorge Juarez Bautista said, only Nabor, Suarez and the driver
remained. A homeless woman who sometimes helps around the church said
she saw several young men and a woman in front of the building around
8:20 p.m., and the woman told her they were waiting for Nabor.
The
elder priest was on the phone when Juarez left at 9:30 p.m., wrapping a
chain around the gate but not locking it. That was the way Nabor wanted
it; he sometimes misplaced his keys, so some time ago he told Juarez to
stop locking up.
About an hour later Juarez
passed by again and noticed the gate was not how he left it, but he
didn't think anything of it since it was not unusual for people to visit
even at night.
At 5:30 a.m., Juarez returned
to find the gate wide open and the two vehicles parked inside the
compound gone. Two hours later another worker arrived and called Nabor's
cell phone, but there was no answer. They entered the priest's
apartment and found it in disarray: His glasses were lying on the floor
in the sacristy, church offerings had been taken and there was blood.
By early afternoon the bodies were located along a little-used road outside town. Nabor had been shot nine times.
Several
days later a woman reflected on the killings, sitting inside the
business she runs just up the road from the church. Things used to be
quiet in Poza Rica, the woman said, and folks never thought twice about
going out at night. Now streets are all but empty after dark. She's
already shortened her hours, and is thinking of shuttering it for good
after just six months in business.
The
priests' murders hit hard because of their positions in the community,
she said, but everyone fears they could be next: "Really, we're all
exposed to having something happen to us."
