Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. / Octavio Hoyos / Shutterstock.Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a candidate for the Mexican presidency in 2018, advocated for a strategy of “abrazos no balazos,” or “hugs not gunshots.”
This strategy lessens the use of force by the military and police while tackling the underlying causes of the drug trade, such as poverty.
Contrary to his predecessors’ “war on drugs,” López Obrador has a different approach. However, violent crime has escalated during his presidency.
The recent shooting deaths of two Jesuit priests and another man inside a church, most likely by a cartel gunman, shook the public despite the fact that violence is prevalent in the country. The fact that the robbers stole the priests’ bodies added to the fury.
During the Ninth Diocesan Pastoral Ministry Assembly on June 22, Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, commented on the murders, saying that “we are passing through some terrible days” and that “these people don’t know [anything] about hugs.”
The Jesuit priests Javier Campos Morales and Joaqun César Mora Salazar, who were shot and died on June 20 while attempting to save a man who had fled inside the Catholic church of the small hamlet of Cerocahui in the state of Chihuahua, were mentioned by the cardinal.
The incident has shook Mexico and is a part of a rising tide of violence there. Pope Francis voiced his “sad and dismay” at the killing of the two Jesuits on June 22.
Violence is not unfamiliar to the Archdiocese of Guadalajara. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most violent and powerful criminal organizations in the nation, has its operational headquarters in the city, which serves as the state of Jalisco’s capital.
Cardinal Juan Jess Posadas Ocampo, the archbishop of Guadalajara at the time, was shot and killed at the airport of the city in 1989; the crime is still unsolved.
The death of the two Jesuit priests, according to Cardinal Robles Ortega, “adds to an already extensive list of priests assassinated in our nation.”
He went on to say that this act, however, “completely illustrates the depth of the violent problem that we are facing in our nation.”
He claimed that because “the priests were executing their vocation, doing their ministry,” they were “in a position suited to their ministry.”
He continued, “They were in the most proper position for their ministry, which was the church; they weren’t doing subversive things or promoting violence by other organizations against the government.
The two Jesuit priests “were carrying out their ministry and were treacherously assassinated, without further ado,” according to the Archbishop of Guadalajara. Just because they were being kind to someone who had run into the church in need of safety.
He declared, “This [is] a very, very dangerous problem.
No matter how many hugs the government provides, promises to provide, or offers, the cardinal stated that López Obrador’s administration should make sure that “these people, those who are dedicated to organized crime, don’t know [anything] about hugs.”
He remarked, “They just know about bullets; they don’t understand hugs.”
More than 121,000 homicides have been reported in the nation in just three and a half years under the López Obrador government, on pace to surpass the more than 156,000 murders committed during the six-year term of his predecessor, Enrique Pea Nieto.
The amount is also much higher than the 120,463 homicides that were reported during Felipe Calderón’s six-year administration.
Official statistics show that 12,481 killings occurred in Mexico between January 1 and June 21 of this year.
“I’m not saying that the government has to adopt the tactic of shooting these people,” the Archbishop of Guadalajara added. No. Bring them to justice for the murders and for all other illegal crimes they engage in.
He remarked, “The government has to let them know there will be no more impunity.” Because the message sent by embraces is one of impunity.