(29 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cuiteco, Mexico – 10 May 2024
1. Various of Raramuri Indigenous youth dance during a sacred Yumari ceremony to ask for rain and honour killed Jesuit priests
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cerocahui, Mexico – 12 May 2024
2. Various of Rev. Jesus Reyes greeting people at Mass
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rev. Jesus Reyes , Saint Francis Xavier Parish Priest:
"All of a sudden he pulled out his pistol and shot Father Joaquin twice. He fell on his side, he lifted him up, put him on his back and shot him again in the throat, in the neck. Then Father Javier looked at him like saying ‘What have you done?’ and he shot him twice, too. Bang, bang, two shots and now they were both down. I was in the middle and figured it was my turn, right? I was a witness.”
4. Reyes during Mass
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rev. Jesus Reyes, Saint Francis Xavier Parish Priest:
"It was a very strong experience, unbelievable, I would never have said that it could have happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it, or understood it, but well, it did happen. But it’s something that I believe the deaths of the Fathers have brought many good things. Especially the fact that now there has been more unity in the families, more understanding, a sense of religion, and above all a process of peace.”
6. Reyes during Mass
7. Mid of people attending Mass
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rev. Jesus Reyes , Saint Francis Xavier Parish Priest:
"Right out here, the candidates signed an agreement for peace. They agreed for the elections in the municipality to be peaceful.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cerocahui, Mexico – 13 May 2024
9. Crosses on the roadside marking the site where the bodies were found
10. Various of mural of the two murdered priests outside the church
STORYLINE:
José Portillo Gil, the gang leader known as “El Chueco” — the Crooked One — lowered his gun.
The Rev. Jesús Reyes then spoke what he feared might be his final words: Please, don’t take my brothers’ corpses away.
Next to him, at the altar of his church in northern Mexico, Jesuit priests Javier Campos, 79, and Joaquín Mora, 80, lay in a pool of blood.
The killings took place in Cerocahui in mid-2022, but the sorrow over the crimes has not diminished in the communities nestled in the remote Tarahumara mountains.
Nor have Catholic leaders’ demands for peace abated.
Since he took power in 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has avoided direct confrontation with cartels and violent gangs controlling and terrorizing local communities.
His “hugs, not bullets” policy has drawn extensive criticism from faith leaders, human rights organizations and journalists who have echoed victims’ fears and anger.
Organized crime has long controlled swaths of territory in states such as Guerrero and Michoacan.
Presidential front-runner and governing party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum hesitantly met with representatives from the Mexican bishops’ conference.
And though she agreed to sign a peace commitment that proposed strategies to reduce the violence in Mexico, the 61-year-old said she did not share the bishops’ “pessimistic evaluation” of the current situation.
Like some other organized crime leaders, El Chueco, who was linked to the Sinaloa cartel, had control over the local beer market.
He financed bars, a baseball team and had a say over local elections and police designations.
Hours before El Chueco stormed into the church, furious by the defeat of his baseball team during a match, he shot one of the players and burned his home to the ground.
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