MEXICO CITY — Four Roman Catholic bishops met with Mexican drug cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a possible peace accord, one of the bishops said, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday he approves of such talks.
The revelation by Bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, José de Jesús González Hernández, in remarks at a public appearance, illustrated the extent to which the government’s policy of not confronting the cartels has left average citizens to work out their own separate peace with the gangs.
López Obrador acknowledged it wasn’t the first time church leaders had held such talks, and that they have done so before in the neighboring state of Michoacan and in other states.
“Priests and pastors and members of all the churches have participated, helped in pacifying the country. I think it is very good,” López Obrador said the day after the existence of the negotiations was revealed.
He said such talks had been held in the neighboring state of Michoacan and in other places in Mexico as well. “The church does it, I can vouch for this, in Michoacan, and they do it in other places.”
López Obrador said that while he had no problem with the talks, he wouldn’t approve of “any agreement that meant granting impunity, privileges, or licenses to steal.”
Many average Mexicans have quietly agreed to pay protection payments to drug cartels for fear of being attacked or having their homes or businesses burned. The church has also suffered — priests have also been killed by the cartels — but some gang leaders talk with church leaders.
The bishop said the talks failed because the cartels and drug gangs didn’t want to stop fighting over territory in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. Those turf battles have shut down transportation and led to dozens of killings in recent months.
“They asked for a truce, but with conditions,” González Hernández said of the talks, held a few weeks ago. “But these conditions were not agreeable to…
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