21 Dec 10 | Americas, Mexico
The fight between the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico and liberal sectors of society continues.
A book “The Church against Mexico,” penned by 21 leading academics and writers hit the bookstores in early December after it was presented at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara.
According to the book, the church continues to attempt to destroy the secularism of Mexico. Most of the book authors live and work in Mexico City, where the leftist government of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has promoted gay marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples, angering the conservative sectors of the Mexican Catholic church.
The book was the latest salvo from those liberal sectors. The book includes political cartoons showing how the power of the Catholic Church has dominated in Mexico for the last five centuries. Some of the book collaborations include cartoons showing the alleged links between the church and drug traffickers. Recently it was found that top leaders of the drug cartel Los Zetas had financed the building of one church in Pachuca, Hidalgo, a city located an hour from Mexico City.
The problema is that Mexico is still a very religious country, and the fight between liberal and conservative sectors over such policies as gay rights and abortion will only continue to get hotter. After the publication of “The Church Against Mexico”, the church replied through the Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Felipe Arizmendi, who said the church not only needed freedom of religion but also freedom of expression, so the church could defend its policies and beliefs.
Bishop Arizmendi also said if the church was against Mexico, “would the poor and the suffering turn to the church for comfort?” Bishop Arizmendi made headlines earlier this year, when he said that pedophile priests were “execrable” or scandalous, but that those violations occurred a long time ago and are not occurring in today´s church. The remarks were made after a group that promotes prosecution of pedophile priests announced that there were 65 Roman Catholic priests accused of child abuse living in Mexico. and that several of them were working for the Catholic churches in the country.
23 Sep 10 | Americas, Mexico
“What do you want from us?”, El Diario de Juarez asked the two drug cartels fighting for control of Ciudad Juarez, one of the most important cities on the US-Mexico border. The front page editorial was a bold public display of the type of questions provincial journalists ask themselves every day when they are attacked by drug cartels. El Diario is the second largest newspaper in this border town, which was an industrial megacity, until it was brought to a halt by the drug war three years ago. The daily newspaper’s editorial came after two of its intern photographers were shot by gunmen, the attack left one dead and the other wounded. The attack was confusing as the two young journalists had recently started their positions. It was the second murder of a journalist working for El Diario in the last two years.
The editorial sparked a diatribe from the Mexican government. Government spokesman Alejandro Poire attacked the newspaper for promoting illegal accords with organised crime.
To make matters worse for the El Diario, it was fooled on Monday by an impostor pretending to be Cesar Nava, the head of the ruling Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN), who said he supported negotiating an end to violence with organised crime.
In Mexico, as in most of Latin America, most of the attacks against journalists occur in provincial cities, where they often go unpunished. Regional media organisations are often small, because they are not as powerful as the national media they are attacked with impunity. There is often an underlying mistrust between these two types of media — the provincial news outlets pay lower salaries and their journalists get less training. In some cases journalists hold multiple jobs, which can pose conflicts of interest.
Until recently, the divide between the Mexican provincial press and the press in the Distrito Federal, as Mexico’s capital city is called, was huge. Attacks against journalists in Mexico have been common for more than 20 years ago, but they often occurred on border cities. Although the divide has narrowed recently — especially since the kidnapping of four journalists including a national Televisa cameraman last July — there is still a significant gap.
In recent interviews I have held with provincial editors, they say they still fee “abandoned” by their colleagues in Mexico City. “Some of our colleagues in [the city] feel we are giving in too quickly,” said one editor in Veracruz, “but the truth is they do not know the dangers we face.” Carlos Marin, of the national daily Milenio, scalded El Diario in a column yesterday, calling for the newspaper to close its doors, rather than capitulate before organised crime. Some Mexico City based editors are more willing to understand the plight of the provincial media. Denise Maerker, a columnist and Televisa presenter, said that El Diario de Juarez’s question to drug cartels last week was simply a public display of what is happening across Mexico. In her column in yesterday’s El Universal, she said that these pacts have been going on silently in the country. “Let’s not leave them alone”, she implored.
The issue underlying the entire debate over El Diario’s decision is the reality that more people in Mexico are questioning the drug war and are debating whether Mexico should negotiate with the drug cartels.
