Abstract

This article analyzes the murders of priests in Mexico (1993-2024) documented by the Centro Católico Multimedial (ccm) and puts them in historical perspective with those that occurred during the Cristero War (1914-1938), according to data from Juan González Morfín. It seeks to contextualize the current violence compared to the historical one, with the purpose of showing differences in magnitude, distribution and motivations. While the Cristero War involved religious persecution and Church-State conflict, contemporary violence is due to the dynamics of organized crime and failed security policies. Today, priests act as social stabilizers in conflict zones. The analysis is based on three concepts: disenchantment of the world (Max Weber), necropolitics (Achille Mbembe) and criminal governance (Benjamin Lessing).

Keywords: murders, organized crime, Mexico, priests, violence

echoes of the cristero war? necropolitics and priestly martyrdom in twenty-first-century mexico

This article examines the killings of Catholic priests in Mexico between 1993 and 2024, drawing on cases documented by the Centro Católico Multimedial (ccm). Using data compiled by Juan González Morfín, it situates them historically in relation to those that took place during the Cristero War (1914-1938). The aim is to contextualize present-day violence against clergy in relation to past violence, in order to highlight differences in scale, spatial distribution, and underlying motivations. While the Cristero War was marked by religious persecution and open Church-state conflict, contemporary violence is driven by the dynamics of organized crime and the failure of state security policies. Today, priests help stabilize social life in conflict zones. The analysis engages three key conceptual lenses: the disenchantment of the world (Max Weber), necropolitics (Achille Mbembe), and criminal governance (Benjamin Lessing).

Keywords: priests, Mexico, killings, violence, organized crime.

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Mark Twain

On June 21, 2022, Mexico woke up to news that provoked the indignation of many in the country and caused a disruption in the acceptance of the prevailing violence. The day before, Jesuit priests Javier Campos Morales and Joaquín César Mora Salazar, as well as tour guide Pedro Palma Gutiérrez, had been murdered in the church of Cerocahui, Chihuahua. The Jesuits had dedicated their lives to the Tarahumara highlands and to the spiritual accompaniment of the Rarámuris. They were murdered by José Noriel Portillo Gil, alias “Chueco”, leader of the criminal group Gente Nueva and area chief of the Sinaloa Cartel in the municipality of Urique. This event, beyond the horror and shock it provoked, has also been an example of impunity. El “Chueco” was not apprehended by the justice system, but was found dead in the territories of his bosses, in Choix, Sinaloa.

These murders, perpetrated by fragmented organized crime, are a macabre echo of the murder of another Jesuit priest, Miguel Agustín Pro, who on November 23, 1927, was executed without trial by a firing squad in the police headquarters of the Federal District Department in Mexico City. This extrajudicial execution represented a major disruption in the framework of the civil war that was being waged at the time: the Cristero conflict. This open conflict between the State and the Mexican Catholic Church was the most deadly of the 20th century. xx in the country. What was to be an example of force on the part of the Mexican State became one of the most shocking cases of martyrdom at a global level and an example of the situation of violence in post-revolutionary Mexico.

Almost a century later, the murder of the two Jesuits in the north of the country has once again brought to public attention the levels of violence that are being experienced throughout the country. As the province of the Society of Jesus in Mexico expressed: the death of the priests is not worth more than the death of others; however, it made visible a phenomenon that seemed to have Mexican society in lethargy. Since 2007, Mexico has been one of the most violent countries for those who exercise the priestly vocation. Violent death, extrajudicial executions, hate crimes and extortion are part of the daily life in several regions of the country, and priests are not exempt from this.

There are at least two disruptive periods in which a considerable number of priests were murdered in Mexico. The first began during the Mexican Revolution (17 priests between 1914 and 1918), continued during the two Cristero wars: between 1926 and 1929 (96), as well as between 1930 and 1938 (19). In total, during those years, at least 131 members of the regular and secular clergy were murdered. The context was that of a civil war, unexpected and disruptive.

The second period of killings began more than 30 years ago. From 1993 to date, the Centro Católico Multimedial (ccm) has registered more than 80 murders of Catholic ministers, missionaries, religious men and women. While it is difficult to establish that Mexico was already a disputed region in the 1990s, the policy of President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa (2006-2012) to combat organized crime transformed the country into a conflict zone.

This article proposes to put into historical perspective the data on homicides against the regular and secular clergy in Mexico, compiled by the ccm for the period 1988-2024, together with data collected by Juan González Morfín between 1914 and 1938. The axes of analysis will be Max Weber's concepts of disenchantment of the world, Achille Mbembe's necropolitics and Benjamin Lessing's criminal governance.

Weber explains how, in the modern world, the religious is no longer part of public life. There are no longer mysterious forces and rationalization has contributed to the secularization of the world. Mbembe, for his part, argues that sovereignty resides in power and the ability to decide who can live and who must die. Finally, Lessing argues that basic order is provided by criminal organizations and that criminal leviathans coincide with the state to rule over territories, resources and populations. The intention of this article is to raise the differences between these two periods of “Catholic martyrdom” and to show, if they exist, the historical continuities in the dynamics of violence.

The article is divided into two sections. The first, “From one disruption to the other”, sets out the general scenario in which the murders of priests took place. A low-intensity religious conflict will be analyzed for the period 1914 and 1938, marked by a high-intensity conflict during the two Cristero wars. In the second section, “From the State perpetrator to the fragmented organized crime perpetrator”, the hard data on the murder of priests will be presented in order to situate them in time and space in the war against drug trafficking.

From one disruption to the next

Between 1914 and 1938, approximately 131 priests were murdered in Mexico, the vast majority between 1926 and 1929 (96). Although these figures are much higher than the number of homicides against priests perpetrated between 1991 and 2024, it is fundamental to understand how the contexts of both phenomena develop in disruptive periods, marked by relevant political transitions and national conflicts: the Revolution, the Cristero wars for the murders at the beginning of the century, and the murders at the end of the 20th century. xx, and the democratic transition and the war on drugs for the second phenomenon. Although the contexts are very different, it is important to highlight some continuities that allow us to understand the dynamics of violence and the possible paths towards pacification and reconstruction of the social fabric after conflicts that might seem insurmountable. It should not be forgotten that war is also a means to establish sovereignty (Mbembe, 2011: 21). The state of exception and the state of siege favor extrajudicial processes or justify, as in the case of Mexico, the intervention of the army in security tasks that do not correspond to it in a representative, democratic and federal republic, as stated in Article 34 of the 1917 Constitution.1

The two Cristero conflicts (1926-1929/1931-1938)

The Mexican Revolution had a social, cultural, economic and political impact. A less studied aspect has been the religious impact. If we understand the revolutionary process as one of medium duration, it is possible to insert the violence against Catholic priests in a time frame greater than that normally considered to analyze the religious impact of this process. Based on the contributions of Jean Meyer ([1973], 2005)2 or Alicia Olivera Sedano (1966), some scholars limit the religious conflict to its high intensity stage between 1926 and 1929 (Blancarte, 1992; Valvo, 2023). This article prefers to follow the historian Juan González Morfín and situate this conflict in a time frame of medium duration, beginning in 1914 and ending in 1938 (González Morfín, 2009, 2010).

The 70% of the homicides occurred during the first Cristero conflict; however, the role played by some priests and their social and political stances3 were seen as an obstacle to the local or state powers, which, supported by the army, opted to eliminate them via summary executions, without prior trial. These crimes, committed by the State, have been conceptualized as extrajudicial executions (Cruz and Kloppe-Santamaría, 2019; Kloppe-Santamaría, 2023; Mechanism for Truth and Historical Clarification, ibero, Mexico City, 2024; Allier Montaño, 2024). In the late 1920s, the struggle for power and control of the masses exercised by the two dominant political forces in Mexico: the Catholic Church and the modern revolutionary State, is clearly shown. It is important to put this first disruptive phenomenon of priest assassinations in Mexico in context.

The key dates that frame this study and take the reader on a chronological journey are 1911 and 1938. In 1911 the National Catholic Party was founded and during the period of the revolutionary split (1914-1918) there was a first moment of religious persecution. Between 1918 and 1926 -when it was decided to suspend worship- the conflict between State and Church could be characterized as one of low intensity. The second period is from 1926 to 1929, known as the first Cristero conflict. The Catholic clergy offered open support and spiritual accompaniment to those who opted for armed defense. The religious agreements reached in June 1929 did not solve the underlying problems, but they changed the relationship between the institutional Catholic Church and the State. These agreements were the result not only of negotiations in Mexico, but also of joint diplomatic actions by the Vatican, Chile, France and the United States of America. The arrangements resolved, momentarily and partially, the religious conflict in Mexico, although they were not a lasting solution; hence historians such as the French-Mexican Jean Meyer speak of the concept of “modus moriendi"." (Meyer [1973], 2005: 344; Guerra Manzo, 2009), instead of the accommodation between the State and the Catholic Church. Several Catholics experienced the process as the renunciation of a real Catholic alternative to the Mexican revolutionary State.

After 1929 the pastoral instructions changed and the Cristero groups felt abandoned by their pastors. With the coming to power of Lázaro Cárdenas in 1934, the clerical elite expected to improve their relationship with the State, but this was not the case. The implementation of socialist and sexual education in that year was a breaking point between both institutions. Thus, the conflict at the national level lasted until the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, despite the fact that the institutional Church stopped providing open support to the Cristeros, whose resistance lasted until very late in the decade. It was not until the second half of the six-year term of Lázaro Cárdenas that a turn in the relationship between the Mexican State and the Catholic Church in Mexico could be appreciated. The nominations of the new archbishop of Guadalajara, in 1936, in the person of José Garibi y Rivera and the archbishop of Mexico with Luis María Martínez y Rodríguez,4 in 1937, made it possible to renew the framework of the ecclesiastical institution. Their arrival meant an improvement in relations with the State and the creation of a modus vivendi amnesty offered by the government of Lázaro Cárdenas. The national amnesty offered by the government of Lázaro Cárdenas (which included the Cristero fighters and Catholic complottista groups) in December 1937 was a clear sign of détente.

The oil expropriation led the bishops of the archdioceses of Guadalajara and Mexico City to make a public call to the Catholic faithful to join the national effort and reconcile Church and State. Both prelates were able to take advantage of their personal relationships within a favorable international context with the intention of reaching a lasting solution to the conflict. The modus vivendi initiated a tradition of political simulation, in which Church and State leaders could assume themselves as allies, explicitly and openly, without modifying the existing legal framework, only by ceasing to apply it.

The religious conflict in Mexico is complex and goes beyond national logic. It had important repercussions in the Holy See and in the United States. In the United States, there were actors who supported the State and others who supported the Cristeros (Redinger, 2005; Meyer, 2014; Young, 2015; Foulard, Butler and Solis, 2020; Valvo, 2023). For many, the motivations were not only religious, but there were compelling commercial and financial motives for seeking a solution to the conflict (Meyer, 2014: 79-215). To simplify a complex issue, it can be said that there were at least three major pressure groups that wanted the pacification of Mexico. The first was animated by oil companies and landowners and hacienda owners who felt that the Mexican Revolution had not done them justice and supported armed resistance to weaken the Mexican state. The second had to do with the payments of the national debt, since in order to resume payments, political and social stability was required in Mexico; that is, for the Mexican government to pay the banks it was necessary that the armed defense did not threaten economically dynamic regions. Finally, the third was linked to the religious issue itself. Mexico was seen at the time as a land of martyrs. The resolution of the religious conflict was associated with international issues and the role of the United States would be preponderant. The oil and mining issues were always closely linked to the religious issue.5

It is convenient to ask why the bishops did not act with the radicalism of 1926, despite the fact that between 1934 and 1935 -during an equally critical situation- they did not suspend the exercise of worship. In spite of the fact that since 1930 certain “cristeros” took up arms again to fight against the anti-clerical, anti-Catholic State, which had not respected the spirit of the 1929 arrangements, the Mexican bishops never gave their official and public blessing to the Catholic fighters.⁶ This was due in large part to the position of the pope who gave priority in Mexico to pastoral care over the temporal power of the Church. The bishops opted, with the support of the Holy See, for the peaceful way and for this they created the Catholic Action (Aspe Armella, 2008: 104).

The Drug War (2007-2023)

The second moment of disruptions began with the high-impact assassination of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo in 1993. This mediatic and complex case is one of the most studied, although it is still not judicially a closed case (González, 1996; Díaz Aranda, 2005; Astorga, 2016; Petersen Farah, 2017). However, the real increase in cases occurred after 2007 when the war declared against drug trafficking generated a major disruption that had dramatic implications at the economic, social, cultural and religious levels. The impact was not only in the Catholic world, but also in the Evangelical and other Christian groups. This phenomenon, which has its peculiarities, is part of a larger phenomenon of generalized violence.

The change in public policy in the face of fragmented organized crime by the government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa led to an increase in violence. Among the many studies done on the issue, Raul Zepeda Gil proposes a review of the existing literature to explain its increase. In “Seven explanatory theses on the rise of violence in Mexico” (Zepeda Gil, 2018) he reflects on the numerous interpretations of the dramatic growth of homicides, disappearances and forced displacement in Mexico starting in 2007, after a time when those indicators were clearly on the decline. The main explanations include 1) government action, 2) criminal conflict, 3) intergovernmental lack of coordination, 4) state weakness, 5) external influence, 6) socioeconomic background, and 7) criminal war against the state (Zepeda Gil, 2018).

The declaration of war was against drug trafficking, one of the most visible businesses of fragmented organized crime in Mexico, but not the only one, nor the most profitable (Dammert and Sampó, 2025). Political scientist and political philosopher Felipe Curcó Cobos insists that La guerra perdida: dos ensayos críticos sobre la política de combate al crimen organizado 2006-2010 (2010) that fragmented organized crime is much more than drug trafficking and that its range of action should not be limited to the purchase, sale, production and transport of drugs. It is important to put into historical perspective the moment we are living in relation to illegal drug trafficking, as sociologist Luis Astorga does precisely in his now classic work, The century of drugs (2016).

In 2022, the magazine Istor of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (cide) dedicated its 86th issue to “Thinking about war in Mexico”. This issue, edited by Alexis Herrera, reflects the work carried out since 2016 by the Drug Policy Program (ppd) of its own cide.7 There are at least four projects that analyze data on violence generated by the military or fragmented organized crime in the context of the conflict between the state and different criminal groups in Mexico. The ppd has made some of the data available to the public through the Open Data Screening Platform. Another initiative is the Seminar on Violence and Peace at El Colegio de México. A third is a transnational proposal led by Dr. Cecilia Farfán-Méndez and Dr. Michael Lettieri, called the Mexico Violence Resource Project. The last one is the Citizen Security Program of the Universidad Iberoamericana, which has been one of the few to address the religious issue surrounding the phenomenon and which supported the realization in 2022 of a diagnosis in the area of influence of the Valle de Chalco diocese with a special focus on health, economy, citizen security, as well as on the dynamics of inequality and violence in the family environment (“To rebuild hope”, ibero, Mexico City, 2022).

Regardless of whether one speaks of the war on drugs (Calderón Hinojosa), the undeclared war on drugs (Enrique Peña Nieto) or the policy of “Abrazos, no balazos” (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), violence in Mexico, on the rise since 2007, has been a disruptive element that has had an impact.

The rhetoric of war initially adopted by the President of the Republic [Felipe Calderón Hinojosa] was accompanied by the decision to resort to the military instrument to carry out tasks that are alien to the defense mission that constitutionally corresponds to the Mexican Armed Forces. What has happened since then is disturbing: somehow, the exercise of violence has surpassed the capacity to name the nature of the Mexican security scenario. Moreover, the deployment of troops in the field has also blurred the boundaries that should separate the criminal order from that which corresponds to the realms of national security and defense. In fact, many of the patterns of abuse and impunity that are so worrisome in Mexico today have developed in the shadow of this growing ambiguity (Herrera, 2021: 9-10).

There are at least three initiatives that measure and analyze the different types of religious violence: the database of incidents compiled by the Observatory on Religious Freedom and the International Institute for Religious Freedom (olire), the organization Puertas Abiertas and finally the Centro Católico Multimedial.

Two scenarios of generalized violence

When putting into historical perspective the disruptive violence of the drug war with the violence that has arisen as a result of the Cristero wars, it can be observed that, over almost a century, there is the persistence of practices such as forced disappearance, torture and extrajudicial execution of unarmed civilians, unlike the Cristeros, who did fight armed. For some it is a sign of “the moral and intellectual shipwreck on which the security and defense policy of the Mexican State has rested in recent decades” (Herrera, 2021: 14). However, there are some major differences. In the Cristero conflict and the second, in the framework of a civil war, the main perpetrator was the State. As mentioned by the political scientist José Antonio Aguilar Rivera in his text War and peace, Unlike what is happening in the war on drugs, whose violence finds no justification, the “Revolution was a violent and disruptive phenomenon, although necessary, but after the armed phase the country was pacified and the violence, which had prevailed in the decades of armed conflict, came to an end” (Aguilar Rivera, 2021: 33). However, in the war on drugs the situation is grayer, since the main perpetrator is fragmented organized crime, integrated in the complex situation of criminal governance and necropolitics, in which officials, armies and hired killers have relationships and connections that make the analysis complex.

In this case, the enemy is not a foreign army or an insurgent army, but an economic market. This market is made up of individual growers, traffickers and distributors who seek to profit by selling drugs to U.S. citizens. These individuals have not joined together to attack the United States or its allies, nor do they seek to destroy them: they are trying to sell their product to people who want to buy it (Bertram and Sharpe, 1996: 44). All of this forces us to break with Manichean visions in which the state is the good guy and the hitmen of criminal groups are the bad guys. The State and fragmented organized crime coexist in a symbiotic relationship, since one feeds off the other through corruption. For this reason, care must be taken in the construction

of a crucial normative argument: the State, despite being corrupt and involved in drug trafficking, is understood as an entity that makes it possible to limit violence and social disorder [...]. A posteriori, The PRI State is seen as a paradigm of regulation and repression of illegal actors, and gives rise to a rigid conception of political-criminal relations, understood once again as a zero-sum game: where crime expands and the State contracts and vice versa (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021: 57).

This violence goes beyond partisan logic: neither the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri), nor the National Action Party (bread), nor Morena have been able to reduce the escalation of violence. The end of PRI party hegemony further complicated the situation. Fragmented organized crime groups favored municipal agreements and only some groups were able to negotiate at the state and federal levels. At the same time, the parties in power favored partisan support logics, rather than attending to local needs and promoting public policies that prioritize the common good. Now, it is important not to confuse the presence of fragmented organized crime groups with violence. There are several states where criminal governance has been functional and the absence of rival groups or agreement with authorities has generated an environment of social peace. “Illicit markets that are regulated and controlled by public protection institutions (state-sponsored institutions of protection) present low levels of violence” (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021: 57). Homicidal violence, according to Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, is the symptom of at least three dynamics:

1. The struggle to obtain protection from the authorities.
2. The war between cartels.
3. The repression exercised by the multiple public forces involved in the fight against crime.

During the cristiada, the State defined the enemy more easily: it was the cristero who defended his faith with all the resources at his disposal; he was classified as a fanatic. Today the situation is more complex. Military and politicians are both partners and executioners of organized crime, aligning themselves not only with national interests, but also with those of the United States. This is why it is so complicated to understand the dynamics of violence, and Mexico seems to be in a perpetual cycle of violence (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021: 57). Gema Kloppe-Santamaría and Le Cour Grandmaison's research tends to show that violence is a resource for the power game. It is key to establishing power quotas at both the local and federal levels. Unlike the modern European vision of the State, which has the illusion of the monopoly of force, the Mexican State does not monopolize violence and has historically played on the permissiveness of violence in order to promote more effective social control (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021; Kloppe-Santamaría, 2023):

[The State is] judge and party, both in the definition of rules and in the use of violence [...] The power of the State is neither perfect nor absolute in time and space. Contrary to the concepts of “weak” democracy or “failed” State dozens of academic works have shown that “violent orders” do not cause the breakdown of the State, but a redefinition of its role in regulating the use of violence, in relation to a multitude of actors (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021: 65).

In this sense, there are similarities in what is happening today in Mexico with what was happening in Italy in the sixties and seventies or in Colombia in the eighties and nineties.8 As Leonardo Sciascia established in 1972: “The Mafia [...] does not arise or develop in the ‘vacuum’ of the State (i.e. when the State, with its laws and its functions, is weak or absent) but ‘in’ the State. In short, the mafia is nothing other than a parasitic bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie that is not enterprising, but exploitative” (Sciascia, 2011).

That is why it is so complex to make a moral judgment and use the categories of “good” or “bad” when trying to analyze the impact of fragmented organized crime in Mexican society and in other latitudes. In any case, if there is a “good”, its fate is terrible, because this group is composed of priests, pastors, human rights defenders, searching mothers and groups committed to the defense and promotion of human dignity. The State is not absent, but is part of this symbiosis that has allowed fragmented organized crime in Mexico to grow and prosper for more than a hundred years (Astorga, 2016).

On the contrary [...] the State is not absent, as we read so much. It is present, but it constitutes one more political actor, immersed in the dynamics and practices of violence regulation observed in Michoacán and in many other territories of the Republic [...] Chronic violence and the presence of hundreds of violent groups in Mexico do not impede the stability of the political system, following the hypothesis that violent actors seek to establish themselves as intermediaries, interlocutors and allies of the authorities for the maintenance of social order at the local level. Therefore, the multiplication of violent actors in Mexico, far from implying the failure of the state, responds to a transformation of the modalities of regulation of violence between the authorities and dozens of turbulent partners (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2021: 51-52).

From state perpetrator to fragmented organized crime perpetrator

The phenomenon of the murders of priests, both in the context of the Cristero conflict and the war against drugs, can be seen as an example of what Max Weber defined as the disenchantment of the world (Weber, 2005: 141). The force and impact of these homicides caused several national and international actors to turn their attention to this violence which, in its most contemporary phase, also affects journalists and social activists. Violence against ministers of worship, diocesan priests, religious or other Catholic personnel can be interpreted as the transgression of a figure previously considered “untouchable” or sacred.

The Church persecuted by the State

“Between 1914 and 1925, 17 priests had died violently [...]” (González Morfín, 2010: 27). The states with the highest number of incidents were Jalisco (three), Oaxaca (three) and Zacatecas (three), followed by the State of Mexico and Tlaxcala (two cases each). During this period -in the voice of its priests and bishops-, the Church had mostly opposed the revolutionary project and its hierarchs had openly and publicly criticized the 1917 Constitution which they judged, among other things, as anticlerical and anti-Catholic. As far as the religious conflict is concerned, the count of priests violently murdered is subject to further interpretation. Juan González Morfín himself is very critical of the hard data.

In some sources, such as the book by Luigi Ziliani [Messico martire. Bergamo: Società Editrice S. Alessandro, 1934], edited for the first time when the Cristero War was just ending, the statement of the total number of dead differs from the number of priests with name and surname given in an extensive list of murdered priests. Specifically, while Ziliani speaks of a total of 238 priests killed, when he says who they were, the total number is 70. L'Osservatore Romano He [came to mention] a number of several hundred dead [even if they were only mentioned by name] 32 priests killed during the Cristero War. Historians who have had the perspective of time to draw up a list of the total number of priests killed, do not usually give too high a number; thus, for example, Lauro López Beltrán mentions 41 priests by name; José Gutiérrez Casillas, 58; Fidel González Martínez, 84 (González Morfín, 2010: 28-29).

Beginning in 1926, several legislative reforms promoted by President Plutarco Elías Calles were enacted, which put an end, among other things, to the religious tolerance that benefited the Mexican Catholic clergy. The episcopate responded to these attacks with the suspension of worship. The State decreed the closing of temples and conditioned their opening to the creation of neighborhood councils. This measure took the management and possession of the church away from the priest. Catholics in some regions opted for the armed defense of their faith. This began the outbreak of a civil war known as the cristiada. During this period the number of murdered priests increased. Juan González Morfín establishes a catalog of 96 of them, a figure used in this study. The region with the highest number of incidents was Jalisco (42), followed by Guanajuato (16), Durango (nine), Zacatecas and Michoacán (each with five). The Bajío, the main zone of military operation, was also the place where most priests were executed.

Of this long list, only six were combatant priests or military chaplains. Most of the ministers of worship murdered continued with their traditional pastoral duties, several of them clandestinely, and most of them were executed by members of the army or agrarists without prior trial (Meyer, [1973] 2005; González Navarro, 2000; González, 2001). This is why the concept of necropolitics developed by Achille Mbembe is so useful. For him, an expression of sovereignty is precisely the power to decide who can live and who must die (2011: 19). The use of authority in Mexico has historically been, at the local, state or federal level, mediated by violence. A clear example of this is the extrajudicial executions (ajusticiamientos) carried out by the State itself. An interesting fact when putting into historical perspective the impunity surrounding human rights offenses by the State and the violence exercised by some fragmented organized crime groups. During the religious conflict the main perpetrator was the different revolutionary armies and the State itself, or groups that today could be considered paramilitary, controlled by a local cacique (Butler, 2006), as well as some members of bandit gangs (Matute, 2013). “Homicide is a predictable form of adjudication of political conflicts, in which authorities (the governor), criminals and rival caciques participate” (Aguilar Rivera, 2021: 44). The caciques are not only on the side of the government, but also of the Cristero armies, as the English historian Matthew Butler (2006) has shown very well.

From one pursuit to another

Together with researcher Fernanda Durand, a map of religious murders has been created that includes the two periods being compared in this reflection (Figure 1).

Map of localities where religious assassinations occurred in Mexico. Beginning of the 20th century (1914-1940) in green and modern (1990-2024) by sexenio in red (Solis Nicot and Durand).

Map of localities where religious assassinations occurred in Mexico. Beginning of the 20th century (1914-1940) in green and modern (1990-2024) by sexenio in red (Solis Nicot and Durand).

When looking at the data of murders of religious perpetrated during the cristiada and the contemporary period, it can be noted that some areas coincide, as in the case of Jalisco, Michoacán, State of Mexico, Veracruz and Oaxaca. In other cases, such as Durango, Zacatecas and Guanajuato, the greatest violence occurred during the first half of the century. xx. In other states, such as Baja California, Guerrero and Chihuahua, homicides against ministers of Catholic worship occurred in the context of the war on drugs. An analysis of the map shows that the highest number of homicides is found between the 21st and 18th parallels. The northern part of Guerrero and the central-western part of the country have historically been the most dangerous areas for those who have exercised this ministry.

The reasons for assassinating a priest during the Revolution, the cristiada or the second were mainly religious, within the framework of an open conflict with the State with a political and cultural background. The Catholic priest was an obstacle to the establishment of the new revolutionary political order. In the contemporary era, after the constitutional reforms of 1992, this political weight no longer exists. The State and the Church entered into a new relationship. This does not mean that there were no frictions, but, in general terms, they do not represent an obstacle to state or federal power. However, through their homilies - in their work to support mothers, adolescents at risk or migrants - they come into conflict with the interests of fragmented organized crime and public officials who collaborate with them. For the Centro Católico Multimedial:

Priests are assassinated for their ability to call people together, for promoting the Gospel to all men of good will. In addition, they offer their support where there is an absence of freedom of thought and expression where government actions leave much to be desired and there is a degree of social decomposition, unemployment, migration and insecurity [...] They bother power groups [...] that operate in illicit actions, under eternal chiefdoms in areas where high percentages of indigenous population and extreme poverty are concentrated [...] They defend migrants in their passage through Mexico [...] (Sotelo Aguilar, 2017: 59-60).

Priestly neo-martyrdom in the context of the drug war

This explains in large part why between 1993 and 2024 a new phenomenon of priest murders began to occur. The number of homicides tripled in each decade, going from eight in the 1990s to 16 in the 2000s and 52 in the 2010s, with the six-year term of office with the highest incidence being that of Peña Nieto (32 homicides) (Figure 2).

Map 2 Homicides of Catholic religious personnel in Mexico between 1993 and 2024. Prepared by: Mtra. Fernanda Durand based on data from Centro Católico Multimedial.

In this map made by Fernanda Durand, based on data from the Centro Católico Multimedial, you can see the places where the murders of priests occurred and distinguish, with color code, the areas with the highest frequency of violent homicides in the same period. From 1993 to date, more than 80 murders of Catholic ministers, missionaries, religious men and women have been recorded. While it is difficult to establish that in the 1990s Mexico was a conflict zone, the policies of President Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) did transform it into one. This situation bears brutal testimony to the role, role and power played by fragmented organized crime at the social, political, economic, as well as cultural and religious levels. However, Mexico is not the only Latin American case; there are similarities with what happened in Colombia (Cárdenas and Casas-Zamora, September 21, 2010).

In 2010, the then U.S. Secretary of State publicly acknowledged that fragmented organized crime was in control of a good part of Mexico, as well as Central America, a phenomenon that to this day has not been curbed (Carroll, September 9, 2010). Once again Mbembe offers explanatory clues: although it is not possible to speak of a colonial system in the relationship between the United States and Latin American countries, there is an imperial will that was exacerbated during the Cold War and that, after the fall of the Soviet bloc, needed to be transformed. The attacks of September 11, 2001 provoked an upsurge in the use of violence against the new “enemies” (Chomsky, 2002). The United States has played a complex and contradictory role in Latin America and Mexico. Regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in power, there is a clear disregard for the lives of Mexicans. On the one hand, there was pressure on the Mexican and Central American governments to declare drug traffickers the enemy through the Merida Initiative, while on the other hand, the State Department came up with a plan to “allegedly” fight fragmented organized crime by arming it with military grade weapons.9 Something similar to what had already been done with Plan Colombia at the end of the 1990s. This is due to the fact that there is no respect on the part of the United States towards the Latin American populations. In a process similar to the one described by Mbembe when he talks about the colonial asymmetry between European nations and the dominated ones, it can be said that the decisions taken from Washington:

They do not imply the mobilization of sovereign subjects (citizens) who respect each other as enemies. They do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants or between enemies and “criminals”. The fact that the colonies can be governed in absolute absence of law comes from the racist denial of any common ground between the conqueror and the indigenous (Mbembe, 2011: 39).

Thus, despite its apparent quest to strengthen the rule of law, the United States has had no problem supporting authoritarian options in Latin America, as long as their economic and security interests are aligned with its own. This does not mean that there are no U.S. religious men and women who are deeply committed to transforming the lived realities in Latin America and Mexico. Nor does it mean that we should minimize the impact of the weight of criminal governance on the increase in violence, including that suffered by Christian pastors or Catholic priests and religious men and women.

Understanding the dynamics of criminal governance in Mexico and the way in which Catholic priests position themselves in the face of it is relevant to explain the logic behind these crimes. This concept has been taken from Lessing's studies. Thinking about the phenomenon through the prism of criminal governance (Lessing, 2020) allows us to understand how, for certain social, political or economic actors, the State's claim of monopoly over the use of force has limitations. Not only in Mexico, but also in other scenarios, such as Colombia, Brazil or even in the suburbs of large European or North American cities, the authority to turn to in case of problems or difficulties is not the State, but the local criminal organization. The State still exists and competes in part with this parallel governance. Thus, citizens continue to pay taxes, political processes are based on voting and the punishment of criminal groups continues to be executed by the State, which is sometimes the agent of punishment and sometimes collaborates with one group to reduce the power of another.

In this sense, criminal groups offer alternative governance to people who do not actively and voluntarily participate in the organization itself. Criminal governance, in this way, intersects with the state and can promote a symbiosis between fragmented organized crime and the state (Lessing, 2020: 854). Luis Astorga in his analysis explains how since 1925 “based on historical research, drug trafficking appears in its beginnings as one more business possible from political power and subordinated to it” (2016: 229).

Andreas Feldmann and Juan Pablo Luna summarize this concept very clearly when they explain that it is “the creation of a parallel order based on the imposition of rules on citizen behavior by criminal organizations often with the collaboration of state agents” (Feldmann and Luna, 2022: 1). In other words, it is not enough to identify the areas with greater violence, but rather to be able to identify the areas with greater criminal governance, those areas where the committed discourse of the priest, the pastor, the journalist, the human rights defender, makes the different groups of fragmented organized crime uncomfortable and where the disenchantment of the world generates fertile ground so that, without remorse of conscience, the priest can be assassinated. This is not a new phenomenon. What Weber explained in relation to the strata of chivalrous warriors could very well apply to hitmen who seek totally mundane goals and are detached from all “mysticism”. However, they have not had the desire, nor the capacity, to achieve a rational mastery of reality.

The irrationality of “luck” and, under certain conditions, “the image of a vague ‘destiny’, considered in a deterministic way [...] have been placed above and behind gods and demons, seen as vigorous and passionate heroes who provide protection or hostility, glory and wealth, or death, to human heroes” (Weber, 2005: 40). They have lost respect for the institution and for the minister of worship, but not for the saint. The Virgin of Guadalupe shares the altar with Santa Muerte, Juan Soldado or Jesus Malverde. This coexistence could explain the increase in the number of homicides, not only of Catholic religious personnel, but also of other religious denominations. Although this reflection focuses on the murders of Catholic priests, it is important to recognize that homicides are not the only type of violence suffered by these agents, as this phenomenon is not exclusive to this religious denomination.

In Mexico, there are several theoretical and methodological perspectives that allow addressing violence against religious groups. Among them, the thesis defended in 2012 by Erika Valenzuela under the direction of Dr. Olga Odgers stands out, as well as the joint article they published in 2014, in which they document and analyze data on three religious communities that have seen an increase in violence in Tijuana. Although violence is not the central focus of their research, as they focus on the various ways in which individuals from three different belief systems interpret and experience it, they take an interesting theoretical approach to the phenomenon (Valenzuela, 2012; Valenzuela and Odgers Ortiz, 2014). Much of their reflection on violence focuses on the urban context, given that their study is located in Tijuana, the main border city of Baja California, Mexico.

Another work that has focused on this issue is that of Tragedia y crisol del sacerdocio en México by Omar Sotelo Aguilar (2017: 33). This is the first study that systematically seeks to expose violence against Catholic clerical agents. Local studies of the entities where the phenomenon occurs more frequently would be useful to better understand the situation.

Avenues for reflection

With 85 priests murdered between 1991 and 2024, the figure is close to the number of homicides against ministers of worship during the three years of the first Cristero War. However, there is a significant difference: between 1926 and 1929, most of the 96 priests murdered were killed by the army during a context of religious civil war; while, since 1991, most have been victims of fragmented organized crime when relations between churches or religious associations and the state are peaceful.

It is not possible to establish a direct comparison between historical and current conflicts or to think of them as sequential. When adopting a historical perspective of violence against priests in Mexico, it is observed that the commonalities are secondary. There are significant differences between the actors and their motivations, as well as in the general environment and the international arena. The first conflict has its origins in a religious issue and in conflicting visions of State and citizenship, while the second stems from the State's willingness to align itself with the prohibitive policies of the United States and to confront directly and violently various organized crime groups, with whom relations had previously been framed in a context of cooperation and tolerance. It is worthwhile, however, to highlight some enlightening coincidences in order to unravel the situation of violence in Mexico today.

In both situations, the Mexican State has operated outside the law, often resorting to extrajudicial executions, without being able to eliminate or defeat the enemy (Cristeros or organized crime hitmen). At the military level, the intertwining of the conflicting forces and the local populations prevents the suppression of violence. The pacification process of the Cristero conflict was complex and mediated by the convergence of international, national and local interests. The interests of the United States, in particular, were diverse and conflicting, something similar to what is being experienced with the conflict generated as a result of the declaration of war on drug trafficking in the era of President Calderón. While part of the state apparatus opts for a prohibitionist stance, a significant fraction of the U.S. population consumes or seeks to consume intensively the products and services offered by organized crime, among which drugs are a key element, but not the only one.

The recent US position on declaring criminal groups as foreign terrorists may, instead of decreasing levels of violence, increase them in the short and medium term. There is the possibility of rekindling nationalist enthusiasm in the face of threats of invasion and provoking an open rapprochement between criminal groups and local authorities. This could break criminal governance, forcing the Mexican State and criminal groups to abandon the corruption and discreet relations they have maintained for more than forty years, leading to a new phase of simulation and agreements to pacify the country. Both during the Cristero conflict and at the present time, the attitude of the U.S. government regarding the purchase and sale of weapons between the belligerents has prolonged the violent times.

In the first decades of the 20th century xxi, violence against priests in Mexico is not an isolated phenomenon, but is part of a broader context of structural violence affecting diverse communities. This violence reflects the social, political and economic tensions in the country. Priests are not collateral victims of organized crime nor are they being questioned for their Catholic faith, as was the case during the Cristero War. In carrying out their pastoral work, they become targets of violence because of their religious role and their commitment to social justice and the defense of human rights. It is essential to conduct further local research to establish whether the harassment, intimidation or murder of ritual experts has been motivated by the priests' refusal to offer their services to certain groups or by their collaboration with rival groups, or whether they represent a threat because of their social work or their role as stabilizers in the communities.

The symbolic burden of the murder of a priest may be greater than that of other citizens and can be equated to that of journalists, human rights defenders, searching mothers, and defenders of land and water. Although some priests and bishops, as well as the ccm have spoken at some point of a resurgence of persecution, there already seems to be a consensus on the use of the concept of “continuous harassment” instead. In the current period, unlike the Cristero wars, this violence is not exclusive to the Catholic world.

The failure of the “abrazos no balazos” policy to reduce violence and the problems of criminal governance pose a much more complex scenario. The Mexican state, as sociologist and historian Gema Kloppe-Santamaría (2023) has shown, has a long experience in the use of extra-legal violence to maintain social and political control of the country. It is within this framework that the actions and positions of Catholic priests and Christian pastors take on a new relevance, as they can promote a profound transformation that seeks to change the dynamics of hatred, favor the construction of peace, the repair of the social fabric and prioritize human dignity and the defense and promotion of human rights.

The role of churches as mediators in social conflicts is crucial, as their ability to promote dialogue and reconciliation can be key to building a more peaceful environment. However, the lack of protection and support for ritual experts working in high-risk areas is a challenge that needs to be further addressed. By studying the history of violence against priests in Mexico, one can better understand the motivations of a multidimensional and fragmented scale actor such as organized crime. The murders of priests have complex causes that cannot be explained solely by the presence of organized crime, as they occur more in areas where there is conflict between different gangs or groups than in those where a single ringleader appears to control territory. Mapping and documenting this violence makes it possible to identify areas where it is necessary to create an environment in which religious leaders can carry out their work without fear of reprisals. This is the only way to move towards a more just and peaceful society.

Databases on religious violence in Mexico

Base de datos de incidentes violentos. Descargada el día 6 de febrero de 2024 de la página del Observatorio de Libertad Religiosa en América Latina. Disponible en: https://olire.org/es/monitorear/base-de-datos-de-incidentes-violentos/

Centro Católico Multimedial. Disponible en: https://ccm.org.mx/

Plataforma de Proyección de Datos Abiertos. Disponible en: https://ppdata.politicadedrogas.org/#mMain.

Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana de la Universidad Iberoamericana. Disponible en: https://seguridadviacivil.ibero.mx/institucion/programa-de-seguridad-ciudadana/

Puertas Abiertas. México. Open Doors. Disponible en: https://www.puertasabiertas.org/es-ES/persecucion/lmp/mexico/

Seminario sobre Violencia y Paz. Disponible en: https://violenciaypaz.colmex.mx/

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Yves Bernardo Roger Solis Nicot Mexican of French origin, is a research professor at Prepa Ibero, Mexico City. He is a member of the Commission for Historical Studies of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean (cehila) and the Centre for Society, Law and Religion Research of the Université de Sherbrooke (sordrus). He is a historian and social scientist. In 2019 he was a visiting professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. (comexus, Fulbright-García Robles). His research work focuses mainly on aspects of the religious phenomenon in contemporary Mexico.