PART 3 – An experience of social/social justice ministry in Mexico
By Fr Curtis Gaston Poyer
Former Director for Social/Social Justice Ministry in the Diocese of Tampico, Mexico, 2004–2023
In May 1993, a few months before I arrived in Mexico, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo was killed in the parking lot of the Guadalajara airport, supposedly in crossfire between two rival drug gangs.
On the national front, a wide range of high-level assassinations were carried out by drug-and-extortion-related cartels in the years that followed. Political candidates, police chiefs, public servants, and even a few of our pastoral colleagues in social/social justice ministry, became victims of organised crime. In the Diocese of Tampico, the situation became worse in 2010 following a split in the Golf Cartel into two warring factions. One part of that cartel continued with the name ‘Cartel del Golfo’ and the other group called themselves the ‘Zetas’.
Both groups embarked on a violent war for control of the transport of drugs to the US through our state of Tamaulipas, and at the same time for the control of firearms and ammunition entering into Mexico from the US, and for the kidnapping and extortion of undocumented migrants on their way to the US through the Diocese of Tampico.
Both groups also carried out extortion and kidnapping against businesspeople at all levels. Street vendors of all types fell victim to this kind of crime. From 2010 to 2015, the inhabitants of the southern area of Tamaulipas experienced moments of terror as war played out between rival criminal groups and between these and security forces.
As a result of the above, we had to expand considerably the area of Justice, Peace, and Human Rights of our social/social justice ministry. Where the subarea of ‘Justice’ was concerned, it meant joining our voice with that of many NGOs and newer government initiatives in supporting and applying much needed criminal justice and law-enforcement reforms.
The Federal and State criminal justice and law-enforcement systems in Mexico were devised many decades ago, and by 2010 were grossly inadequate to deal with vastly powerful criminal networks while facing growing numbers of local crimes.
Where the subarea of ‘Peace’ was concerned, social/social justice ministry meant convoking different areas of society and improving dialogues between and among these areas, and between communities and different kinds of law enforcement to share information and techniques for reducing and denouncing crime.
Regarding the subarea of ‘Human Rights’, our work involved pushing for legal protection and access to services for the more vulnerable groups.
With help from parishioners and pastoral agents, I used the parish, both the church and the different meeting areas to facilitate these meetings, workshops, information and training sessions, conferences, a wide range of dialogues, and formation sessions for the laity, including for those who were victims and targets of violence and human rights abuses.
These latter included hundreds of undocumented migrants who frequently contacted the parishes in this Diocese looking to continuing their journey to find the ‘American dream’, but who all too often, experienced the Mexican nightmare.
All this pastoral activity meant that the lives and well-being of our own pastoral agents were frequently put in danger, and some of us even came under direct threats from organised crime.
To avoid this, we had to become much more discreet in our actions and language. As the legal justice and law-enforcement systems went through sweeping changes, and as civil society became more organised and informed, violence dwindled somewhat between 2015 and 2020 and we were able to develop more freely other areas social/social justice ministry.
Tackling environmental issues
For many years, pollution from the oil refinery and other industrial activities was linked to an increase in cancer among women and a wide range of allergy problems among children and young people.
While our social/social justice ministry was already initiating several recycling and cause of pollution conscious-raising projects since 2010, it was not until 2016 that we fully went into promoting the idea of socially and environmentally responsible companies and industries.
Fortunately, environmental activists and movements were already doing this and so our actions complemented and contextualised theirs. Changes in environmental protection legislation paralleled and aided our efforts and offered us a specifically Mexican legal framework and reference points for our own efforts, which were based on a growing area in Catholic Social Teaching.
The Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020. It reduced our social/social justice ministry to rallying support for and giving aid to the hundreds of families and businesses that were directly affected. But isn’t that what we were supposed to do?
TO BE CONTINUED.
