Padre Habacuc Hernánadez Benítes didn’t need to die. Yet in the times before he was slain, “Cuco,” as he was affectionately called, endured the phobia of being targeted by narco assassins. He was only 39 years old and the vocational director for the diocese of Ciudad Altamirano in Mexico when he was murdered on the afternoon of July 13, 2009, together with two seminarians. The immediate motive of the killers was to steal his automobile.
Within the last 15 years, between 45 and 50 priests have been killed in Mexican narco-related violence. I decide to give attention to the case of Cuco on account of a private connection: He was killed within the parish of Padre Samuel, a priest who has been a detailed friend of mine for nearly 50 years, and who knew and esteemed Cuco as a good-natured and upright man and holy priest. (I actually have used a pseudonym for Padre Samuel to guard his identity.) Padre Samuel recounted to me how, on the funeral, just before Padre Cuco’s interment, an anguished woman in the gang wailed loudly, “Blessed are you, Padre Habacuc, for God called you to the holiness of martyrdom.”
My research shows that the majority murdered priests were like the opposite innocent victims of the drug war: They were caught within the crossfire.
No Latin American country is more dangerous for Roman Catholic priests than Mexico. The murder of men and ladies in pastoral ministries—particularly Roman Catholic priests—has grow to be a part of day by day life in Mexico. They join a bunch of journalists and human rights defenders together with indigenous leaders and 1000’s of other innocent victims. While the vast majority of the killings of priests have taken place in only a number of states (Guerrero is probably the most dangerous, followed by Michoacán and the perimeters of Mexico City), this violence is spreading, and plenty of more pastoral ministers are more likely to die. Two Jesuit priests, Javier Campos Morales and Joaquin Cesar Mora Salazar, were murdered on June 20, 2022, in Cerocahui, Chihuahua, while attempting to defend a person who was looking for refuge of their church.
This just isn’t the primary time that anti-Catholic violence has plagued Mexico. Anti-Catholic and anticlerical oppression culminated within the savage Cristero War of 1926-29, wherein roughly 90 priests were killed in an anticlerical purge. In his 1939 travel memoir, The Lawless Roads, Graham Greene described this siege on Mexican Catholicism as “the fiercest persecution of faith anywhere because the reign of Elizabeth.”
The straightforward—and improper—explanation for the recent wave of violence is that the priests in query messed with the improper drug trafficker. But clerics in Mexico know higher than to initiate a head-on confrontation with such powerful and menacing adversaries. My research shows that the majority murdered priests were like the opposite innocent victims of the drug war: They were caught within the crossfire. Or, they were killed because they refused to perform sacramental service, like a baptism or wedding, for known narcos.
For these Mexican priests, narcos should not “others”; relatively, they’re a component of the communities to which the priests minister.
Some might ask whether Roman Catholic priests in Mexico should do more to publicly confront these criminals within the name of the church. There are various solid the explanation why they don’t make such displays. The primary is definite death and an end to whatever efficacy they may need had. Mexican narcos have shown no mercy in taking out anybody who stands of their way.
One more reason: For these Mexican priests, narcos should not “others”; relatively, they’re a component of the communities to which the priests minister. The drug trade is an enterprise that requires many accomplices. Farmers are needed to lift the illegal crops, accountants to trace the cash, drivers to deliver the products. Government officials participate or are suborned to look the opposite way. Most of those people should not villains; they’re caught in the center too, and the priests need to be there for them.
Priests might also not know who of their pastoral community is an element of the drug trade. An unassuming person on the surface—a seemingly legitimate businessperson, a pacesetter locally and even the parish housekeeper—could also be a cog within the complex narco machine.
Mexican priests even have a strong spiritual incentive to remain at work. Padre Samuel told me of an encounter with an infamous trafficker in his parish community. Though he would never agree with the narco’s criminal decisions, he told the narco that he remained a “child of God who loved him, despite the illicit activities.” That is an announcement of Christian faith constructed from the crux of the drug war. Thus Padre Samuel rejects the trafficker’s occupation but still offers him God’s love.
Many Catholics have an inclination to declare all such clerical victims “martyrs.” Although their sacrifice is doubtless, the normal Roman Catholic theology of martyrdom is grounded within the extraordinary witness of a one that is killed “in odium fidei”—in hatred of the religion. So those that select a lifetime of suffering for Christ in a dangerous environment—as an example, from disease, war or general violence—have previously not been considered martyrs. Yet these theological distinctions don’t deter local communities from revering as martyrs their murdered priests, just like the grieving woman at Padre Cuco’s funeral.
Thus people within the Catholic Mexican community have proven to be theologians by instinct and the Holy Spirit. And Pope Francis agrees with the Catholic community; he has enlarged the specific determination for martyrdom by establishing a recent designation of martyrdom: “oblatio vitas,” the offering of 1’s life in a single act of heroism, as identified by Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary in “Opening the Fifth Seal: Catholic Martyrs and Forces of Religious Competition.”
These fallen priests are the people’s martyrs, individuals who day by day face the identical malicious threat of narco violence.
These fallen priests are the people’s martyrs, individuals who day by day face the identical malicious threat of narco violence. Amid Mexico’s pernicious violence, priests and other pastoral ministers are rather more than obscure figures of the disastrous victimization of the innocent. They’re altruistic Christian witnesses who willingly serve their people, accompanying them and comforting them through Mexico’s narco nightmare.
Given this high esteem for priests in Mexico, the church’s unique historical role in colonial Mexican history and the present-day importance of the Catholic Church in Mexico, the many killings of priests unquestionably represent a recent and ongoing societal, cultural and particularly spiritual erosion for Mexico. What’s the meaning of those killings amid the narco reality?
Although each of those violent deaths could seem a random event—like a car-jacking gone bad—they require and actually demand further reflection and interpretation, because these material realities should not the whole story. They disguise the helpful effect the narcos gain through these seemingly random killings. Priests are by their very person God’s representatives and pastoral leaders in the local people. Unlike parishioners in Padre Samuel’s parish, who may seamlessly play multiple roles, a pastor is committed to the one endeavor of service to God and his people. Due to this fact, whether a priest is killed in an effort to steal his automobile, pilfer the parish collection or punish his refusal to manage sacraments to known narco personnel, ultimately, the underlying and real reason for this violence is that the singular integrity of the priests threatens the narco reality and the brand new social order of Mexico.
One thing is for certain in Mexico: We are able to not see and understand governance in strict and isolated categories. The contemporary social theorist Roman Le Cour Grandmaison, in his 2021 essay, “Order, Sovereignty, and Violence in Mexico,” describes Mexico’s governance as “a fluid process involving continual interaction between multiple private and public actors.”
What exists in Mexico now’s what Le Cour Grandmaison calls “overlapping sovereignties.” One layer comprises the national and state governments and native police; one other is the stratum of narco control and “sovereignty.” The Mexican social order, he writes, becomes “a set of rules that govern the usage of violence in addition to the modalities of power and authority.” This enables various networks and relationships “that let violent actors to interact with public authority and vice versa.”
Contrary to what most Americans think, the narcos in Mexico should not attempting to overthrow political authorities; in response to Le Cour Grandmaison, they are attempting to realize a more advantageous position in relation to those authorities. We see this dynamic functioning with the people of Padre Samuel’s parish community, who seamlessly play multiple roles inside each sovereignty. So it is important to know that these two multilayered sovereignties should not in opposition to one another but, for probably the most part, cooperate with each other. As Le Cour Grandmaison states, “Narco business people and public authorities can very easily coexist, collaborate, or come into conflict in response to given political configuration and opportunity.” He describes this because the “cake layer sovereignty that overlap[s].” These two complementary power systems then form a social whole: all the overlapping cake.
Amid this newfound, somewhat vague and fluid Mexican social order, the fallen priests represent the established order. Priests serve because the grassroots representatives of the people and emissaries of the people to God, the interlocutors between God and the people. Due to this fact, priests by their person pose a singular challenge and even a threat to the delicate cake-layer sovereignty. When a priest refuses to support or not directly take part in the narco layer of sovereignty, he becomes an obstacle, an annoyance or perhaps a mere representative of a unique and alternate social order, and so the priest have to be eliminated.
The English writer and theologian G. K. Chesterton articulated the crux of this same rationale long before Mexico was dominated by narcos. He forged the dynamic of martyrdom and social conflict when it comes to sanctity. “The Saint,” Chesterton wrote, “is a drugs because he’s the antidote. Indeed that’s the reason the saint is commonly the martyr; he’s mistaken for a poison because he’s the antidote.” Accordingly, these Mexican priests, by their presence amid the dark horizon of violence, shine as a light-weight of resolution, order and hope, contradicting the disorderly flow of a cake-layer sovereignty of Mexico. And that’s the reason they die.
