Mexico: church appeals for protection for migrants after latest killings

Cathedral of San Cristóbal

After two Honduran immigrant women (aged 24 and 19) were killed in Chiapas, southern Mexico, on Friday, the Bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mgr Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, appealed for the government to do more to protect undocumented migrant workers trying to get to the Uniter States from criminal gangs preying on them.

Bishop Esquival said the women had been killed on a train journey after they went to police to report a gang who had tried to extort money from them.

The Catholic Church, several times told soldiers to accompany the train to protect immigrants. "In the case of Iris Suleida Raudales Flores and Cynthia Carolina Cruz Bonilla, murdered on 30 May, they had reported the extortion of which they were victims two days before. Somehow the gang was informed, identified them, stopped the train and killed them" said the Bishop. After Sunday Mass, Mgr Arizmendi said the fact that Mexico "does not provide protection to those traveling" along the Mexican territory is "an embarrassment at an international level".

He said that because of the economic situation in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, many people are forced to leave their homes and try to get to the USA through Mexico, in order to look for work. On their perilous journeys in the area of Palenque, in Chiapas, he said: "they are attacked by criminal gangs who extort their money, beat them and, in the worst cases, kill them."

The Church has denounced this on countless occasions, he said, but, unfortunately, the recent events show that "the necessary measures to prevent crimes or at least reduce them have not been adopted."

Source: Fides