The archdiocesan newspaper was unstinting in its reflection on López Obrador: “He is not afraid of being ridiculous, which has become a form of governance. With the response he gave, which we all know, to the matter of the five young people who disappeared in Lagos de Moreno, he not only shows a lack of sensitivity but also perversion.”
Five childhood friends, ranging in age from 19 to 22, got together for the annual fair at Lagos de Moreno, a colonial city in the state of Jalisco. They were last seen playing soccer some three miles outside of the city. While their bodies have not been identified, images abound on the internet of the young men bound, gagged, and looking fearfully at the camera. Investigators later identified the place of their probable murder. Human remains have been found not far from the killing field. Media reports suggest that they were brutally murdered by cartel thugs when they refused to join the criminal organization.
Mexicans have responded by lighting thousands of candles in their memory in churches throughout the country.
“Mockery, not taking things seriously, laughing at others’ misfortune (children with cancer, for example) has become one of his means (calling them a strategy is going too far) to ‘answer’ when he does not want to, cannot, or does not know how to do so,” the paper contended.
It quoted Cardinal Robles, who said: “What we are seeing is a great deal of indifference on the part of authorities, who should be more concerned about caring for young people and making firmer decisions.”
“We are living in a climate of crime where no level of society is blameless,” Robles went on to say. “This is not about passing on responsibility but of confronting what is happening with the full authority of the law. Otherwise, this cannot be fixed.” This is because, he said, “in everything that is happening there is complicity, impunity, protection.”