In the letter, the bishop charged that organized crime commits “kidnappings, and disappearances, makes threats, harasses people, takes natural resources, persecutes people and dispossesses their assets, the fruit of our work.”
The prelate pointed out that this situation has created food shortages, such as of basic grains and other goods, as well as a lack of medical care and medicines.
Aguilar charged that there is “social, political, and psychological pressure and control from different gangs such that the people take sides with one or another crime gang.”
The bishop blamed the authorities at all levels for “ignoring the complaints of civil society” and demanded that they “urgently” address the “cases of violence and insecurity that are destroying the lives of our people.”
Furthermore, he demanded that the authorities “immediately issue and execute the arrest warrants for the leaders of these crime gangs” and “restore social order without doing harm to civil society.”
At a Sept. 25 a press conference, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, stated that the incidents of violence in Chiapas are “a matter very limited to one region” and that the videos that were posted are a strategy of his political opponents to make it seem that “drug trafficking dominates throughout Chiapas and throughout Mexico.”