Banners purportedly signed by one of Mexico’s drug cartels have promised there will be no violence during next weekend’s visit by Pope Benedict XVI. At least 11 banners signed by the Knights Templar gang were found in five towns across Guanajuato state, including the city of Leon, where the Pope begins his trip on Friday, the state attorney general’s office said. A spokesman said the banners were found over the weekend hanging from pedestrian bridges and carried messages about “a sort of truce for peace and said they are going to keep the peace during the Pope’s visit”. The newspaper Reforma said one banner read: “The Knights Templar disavow any military action, we are not murderers, welcome to the Pope.” The Knights Templar gives itself a pseudo-religious persona, proclaiming in banners that it is the defender of the region’s people. It was created in Michoacan state after a split with the since-weakened La Familia cartel. In February, the Knights Templar put out banners warning rival gangs to stay away and not to create trouble during the Pope’s stay. The pontiff is scheduled to visit Guanajuato from Friday until Monday, when he will fly on to Cuba. Mexican president Felipe Calderon plans to greet the Pope at Leon’s airport. For many Catholics, the papal visit is long overdue, given that the country has more Catholics than any other Spanish-speaking country. Devotion still runs high for the Pope’s predecessor, John Paul II, who honoured Mexico by making it his first trip outside the Vatican and coming back four more times. He is known as “Mexico’s pope”. Recently, a glass case containing his blood – one of the relics of his beatification – travelled throughout Mexico for 91 days and is said to have been seen by 27 million people.
narcoblogger has stepped into the breach left by Mexican journalists, who dare not report as they used to do. Thirty journalists have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon started his war on the drug cartels in 2006, making Mexico the most deadly country in Latin America for the media. Most are victims of the drug cartels, not caught in crossfire but targeted for reporting what is going on.
Last month, four reporters from the central Mexican state of Durango were kidnapped after reporting a prison riot, which followed the revelation that the prison governor was allowing inmates to go out at night and commit murders. The journalists were freed only after their TV station agreed to broadcast a video, produced by one of the drug cartels, which showed corrupt policemen who were apparently working for a rival cartel.
Today, attention has turned to Tamaulipas state where police have found 72 unburied bodies dumped on a ranch. They are presumably victims of the ever more vicious drug war, which in this part of Mexico pits Los Zetas against the Gulf Cartel. In recent weeks, the industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico’s wealthiest, has been almost brought to a standstill by cartel road blocks, kidnaps and gunbattles, following the murder of a local mayor. Police chiefs, political candidates and senior state officials are frequently targeted for assassination. The drug gangs are trying to seize the Mexican state, and closing down the media is just one part of their plan.
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