MEXICO CITY –
A retired Catholic bishop who was famous for trying to mediate between drug cartels in Mexico was located and taken to a hospital after apparently being briefly kidnapped, Mexico’s Council of Bishops said Monday.
Church leadership in Mexico said in an earlier statement that Bishop Salvador Rangel, bishop emeritus, disappeared Saturday and asked his captors to release him.
But the council later said “he has been located and is in hospital”, without specifying how he had been found or discharged.
Uriel Carmona, chief prosecutor of the state of Morelos, where the bishop disappeared, said that “preliminary indications are that it could have been an ‘express’ kidnapping.”
In Mexico, typical kidnappings tend to be protracted affairs involving lengthy negotiations over ransom demands. “Express” kidnappings, on the other hand, are quick kidnappings that are usually carried out by low-level criminals when ransom demands are lower, precisely so they can deliver the money more quickly.
Earlier, the council said Rangel was in poor health and pleaded with his captors to allow him to take his medication as “an act of humanity.”
Rangel was bishop of the notoriously violent diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, in the southern state of Guerrero, where drug cartels have been fighting turf battles for years. In an effort that was later backed by the government, Rangel sought to convince gang leaders to stop the bloodshed and reach agreements.
Rangel was apparently kidnapped in the state of Morelos, just north of Guerrero. The bishops’ statement reflected the very fine and dangerous line that prelates have to walk in cartel-dominated areas of Mexico to avoid antagonizing drug lords who could end their lives in an instant, on a whim.
“Considering his delicate state of health, we make a firm but respectful call to those who hold Bishop Rangel captive to allow him to take the medications he needs in an adequate and timely manner, as an act of humanity,” the council of bishops wrote earlier. of was found.
It was unclear who may have kidnapped Rangel. The hyperviolent drug trafficking gangs known as the Tlacos, the Ardillos and the Familia Michoacana operate in the area. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the crime.
If Rangel had suffered any harm, it would have been the most sensational crime against a top church official since 1993, when drug cartel gunmen killed Bishop Juan Posadas Ocampo in what was apparently a case of mistaken identity during a shooting in the Guadalajara church. airport.
Guerrero state prosecutors confirmed the kidnapping but offered no further details, saying only that they were willing to cooperate with their counterparts in Morelos. Morelos, like Guerrero, has been hit by violence, homicides and kidnappings for years.
In a statement, Rangel’s former diocese wrote that he “is very loved and respected in our diocese.”
In February, other bishops announced that they had helped arrange a truce between two warring drug cartels in Guerrero.
The Rev. José Filiberto Velázquez, who was aware of the February negotiations but did not participate in them, said that leaders of the Familia Michoacana cartel and the Tlacos gang, also known as the Mountain Cartel, participated in the talks.
Bishops and priests are trying to get the cartels to talk to each other in hopes of reducing bloody turf battles. The implicit assumption is that the cartels will divide up the territories where they extort money and traffic drugs, without so many killings.
Previously, the current bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, José de Jesús González Hernández, said that he and three other bishops in the state had spoken with cartel bosses in an attempt to negotiate a peace agreement in a different area.
Hernández said at the time that those talks failed because drug gangs did not want to stop fighting over territory in the Pacific coast state. These turf battles have paralyzed transportation in at least two cities and led to dozens of murders in recent months.
“They asked for a truce, but with conditions” for the distribution of territories, González Hernández said about the talks, held a few weeks before. “But these conditions were not to the liking of one of the participants.”
In February, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he approves of such talks.
“Priests and pastors and members of all the churches have participated, they have helped pacify the country. I think it is very good,” said López Obrador.
Critics say the talks illustrate the extent to which the government’s policy of not confronting cartels has left average citizens to craft their own separate peace deals with gangs.
A parish priest whose town in Michoacán state has been dominated by one cartel or another for years said in February that the talks are “an implicit recognition that they (the government) cannot provide safe conditions.”
The priest, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said, “We certainly have to talk to certain people, especially when it comes to people’s safety, but that doesn’t mean we agree with it.”
For example, he said, local residents asked him to ask cartel bosses about the fate of their missing relatives. It is a role that the church does not like.
“We wouldn’t have to do this if the government did its job well,” the priest said.
In February, Rangel told The Associated Press that truces between gangs often don’t last long.
They are “a little fragile, because in the drug world it is very easy to break agreements and betray,” Rangel said at the time.