MEXICO
Counterpunch
by JOHN HAZARD
Pope Francisco comes to Mexico for the first time this week. Will it be a “Meet the new boss—same as the old boss” experience? In the 1980s, John Paul II shamelessly performed a private mass for the family of then-president José Luis Portillo. (“Mexico deserves a mass in the presidential residence,” was that pope’s logic.) The current pope comes with a more populist stance, but, according to Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi, refuses to meet with parents of the 43 disappeared education students—as he has avoided doing since a group of mothers went to see him in Philadelphia in September—or with victims of pederast priests. In both cases, church authorities offer tickets to the mass the pope will officiate in Ciudad Juárez, which is about a 30-hour drive from the state of Guerrero.
Epifanio Álvarez, father of one of the missing students, responded that if the pope “were really different and wanted to do something for us, he would have made some kind of statement a long time ago.” Whether seeking papal intervention is the best strategy to fight state violence in Mexico is open to debate, but what cannot be disputed is that this pope has scheduled time to meet the family of the neo-liberal mayor of Mexico City—Miguel Ángel Mancera, friend of violent police officials and of real estate vultures who send thousands of poor people per year to live on the streets or to leave the city—but not to meet with families of the worst state-committed atrocity in Mexico’s recent history. (Alexandro Solalinde, a priest who is widely respected for his defense of Central American immigrants who pass through Mexico, believes that, in spite of the announcements to the contrary, the pope will meet with the families of the 43 students.)
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