AMERICA/MEXICO – Historic event: a Bishop at the Congress of Coahuila opens a dialogue for the rights of migrants

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Coahuila (Agenzia Fides) - "Abroad we have become a country that stands out because here we kill migrants" denounced the Bishop of the Diocese of Saltillo (Coahuila, Mexico), His Exc. Mgr. José Raúl Vera López, O.P., speaking yesterday, November 5, at the headquarters of the Congress of Coahuila - highest authority of the state, and then added that "Mexico is rejected in the field of human rights".
The note sent to Fides Agency stresses that it is a "historic event" as Mgr. Vera Lopez is the first Bishop of the Catholic Church to hold a conference on "Human rights of migrants", in front of more than 500 people. Mgr. Vera Lopez has been fighting for the defense of the rights of migrants in the world since 2010, and for this reason he went to speak at the headquarters of the most important international organizations.
In his report, Mgr. Vera Lopez highlighted that "the police hand migrants over to organized crime; trains stop to make sure that the guards are able to collect a thousand dollars by migrants and those who do not pay are thrown out of the train". The Bishop of Saltillo went on to say that every person "without documents" pay from 3,000 to $ 5,000 to smugglers to cross the border and arrive in the United States in search of work. He also pointed out the complicity of the authorities in some cases, such as the crime in San Fernando, Tamaulipas (see Fides 27/08/2010 and 1/08/2010). Finally, he invited everyone to join in the defense of undocumented immigrants, through the campaign "Visa Transmigrant, por una migracion sin violencia " .
The second speaker of the Conference, the migration specialist Rodolfo García Zamora, of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ), stated that 11 million Mexicans have left the country due to the inability of an economic model and the absence of a social development policy.
More than a political and social representative gave his recognition to the Catholic Church and the authorities of Coahuila because this event actually opens a public dialogue between the Church and the political power concerning a very serious problem of the Mexican society. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 06/11/2013)


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