New America Media, News Feature, José Luis Sierra, Posted: Oct 17, 2011

LOS ANGELES -- Father Alejandro Solalinde relates a story over dinner about a friend, another priest who also happens to be his bishop. “Whenever you announce you are coming, I get happy,” the bishop allegedly told him back in his home state of Oaxaca. “But whenever you are actually here… I get scared.” The small crowd at the dinner table explodes into knowing laughter.

Since 2007, Solalinde has taken charge of the Catholic Pastoral Care Centre for Migrants, one the largest networks of immigrant assistance shelters in Latin America -- 57 to be exact. In the process, he has become persona non-grata to Mexican government officials, immigrant smugglers, drug lords and even residents of the small towns where the shelters operate.

His campaign in defense of migrants has riled so many, in fact, that for the past two years Mexican authorities have assigned four agents to serve as his bodyguards. Two of them accompany him as he crisscrosses the country, while two remain behind to guard the migrant center in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, where Solalinde lives.

Advocating for migrants, Solalinde has learned, can be dangerous work.

In 2008, a mob of local Ixtepec residents that included municipal officials and the mayor broke into the shelter, which caters mostly to Central American migrants, and demanded that it be shut down in 48 hours or be burned down. The attack followed the arrest of a Central American migrant for the rape of a six-year-old girl. Solalinde condemned the rape, but insisted the suspect had not been housed at his shelter.

Having first arrived in southern state of Oaxaca some three decades earlier, Solalinde says he chose to “marry” Ixtepec, one of the poorest towns in the state, precisely for that reason. “When I see the faces of the migrants, I see the face of the Lord.”

We meet during a gathering of friends and colleagues at La Guelagetza, a Los Angeles eatery popular for its Oaxacan and Mexican cuisine. Over the course of the meal, the topic eventually shifts to the conflict now engulfing much of the country between rival drug gangs and central authorities, both of whom Solalinde says are looking to exploit the floating population of migrants.

“Do you think that they assigned me body guards because they like me?’’ Solalinde asks with a hint of irony. “No, they [the government] do it because they know that if something happens to me they will have a national conflict… perhaps an international conflict, on their hands.” He then airs suspicions that the federal government and the Sinaloa cartel – one of Mexico’s largest -- might be involved in some kind of unwritten agreement to eliminate rival Zetas around the state to make it safer.

Over the past five years, the Zetas have been identified as the only organized crime group in Mexico that specializes in exploiting migrant workers. They’ve been involved in kidnappings, extortion, murder and human trafficking. In an area that serves as a central corridor for thousands of Central American immigrants aiming to cross Mexico on their way to the United States, that means big business.

The most recent official report on kidnappings in Mexico, released in February of this year, put the number of cases at about 11,333 in 2010. The majority of victims were migrants from Mexico and Central America -- 44 percent from Honduras, 16 percent from El Salvador, 11 percent from Mexico, 5 percent from Cuba, with the rest coming from Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador.

Average ransom demands usually amount to around three thousand dollars.

Solalinde describes himself as an unconventional priest, insisting that while he loves the Church and stands by its principles, he is, at the same time, concerned that its leaders -- ensconced in positions of power -- may have lost their way.

“I belong to the PRD,’’ he announces, as we all brace for a political stump speech trumpeting Mexico's “leftist” Partido de la Revolucion Democratica, or Party of the Democratic Revolution. “The Party of the Reign of Dios [God],’’ he quickly follows up, drawing a round of relieved laughter.

“I am not a very religious man,” he says. “I am a man of faith." He then adds that he is also something of an irritant to the higher echelons of the Catholic Church, who at one point he compares to Mexico’s central leadership.

Like many of his fellow Mexicans, Solalinde believes that President Calderon began a crusade against the drug cartels looking for some sense of reaffirmation in his victory against his leftist rival Manuel Lopez Obrador and to curry favor with the U.S. government.

“Mexico is going straight in a downward trend,’’ said Solalinde. “Our government lacks credibility,” he notes, adding that the future depends on the involvement of citizens, not political parties, if there is to be some hope of saving the country.