The Pope Blames Business for Crime in Mexico — And Asks Prisoners to Forgive Society

On the last day of his whistlestop trip around Mexico, Pope Francis asked prisoners in the border city of Ciudad Juárez to pray for the society that has failed them, and then called business leaders "slave drivers" who were helping to foment violence.

"Let's open our hearts to forgive the society that did not know how to support us and that so many times pushed us into making mistakes," Francis told inmates in the patio of the city's main prison, before leading them in a few minutes of silent prayer.

The Pope's empathy with the prisoners contrasted with the tone of his later speech elsewhere in the city at a gathering of business and union leaders.

"What kind of Mexico do you want to leave for your children?" he challenged them. "Do you want to leave them the memory of exploitation, insufficient salaries, harassment at work, and the traffic of slave labor?"

The Pope said this has created conditions of poverty and exclusion that ensure young people "fall into cycles of drug trafficking and violence."

The "slave drivers of today," he added, "will be held to account by God."

Located just over the border from Texas, Ciudad Juárez is home to many assembly-for-export factories that typically pay miserable wages for long shifts.

Related: What It's Like to Be a Priest in the Trouble Spots the Pope is Visiting in Mexico

Juárez is also still struggling with the legacy of a turf war — between the local drug cartel known as La Línea and invaders from the Sinaloa cartel — that raged between 2008 and 2011, and turned it into the most violent city in the world.

Both sides fought their war largely by proxy through local street gangs, often made up of the children of factory workers who were rarely at home.

The war between the gangs, directed by their cartel masters, also continued behind bars.

The prison that welcomed the Pope on Wednesday with a small orchestra that played Mexican classics such as Bésame Mucho and Cielito Lindo, saw 20 inmates die in an inter-gang battle in 2009

Related: 'Chapo' Prison Break Shows Just How Weak Mexico's Government Really Is

The Pope called on the inmates in grey uniforms seated in neat rows before him to "help break the cycle of violence and exclusion."

He did not directly mention either the 2009 bloodbath, or the wider phenomenon of deaths in Mexican prisons that, according to a report released this week by the Citizens National Observatory, killed at least 445 inmates between 2008 and 2014. The latest horrific case took place earlier this month when 49 prisoners were killed in a fight between two factions of the Zetas drug cartel in the Topo Chico prison in the state of Nuevo León.

Juárez's fame as a world center of both factories and crime did not emerge out of nowhere.

Prior to the outbreak of the turf war — which would reach a peak in 2010 when there were around eight murders a day before falling off the the current level of about one or two a day —  the city grabbed global attention for a rash of murders of women. Many of the victims worked in the factories and some of the murders appeared to have serial traits.

The murders became an international cause celebre for human rights groups and prompted two Hollywood movies, though they were all but forgotten once the drug wars got going in 2008.

According to Javier Juárez, a researcher at Madrid's Complutense University who has studied Ciudad Juárez femicides for more than a decade, the gender-based murders not only continued unabated, they increased. He says there were around 500 women abducted and murdered between 1993 and 2007, and more than 700 between 2008 and 2013.

This Monday a group of mothers of disappeared girls painted symbolic crosses along the avenue the Pope was due to travel in his popemobile to remind the world about the femicide epidemic in Juárez.

"We're painting these crosses so that people don't forget the women who disappeared in Juárez. Everybody knows what a black cross on pink paint means," said Lydia Cordero, director of the women's shelter Casa Amiga.

On Tuesday the government removed all the crosses, though some remained on other streets.

"The mothers of murdered women regret the state's efforts to pretty-up the reality that we live in Ciudad Juárez," the protesters said in a statement.

Related: At Least 52 People Have Been Killed Inside a Prison in Northern Mexico

In an interview with the newspaper Excelsior, Governor of Chihuahua, César Duarte, appeared to confirm the sense that the authorities thought Francis' visit would help Juárez bury the legacy of the violence.

"Fortunately the theme of the violence is being left behind," the governor said. "The Pope's visit is generating great hope in the collective spirit."

By then Juárez was already plastered with billboards welcoming the pontiff. People walked around cheerfully taking photos with cardboard cut-outs of the religious leader. The downtown market was busy and bustling with children playing outside and young couples holding hands, seemingly without worry.

The Pope's speeches, both the one in the prison and the one before business leaders, paid little attention to this relatively tranquility.

The pontiff's insistence on focusing on the violence, despite a 92 percent drop in the murder rate since 2010, echoed the sentiments of Father Oscar Enríquez, who runs a human rights group in one of Juárez's toughest barrios.

"The Pope has a sensibility, a heart, for the people that suffer, and we believe that Juarez is one of the places that has suffered the most," he said earlier this week in a soft, sad, voice. "This situation with the violence has deeply impacted the city. People have been traumatised. We hope that the visit of the Pope will bring us some comfort."

Throughout his six-day visit to Mexico, the Pope has delivered messages designed to shake up the status quo. As well as making multiple references to corruption, and the establishment's ineffective response to the country's drug wars, he has also asked Mexico's indigenous population for forgiveness for centuries of exploitation and discrimination.

Francis is due to wind up the trip later this afternoon with a mass held on the border with Texas where he is expected to focus on the issue of migration.

Related: Pope Francis Tells Mexican Priests Not to Resign Themselves to the Drug Wars

Nathaniel Janowitz and Jan-Albert Hootsen contributed to this report

Follow Alan Hernández, Nathaniel Janowitz, and Jan-Albert Hootsen on Twitter: @alanpasten, @ngjanowitz, and @Jayhootsen