Mexico in Focus

Are men prepared to be President just for being men?

Four months before the presidential election in Mexico, the three main political parties have already chosen their candidates.

Josefina Vazquez Mota was recently elected as the presidential candidate for the right-wing party, Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). She is now running against Enrique Peña Nieto, from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).

This is not the first time that a woman is contending in the presidential race. Among her predecessors are Patricia Mercado (México Posible, 2008), Rosario Ibarra de Piedra (PRT, 1982, 1988) Cecilia Soto (Labor Party, 1994) y Marcela Lombardo (PPS, 1994).

In fact, Vazquez Mota owes her nomination to all of the women –most of them from the left– that have fought for the recognition of their rights. But unlike her predecessors, Vazquez Mota is the only female presidential contender that comes from a party currently in power. And that can make the difference, if only for the amount of support that the party’s political machine would give her.

Regardless of the final result of the election on July 1, it is always surprising to hear people asking if the country is prepared to have a woman as president. In several interviews that Vazquez Mota has given to media members after her nomination, the gender question has always jumped up in different ways.

 Just the question by itself reveals the country’s political backwardness and the still-prevailing macho culture that dominates the political arena.

 Step by step, little by little, Mexican women have gained political spaces since 1953, when they gained the right to vote. Currently, women hold 27.8 percent of the seats in the national congress and 23.6 percent of the total number of legislators at the state level.  Although they are still a minority in the legislative power, their power and influence is increasing.

 In contrast, the number of women heading state governments is still far from being equitable to the opposite sex. Of the 31 Mexican states, only six have been ruled by women, two of them from the leftist party PRD and four from the PRI.

 When these women were elected, the topic about their capacity to rule didn’t seem to come up as an “issue”. When they were chosen as their parties’ candidates for those positions, what weighted was their ability to negotiate, their political knowledge, their preparedness, their connections and their academic background. Other factors were their understanding of the social and economic problems of their states, their stances on certain issues and their abilities to build a strong team of women and men to help them govern.

 Although their gender probably was not an issue, they did find resistance and skepticism. Amalia Garcia, former governor of Zacatecas, former Senator and former president of the PRD said in an interview  “There were always obtacles, resistance, a machista culture. That is part of our society…but our decision was not to give up”.

 Women have also gained political spaces in LatinAmerican countries, where some of them have become heads of state. Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Bilma Rouseff in Brazil are the most recent examples of women leading their countries.

 Josefina Vazquez Mota is a strong candidate. She has been a lawmaker and a public official during the administration of former president Vicente Fox. In theory, she has the same possibilities of becoming president that Peña Nieto or López Obrador do.

 But unlike them, she has to convince voters that she is “capable” of doing so. While her contenders don’t have to worry about their gender, she will have to consider this issue as part of her political campaign. She will need to address the issue of being a woman and convince people that she can be president, as if just being a man made someone immediately capable of being president.

Vazquez Mota is including issues of gender equality in her campaign and paradoxically, some women and feminist supporters are skeptical about her real stance on these issues. Some have argued that when she was a public official she never showed concern about gender equality or women rights. This particular point is relevant because just for being female, her statements about women’s issues would receive more attention from feminists groups than the male candidates’ statements on the same topics.

 Summarizing, it is not going to be easy for her to conquer the votes needed to gain the election. Now, she is second on the electoral preferences, following  Peña Nieto, who according to recent polls, is leading the race with 40 percent of the electoral preference. Vazquez Mota has a little bit more than four months to change the trend if she wants to become president.

 Hopefully in this election, the questions about the capabilities of all of the candidates will be more important than gender or physical looks. In the case of Vazquez Mota, for example, the voters’ questions should be more around her voting records as a lawmaker, the congruency of those records with her political statements, her actions as a former education minister, among others. And the same kind of issues should be considered to measure the other candidates’ abilities.

 

 

Mexican politicians, migrants and votes

A few days ago, an aspiring Mexican presidential candidate for the right-wing National Action Party, Josefina Vazquez Mota, visited Chicago as part of a working tour to the United States.

In an interview with local newspaper "Hoy," Vazquez Mota ­–a congresswoman on administrative leave– said she wants to be “the president of the migrants." 

Her statement was not a surprise, much less in a time in which the already ongoing 2012 presidential race occupies most of the analysis and political news in Mexico.

When reading Vazquez Mota’s interview it was unavoidable to think about former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who referred to migrants as “heroes” and promised them to fight for an immigration reform that would give them the possibility of a better life in the U.S. His promises were part of his political campaign to become president.

Fox was perhaps one of the first presidential candidates that openly acknowledged the effort and the economic contribution of migrants to the economy of Mexico. Back then, Mexicans living abroad were not allowed to cast their vote in elections and therefore, Fox was not seeking their vote. What he probably wanted was their influence over their families in Mexico, something that could help him win the presidency in 2000.

For over a decade, migrant remittances to Mexico have been vital to the national economy and have contributed significantly to reduce poverty in large parts of the country. Despite the fall they have had in recent years, remittances remain the second largest source of foreign income for Mexico after the exportation of oil. Last year, remittances amounted to little more than $21 billion.

But that's not all. Since 2005, when constitutional reforms allowed Mexicans living abroad to vote overseas, migrants have become a potential source of votes for any presidential candidate.

The vote abroad is still young and a developing process, which is reflected in the low numbers of voters in the 2006 presidential election. According to estimates by the Federal Electoral Institute, there were 4.2 million potential Mexican voters living abroad.

However, only 56,312 applied for registration in the lists of voters residing abroad. Of those, only 40,876 qualified. 

In the end, only 32,632 people living abroad voted in the 2006 presidential election, representing 58 percent of those who applied for registration.

And while the numbers are low, the Federal Electoral Institute expects those numbers to grow from today to Jan. 15, when the period of registration of voters abroad concludes. However, the major constraints to increase the electoral participation of Mexicans abroad are still the inability to issue voter cards on this side of the border and the fact that voting in person (at embassies or consulates) is not authorized.

Still, the aspiring presidential candidates will come to this side of the border to vie for migrants’ votes. They will come with a portfolio full of promises and good intentions -- among them, to fight for an immigration reform and to include them in future political and economic decisions.

But let’s not forget that 2012 will also be a U.S. election year and, as it usually happens in these processes, the immigration topic will be on the table as a controversial and dividing issue among candidates and the American electorate.

In this context it will be interesting to see how Mexican candidates will draft their proposals on immigration and how they are going to deal with the tensions that this particular issue always raises.

 

 

From tweeting to jail

A few months ago, I wrote about the Coahuila government’s attempts to censor and punish people who use social network media –Twitter, Facebook and text-messages — to create chaos and panic among the population.

At that time, Coahuila’s authorities were trying to stop people who were using social media to alert citizens about shootings and several other violent incidents happening around the cities.  Apparently the authorities’ efforts were not successful because of many legal complications. After all, how could they stop people from using social media? How could they regulate their use? 

But now, six months later, other local Mexican governments are trying to do the same and have even legally moved forward toward stopping social media.

 Just last week, the government of Veracruz, in southeast Mexico, arrested, charged and imprisoned a man and a woman for “terrorist acts,” arguing that the two tweeted messages that were terrifying the population.  The messages sent by these two individuals warned of shootings and other possible violence that would be supposedly perpetrated by Gulf Cartel members. As a result of the tweets, many scared parents picked up their children from school; stores shut down for a day and people were panic-stricken.

 If the “tweeteros” are found guilty, they could face up to 30 years in prison!

 In Tabasco, a southern Mexican state, legislators approved a bill this week to criminalize the use of Twitter and social networks to spread rumors or any information that creates chaos and fear. The measure would penalize anyone found guilty with up to six years in prison plus fines.

 I’m wondering how much effort (and resources) the governments will put on pursuing the “tweeteros” instead of the real criminals responsible for the chaos and insecurity.

In fact, all the “noise” produced by social media is a consequence of the lack of official information. In Saltillo, the tweets increased along with rumors  of shootings and confrontations, while no official information on the incidents was being made available. The same has happened in Tamaulipas, Ciudad Victoria, Monterrey and all of the places where there has been a vacuum of official and credible information. 

Instead of finding short-term solutions that don’t really solve the problem, the governments should work on strategies to improve their communication with the public. If they do this, they could stand to regain the public’s confidence and their credibility. In an ideal situation, people will trust them and probably will stop tweeting rumors.   

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What else do we need to say enough is enough?

The attack yesterday against the Casino Royale in Monterrey, where 61 people died and many others were injured, is the worst tragedy Mexicans have faced during the drug war.

 “These terrorists have surpassed all limits,” said Mexican President Felipe Calderón in a message to the nation today. He also offered a substantial reward for information that could help track those responsible for the attack.

This is the first time that the Mexican government uses the word “terrorists” to refer to organized crime. It is the first acceptance that terrorism has hit Mexico. The government refused to use that word even after a car bomb exploded in Ciudad Juárez last year.

 The big question now is what kind of implication this recognition will have in the drug war strategy.

 In countries that have dealt with organized crime and terrorism, such as Colombia or Peru, similar attacks marked a watershed for society and authorities in the way that they look at the problem.

 In a conversation with a group of Peruvian friends yesterday, they remembered the Tarata incident in Lima, Peru, in July 1992.  The attack, perpetrated by the Shining Path guerrilla group, killed more than 24 people and injured more than 200. It was a blast of more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives in Tarata Street, the busy business area of Miraflores, an upscale district of the city.

 The attack shocked the entire Peruvian society and generated a public response that forced the government to intensify its fight against the Shining Path.

 In Colombia, a country more used to bombings and terrorist attacks, it was not just one incident that prompted a reaction from the civil society and the intensification of the drug war strategy. Some of the triggers were the bombing of an Avianca plane in 1989, where 107 passengers died, and the DAS’s building bomb in 1989, which killed 52 people and injured more than 1,000.

 Yesterday’s attack in Monterrey is significant, not just because it shook the financial heart of the country and killed a large number of innocent civilians, but also because it has shown that the war has escalated to previously unknown levels.

 The days coming up are not looking bright.

 

 

 

Juarenses get caught in the middle of police rivalries

Mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Hector “Teto” Murguía said yesterday that the Federal Police would leave Juarez by middle September.

According to Murguía, Federal Police Commissioner, Facundo Rosas Rosas announced the decision to Juarez’s authorities during a meeting to analyze and review the strategies to fight crime in the city.

“The Federal Police Commissioner considered that the city is under control, therefore, the local police is prepared to guarantee the security of the municipality,” Murguía said through an official press release. As today, the Federal Police has not confirmed the information provided by Murguía.

As July of this year 1,239 people have been killed in Juarez, a number that doesn’t include 17 killed yesterday at the local detention center. According to local figures, crimes such as extortion and kidnapping are still widespread and affecting a big portion of the society, especially business owners.  Besides that, the cleaning of the municipal police is still far away of being completed and stories about the involvement of police officers in criminal activities continue plaguing the front pages of local newspapers.

So, how come the municipal police force could be ready to confront organized crime by itself?  Where are the indicators that show that they have had some kind of success in their strategies? 

The rivalries between local police and federal police are a well-known story for many Juarenses. You probably remember the incident in which a federal police shot and killed one of Murguia’s bodyguards in January this year. After the incident, Murguía asked the Federal Police to withdraw from Juarez.

In a recent interview with El Paso Times, Juarez’s chief of police, Julián Leyzaola openly recognized the lack of understanding and coordination between federal and local police forces in fighting crime in Juarez. “They are intervening in areas that are my responsibility”, he said. “But in the end they will go soon”.

Yesterday, Leyzaola’s convoy was attacked allegedly by federal police officers, an incident that just fanned the flames between these two corporations.

It is unclear what would be the real reason for an anticipated withdraw of the Federal Police, but what seems to be clear is that Juarez is still in a very difficult situation and there is not a single indication yet that the local police is ready to take the reign and to guarantee the security of all the Juarenses.

And once again, the Juarenses are caught in the middle of politics and police rivalries.

 

Affidavit shows drug dealers operations across the border

An affidavit filed by an special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a case of possession and distribution of marijuana offers an exact and clear glimpse on how drug dealers are managing their retail operations across this border.

The affidavit relates to the criminal case against Jesús Chavez, a man arrested on federal drug smuggling charges on June 30. Chavez allegedly runs a daily marijuana smuggling operation from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso, documents show. According to the affidavit filed by FBI special agent Daniel Clark, Chavez and his partner Carlos Gomez, smuggled marijuana into El Paso by using the trunks of unsuspecting driver's vehicles. 

The marijuana, according to the agent, was stored in El Paso and later on shipped to cities throughout the U.S. on a weekly basis.

The federal document details a scheme used by Chavez and Gomez that lead to the arrest of several El Pasoans, among them, Ana Isela Martinez Amaya, a private school teacher in El Paso waiting for a trial in Cd. Juarez on drug charges. Other victim of the scheme, according to the document, were Dr. Justus Lawrence Opot and Marisol Perez, who were arrested early on January in Juarez under drug charges too. Both were released after their defense demonstrated that the drugs were planted in their car.

According to the affidavit filed in federal court, Chavez and Gomez targeted professionals and students who used to travel to El Paso on a regular schedule using the express line. They selected their objectives based on the information given by “lookouts” or teenage kids whose job was to identify a target vehicle and write down the Vehicle Identification Number.

Once with this information, Chavez and Gomez would provide it to a Texas-based locksmith to prepare two keys for the target vehicle. One of the keys was kept by the suspects in El Paso, the other key would be given to their Juarez-based co-conspirators, the report states.
According to Clark, the co-conspirators would place the marijuana bags in the trunk of the target vehicle at night. The next morning, after the vehicle had crossed to El Paso, Chavez and Gomez would retrieve the bags from the car.

At least three more victims of the same scheme were mentioned in the affidavit.

In a conversation recorded by the FBI using a confidential source and quoted in the affidavit, Chavez and Gomez discussed the arrest of Martinez Amaya and talked about what went wrong in that case. “We made such a …mess”, Gomez said in the conversation. “No, but the damn soldiers saw that she (Martinez) was young. And they got her out. She was kind of cute.”

In the same conversation, they discussed how they choose Martinez as their target.
“Why did you pick her?,” the confidential source asks. “Was she really hot or what?”
“No, It's that look. Well we cross the ... vehicles like that… We have seen that girl for about a year because she's like a clock. At 5:00, she (Martinez Amaya) was there”.

Later on, they also discuss how Dr. Opot was able to get out from prison.
“Because the doctor (Opot) went and delivered (the marijuana) to the them (Mexican federal police). He  (Opot) went and told them,” said Gomez. “The doctor told them (MX federal police) 'You know what? They put that (marijuana) in (the trunk of Perez's Mitsubishi Galant) And they arrested him (Opot) anyway.”

The document filed by the FBI special agent provides an intriguing view on drug smuggling schemes and the subsequent hearings will probably reveal more details on the connection Juarez/El Paso. 

A detention hearing for Chavez will be held Thursday in U.S. District Judge Norbert Garney's court.

Judges and justice, on the spot again in Cd. Juarez

It has been almost one-and-a-half year since Arcelia Medrano lost her 17-year-old son in a massacre in Ciudad Juárez that made international headlines on January 2010. 

Mrs. Medrano can’t hold the tears when she remembers the last time that she saw her younger son, Juan Carlos, lying unconscious in a hospital bed unable to breath by himself. “With his death, I lost the reason of my life”, she said to a group of reporters last week.

The last days have been particularly difficult for Medrano and her family, but this week could be critical for them too.  Just few days ago she saw for the first time, the pictures of the crime scene in Villas de Salvarcar, where 15 young people were killed by a group of armed men, during a birthday party on January 30.

The photos were part of the evidence presented by the prosecutor office during the criminal trial against the five men who are allegedly responsible for the massacre. The oral trial began June 20 and after two weeks of arguments and evidences presented by the prosecutors and the defense, the judges would probably have a verdict and sentence by the end of this week.

“I have hope and faith that there will be justice”, said Medrano outside of the Ciudad Juarez courtroom last Friday. “I’m very tired of this. Even if they release them, I know that there is a God that will punish them.”

Regardless of the final verdict, the trial has all the elements to become national news for several reasons. Let’s look at some of them.

-- The five accused men have argued that they confessed their responsibility in the crime because they were tortured. According to the defense lawyers some of the suspects have accepted that they were involved in other major crimes —one of them was already sentenced for his role in the killings at Bar Amadeus, where five people, including  a U.S. soldier, were executed— but not in the Villas de Salvarcar massacre. One of the defendants, Israel Arzate, is under legal protection and his case has been supported by human rights organizations, which have argued that there is enough evidence to demonstrate that he was verbally, physically and psychologically tortured. 

--  The confessions of the accused men are the strongest evidence on the prosecutor side, but if the judges decide that the allegations of torture are sustainable enough, the prosecutors would be in a big problem.  This point would take us inevitably to the lack of professionalism in the way in which criminal investigations and the consequent arrests are conducted in Mexico.  A clear example can be seen in the video in which one of the accused men is explaining his role in the Villas de Salvarcar massacre: when he is talking, anybody can hear other people talking and laughing loud in the back.

-- The three judges participating in this case are under strong political pressure because of the Marisela Escobedo’s effect.  As you probably remember, the activist and mother of Rubi Freyre was killed on Dec. 16 last year, while demanding justice for her daughter’s assassination. Escobedo became a public figure when she decided to protest a state tribunal decision that cleared the man who allegedly confessed his responsibility in the killing of her teenager daughter. The judges in that case argued that they released the man because the lack of evidences presented by the prosecutors.  They said that the attorney office was not able to demonstrate the responsibility of the accused man and their decision was based on the law.  However, public opinion and the federal and state authorities targeted the judges.  They were fired, scrutinized and prosecuted.

 The Villas de Salvarcar’s massacre forced the national government and the entire country to look closely at the situation in Juárez. For that reason, the result of this trial is so important at the political level. The pressure for the judges is then enormous.

 For the victims, however, the most important thing is to have closure and justice. As Mrs. Medrano says, “I would like to see them (the killers) in jail, but inside me I’m thinking ‘I hope they investigated well, I hope they are judging the right people.’”

For the judges that should be the most important thing too. 

 

Violence metastasizes in Mexico

Like the metastasis of a terminal disease, the violence in Mexico is spreading throughout the entire country with a speed that makes it almost impossible to keep the smallest bit of hope.

Last week, Monterrey –the third largest city in Mexico and the capital of Nuevo León state– broke a bloody record with 33 people killed in one single day.  It was the goriest day of a war that has left more than 650 people dead this year. Two of the state governor’s bodyguards were also killed and mutilated during the week.

Monterrey is the industrial capital of the country and it is also Mexico’s wealthiest city.  It generates around 7.5 percent of the national gross product and houses offices for foreign companies such as John Deere, Caterpillar, BASF, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes Benz, General Electric, Siemens and Mitsubishi, just to mention a few.

Monterrey used to be synonymous with progress and entrepreneurial spirit. Its residents used to boast about being part of a first-world and Americanized city. But now that’s in the past.  While two cartels –the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel– battle each other over the control of Nuevo León’s trafficking routes, authorities seem to be stunned by the violence and the citizens are disheartened.

As most of the cities in the country, Monterrey also has problems of police corruption and impunity. It also has a huge problem of unequal distribution of wealth and a growing problem of neglected population. In few words, it has everything to become another Ciudad Juárez with its thousands of killed people every year.

Just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable to think that Monterrey, the center of economic power in Mexico, would be so affected by drug-trafficking violence. The flawed logic behind that naïve idea was that the government, the authorities and Monterrey’s upper crust wouldn’t allow the cartels to touch their interests and risk the flow of foreign investment into the city.

But that thought proved to be wrong. And as one executive of Femsa told Reuters recently, “if we can’t deal with the problem in Monterrey, with all the resources and the people we have there, then that is a serious concern for the rest of Mexico”.

To this day there isn’t a clear strategy to fight crime in Monterrey. The federal government has sent some troops to help the state and municipal police, but there isn’t any evidence that crime is declining. And despite all the noise coming from the state government regarding their new police forces, corruption still reigns within the corporation.  In fact, 22 officers were arrested recently because of their alleged participation in the torture and killing of the governor’s bodyguards.

It seems that Monterrey is falling apart and unfortunately there is nothing to suggest that the trend is going to stop.

As with a terminal disease, the cancer is attacking a vital center.  The tumor had already provoked irreversible damage to places such as Michoacán, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Durango, Sinaloa, Coahuila and many more...Now is getting worse in Monterrey, tomorrow will be Guadalajara and later on Mexico City. When it happens, the country will be screwed up.

 

Transparency, a big challenge of Juarez's new police chief

Julian Leyzaola is a controversial man.

The Ciudad Juarez’s new police chief is seen as a hero by many because of the way he crackdown crime in Tijuana, when he was the chief of police. For many others, his methods of fighting criminals are concerning, especially for human rights related issues.

Leyzaola likes to call things by their names. He proposes to take out the fancy names and the paraphernalia that surrounds criminals: “A hit man is an assassin… an armed group is a group of delinquents… executions are homicides,” he said in an interview with reporters early this week.

He doesn’t evade any of the questions and he seems to have a response for all of them. On the allegations of human rights abuses, for instance, he says that those allegations came from people who he fired from the Tijuana’s police force after he discovered their involvement in corruption and crime activities.

At least 24-fired Tijuana’s police officers accused Leyzaola of torture. In their testimonies before human rights commissions they said they were beaten and had electric shocks to their genitals. They said they were obliged to sign confessions that they were not allowed to read. Some of them said Leyzaola was present during the torture.

Leyzaola denies the accusations and he even says that if authorities are involved in torture, they are not different from criminals. He asks human rights commissions to investigate all sides of the story and he insists that some people use human rights organizations “as a blanket” to cover and protect themselves from justice.

In countries like Mexico, the line between law enforcement and respect for human rights is very fine, but it can turn almost invisible in situations where crime is as outrageous as it is in Ciudad Juarez right now.

For that reason Leyzaola’s affirmation that some criminals can’t be considered human is concerning.  “A criminal is a criminal”, he said. “Some of them call themselves human, which I doubt considering the aberrations some of them commit, like chopping up women or locking them up and torturing them for days. And they still demand that their rights are respected? I believe that the punishment of criminals has to be in the in direct proportion to the harm they caused.”

Yes, everybody agrees that criminals should be punished. But they should be punished after a trial that clearly demonstrates their plenty responsibility and guilt in those criminal acts. People can’t be punished before with methods such as torture, forced disappearance or any other antidemocratic and barbaric strategies that have inflicted so much pain to the society in the past years.

Mexico’s justice system is far away of being perfect. Countless of cases of innocent people being detained, tortured and imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit have shown the pitfalls of the system.

Leyzaola seems to have good intentions to fight crime and that is absolutely necessary not just for Juarez, but for the entire country. But there must be a balance between law enforcement and respect for human rights. If that balance doesn’t exist, all of his efforts are going to fail because of the lack of credibility.

That balance could be achieved through transparency. If there is transparency in the ways that the police conduct their investigations and arrests, if the society can trust the intelligence of the corporation, then, we could start talking about the beginning of the change.

Leyzaola has been just three months in the position. He is careful about delivering promises, but he says that by mid next year there must be some visible changes. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Caravan for Peace brings hope to Juarenses

The last time Roberto Galván heard of his son was on Jan. 25 this year.

That day, his 34 year-old son, also named Roberto, was relaxing in the central square of General Terán, a small town in the state of Nuevo León, when a group of state police officers arrested and took him to an unknown place.

Since then, Galván has been looking for his son in all the possible places. As many other parents of people who have disappeared, Galván has become an investigator. He has collected testimonies from people who saw the officers taking his son, he has interrogated police officers and he has obtained a lot of evasive responses from the local authorities.

Galván is one of the many parents who have joined Javier Sicilia, the man who heads the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity that arrived yesterday to Ciudad Juárez.

Sicilia, a poet and journalist, has been traveling through the country heading a national movement that demands justice and an end to the government-led war against drugs. He started the movement after his son was brutally killed March 28  in the city of Cuernavaca, Morelos.

 “When I met Sicilia I told him:  ‘le dieron en la madre a mi hijo igual que al tuyo’ (they screwed up my son the same way they screwed yours)…and the third time that I told him the same, he gave me a hug and we cried together,” told me Galván while we were waiting for the beginning of the Caravan’s first demonstration of the day at the cotton field in Juárez this morning.

After his son’s disappearance, Galván abandoned his job as an entrepreneur and decided to devote himself exclusively to find him. He has been moving with the Caravan since June 4, where he has met many desperate parents just like him in states such as Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Mexico City and now Chihuahua.

“I decided to leave everything because this is really important. It is not just the loss of my son…it is the loss of all of our children,” he said. “Our country is falling to pieces and if we don’t stop it, we are going to lose it.”

Sicilia has brought some hope to hundreds of people who have lost relatives or friends during the five years of the government’s drug war. Today, he was saluted by the parents of dozens of women who have been killed or have been missing for months or even years. All of them share the pain and mourn for their loved ones.

In Galvan’s case, he is determined to follow up with the commitments that the authorities of the state of Nuevo León made with the members of the Caravan last Wednesday, which included an investigation of the cases of eight missing people, including his son Roberto.

“We should have a preliminary report on these cases in eight days, and later on, in 30 days, they should give us a complete report on what happened to these people. If we don’t get it, we will put more pressure on them,” he said.

In his speech this morning, Sicilia said that the pain shouln’t become a wall of woes. On the contrary, he said, it should be the seed for something different. He and the civic organizations integrating the Caravan will sign an agreement this evening demanding the end of the drug war and a more integral strategy to fight organized crime.

Tomorrow, Sicilia and the Caravan will be in El Paso.

 

Juarenses will receive the Caravan for Peace this Thursday

This coming Thursday, the people of Ciudad Juárez will greet and receive the Caravana for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

The Caravana, headed by poet Javier Sicilia and more than a dozen civic organizations, will arrive to Juárez on June 9 after a journey of more than 1,800 traveling miles and several meetings in some of the cities most affected by drug-trafficking violence. Massive events in the city are planned for Friday.

Sicilia became a public figure after the brutal murder of his son, Juan Francisco, along with other six young men on March 28 in the city of Cuernavaca.  Sicilia, who is also a journalist from the prestigious magazine Proceso, has become a strong voice demanding justice for all the victims of drug-trafficking violence and an end to the government’s drug war.

In its traveling route, which has included Mexico City, Morelia and San Luis Potosí, Saltillo and Monterrey, the Caravana has attracted hundreds of people who have suffered the kidnapping, the disappearance or the assassination of one or several of their family members. It is expected that more people will join it as the caravan moves through to Torreón,  Chihuahua and finally to Ciudad Juárez.

It is significant that the civic organizations integrated into the Caravana chose Juárez as the place to sign a national civic agreement to pressure the Mexican government to change its strategy to fight organized crime.

With more than 7,000 killings in the last three years, Juarez is an emblematic place for drug-related violence. In Sicilia’s own words, Juárez symbolizes all the pain and the suffering that the country is going through as the result of a war that is not its own.

Sicilia and the civic organizations are calling for a more integral strategy that would include policies to crackdown on the finances of organized crime, money laundering, corruption and impunity, as well as actions to restore the social fabric and political reforms to advance democracy.

Although is highly unlikely that the government would make changes to its militarized drug war strategy –especially when election time is around the corner– the civic organizations’ pressure could generate some significant developments in the short term.

Yesterday, for example, members of the Caravana had a meeting with the attorney general for the state of Nuevo León. As a result of the meeting, the local government made the commitment to reopen the investigation of dozens of people who have disappeared without leaving any trace. The attorney general even appointed an official to follow up all the cases and to investigate theit legal status.

With little steps like this, civic organizations can force the local and federal government to fight impunity and to give answers to thousands of people who are still demanding justice for their relatives. Hopefully they will have similar answers from the authorities of Chihuahua.