MEXICO–In recent years numerous groups have marched through the streets and highways of various cities in the country to demand from those in power a stop to the heinous violence, woefully unleashed on this poor country. To date this violence has resulted in the violent death of more than 40,000 (women, men, old people and children). Add to the more than 40,000 deaths the more than 100,000 disappearances (most of them Central American migrant brothers/sisters).
The mobilizations for peace, dignity and justice, are a social reaction that has taken a long time to come about, yet long overdue.
It’s a movement of regrets, of pain, of weeping without end, of anger that first demands of the illegitimate Felipe Calderon government to stop its “war on drugs.” This movement demands the immediate withdrawal of the Mexican army from this war. Simply, because the Mexican army is as corrupt as any other entity in Mexico (as much as are the various Mexican police forces). The various crimes and abuses by the army such as –rapes, thefts, murders, and massacres–have been well documented.
This movement also issues a general call to those in power in Mexico. To Mexicans it’s becoming very clear that drug trafficking is in the interests of those in power–politicians, bankers, businesses–that is to say, all those who enjoy economic power.
These powers in this neo-liberal process – the most brutal stage of capitalism – are directly responsible for moving this country from a previous stage of relative stability and calmness to a morally degraded social life. This social life is a throwback perhaps as far back as that of cavemen. That is to say, only if at some stage human beings lived without basic moral principles.
Historically, Mexico has been fragile institutionally, from its very birth. And furthermore: how would this not be attractive to powerful drug traffickers, when drug-trafficking it is the most profitable and indispensable of capitalist business? There is a popular saying that says “money calls to money.” It’s clear that there always will be conduits through which drug trafficking money will be able to flow from “illegal” areas, to the “blessed” terrain of legal finance.
In this decadent stage, drug trafficking is capitalism’s indispensable crutch. No country is an exception. Those in power–politicians, industrial financier and company–are involved in this national catastrophe.
This mobilization emerges against this brutal context of extreme violence that this Mexican political system pawned in supporting its so-called “war on drugs.” The mobilization is spontaneous. It does not have leaders who are politicians or professional activists. Its principal leader, Javier Sicilia, is essentially a poet. It’s a social reaction that takes to the streets to avoid being drowned in impotence, in pain, in shame, in humiliation, and in defeat. We hope that the movement becomes stronger and gets positioned and it achieves its objective. It already has massive substantial support.
