Nothing Has Changed Four Years After Founding of Mexico Movement for Peace Javier Sicilia - Proceso
go to original March 31, 2015

Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, an organization of family members of victims of Mexico's drug wars. (teleSUR English)

On March 28, 2011, the slaughter of seven people, including my son Juan Francisco, created the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD). For two years we toured this country and the United States, raising the visibility of the victims that Felipe Calderón's government was criminalizing. We spoke with everyone, proposed routes towards justice and peace and, along with many victims' organizations, we were able to attain the [General Victims] law which should attend to them. Back then, the country was carrying the burden of 40,000 dead, 10,000 missing and 150,000 displaced.

Three and a half years later, on September 26, 2014, amid the silencing of the horror and the electoral grand finale that led to the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto and re-elected a many of the state governments, another slaughter - the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers and the murder of six of them, one of them Julio César Mondragon, mutilated and flayed - a slaughter exponential to that which mobilized us in 2011, again demonstrated the only historical truth we possess and one which the democratic illusion wanted to make us forget: Mexico lives under the constant onslaught of organized crime and of the state. What happened in Ayotzinapa showed that nothing had changed, that between the two massacres lay only three years, new governments and increased pain: 160,000 dead, 30,000 missing, nearly 500,000 displaced, tens of mass graves that nobody had opened until then, and the same 98% level of impunity as in the previous regime.

Four years later, on March 28, 2015 - symbolically closing the 40 days of Lent and opening the painful mystery of Easter - nothing except fear and political blindness can now cover up what we showed in 2011: that the State and the partiocracies who administer it are the source and the problem of the violence and of the organized crime. Along with the dead, the missing, the displaced and the increasing brutality, the delinquent status of the state and its partiocracies has been shown as never before: the conflicts of interest among the presidential family, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Higa Group; the impunity of Gutierrez de la Torre [former head of PRI in Mexico City accused of operating a prostitution ring from party offices] over human trafficking and the impunity of governors, deputies, senators and party members over the omissions and complicity with organized crime; the silencing of critical voices, of which Carmen Aristegui is the symbol; the destruction of land, the environment and communities through the structural reforms and the repression brought on against dissent.

After the four years of struggle we at MPJD have undertaken, it is more than clear:

• That the security policy based on the pursuit of cartel bosses and hit men, and on unsuccessful attempts to reform the police, has been a failure that has strengthened and diversified crime.

• That organized crime has converted itself into complex networks that interact closely with politics, the parties, the economy and local, state and federal governments, in which some businessmen, bankers, frontmen, currency exchange experts, public officials and political leaders are involved.

• That criminal links are established by the State and the political parties so that state resources, as well as security and government decisions, serve to win public contracts in favor of seemingly legitimate businesses, to protect criminals and to neutralize political opponents.

• That, within these networks, citizens are trapped by extortion, kidnapping, forced disappearance and trafficking in persons.

• That the structural reforms only benefit the economic interests of large international consortia and - given the circumstances of corruption and criminality within the state - of organized crime itself.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Amanda Moody

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

Photo: Xinhua

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