How the 'Desaparecidos' of Ayotzinapa Have Sparked a US-Mexican Solidarity Movement Roberto Lovato - The Nation
go to original April 22, 2015

Activists with Caravana43 march with pictures of Mexicans who have disappeared during the drug war (Caravana43/Facebook)

To be silent or to speak may constitute the difference between life and death. The life that comes from speaking, the life that comes from being silent; the death that comes from speaking, the death that comes from being silent.
—Trauma and Healing Under State Terrorism, by Inger Agger, Søren Buus Jensen

Midway on one of the major journeys of her life - the journey to find her son, Jorge - Blanca Luz Vélez Nava takes a moment to breathe. “I think of Jorge all day and all night, and I won’t stop until we get him back, until we find out the truth of what happened,” she says, while sitting on one of the granite slabs beneath the 300-foot campanile clock that marks the birth of the Free Speech Movement, the South Africa and the Central America solidarity movements, and other movements that fired political imaginations here at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.

“I’m halfway on this trip and I’m tired,” she continues, as she listens to a student strumming her guitar, “but I hear the young woman playing and I think of Jorge, because he loved to play guitar too. I see these young people and I feel happy knowing they support us and give us cariño [love].” Nava’s eyes light up as she looks toward the hundreds of students, faculty, and parents gathered solemnly in a circle, as if they’re protecting the delicate flames of the 43 small white votive candles forming the number “43” at the center of this outdoor event. Each flame is a reminder of Jorge and the 42 other student teachers from Mexico’s Ayotzinapa Teachers College, whose disappearance last September 26, along with six who were murdered, has inspired anger and indignation, as well as other, nobler sentiments - ones that start and sustain movements for social and political change.

Read the rest at The Nation

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