Activists Connect Drug Wars in US and Mexico Ellen Jean Hirst and Antonio Olivo - Chicago Tribune
go to original September 3, 2012

Kristen Muller, of San Francisco, claps with other participants of the Caravan for Peace as members are recognized Sunday for their contributions at the Augustana Lutheran Church in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Chicago: Sunday morning. One man dead after taking three bullets — one to the head, two to the chest. Cocaine clasped in hand, and more found near his body, police said.

Mexico City: Last year. Six found bound and choked or suffocated to death. Bags over their heads. The murderers were likely drug traffickers, police said.

Murders and shootings are up in Chicago. They are up in Mexico.

Gun laws and the war on drugs are pivotal to those deaths, said a group of Mexican activists, almost all of whom have lost family members to drug violence, who are traveling 6,000 miles across the U.S. to heighten awareness of the problem. On Sunday evening, the activists' Caravan for Peace arrived in Chicago.

Javier Sicilia, a renowned Mexican poet and writer, said it's easy to forget the deaths represent people. The man who died Sunday was Jeffrey Smith, 38, who lived in the 5100 block of South Marshfield Avenue, authorities said. One man who died in Mexico City was Javier Sicilia's son, Juan Francisco, 24.

Sicilia organized the 20-city Caravan of Peace tour across the U.S. in response to his son's death. The tour began Aug. 12 at the Tijuana-San Diego border and is scheduled to end in Washington Sept. 12. The caravaners talk about relatives who have been kidnapped and later found dead or who have never been found.

Read more at The Chicago Tribune

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