Javier Sicilia and Sergio Aguayo Challenge Harvard to Respond to Charges Against Calderon Proceso
go to original January 31, 2013

Javier Sicilia and Sergio Aguayo (Revolución Tres Punto Cero)

The poet Javier Sicilia and political analyst Sergio Aguayo once again challenged Harvard University to respond as to whether President Felipe Calderon meets the ethical codes necessary to lecture at the institution.

In a second letter to the director of the Kennedy School of Government, David Ellwood, Aguayo and Sicilia criticize him for not answering the questions that were in their first letter, sent on Sunday, January 13, regarding the issue of the victims and violence in Mexico during the Calderon presidency.

    "As close witnesses to the horror, we know that the most terrible tragedy is that of the disappeared. Those who fade away from one day to the next are punished with contempt and oblivion, and their parents, wives, children, friends and an entire country are left with the agony of not knowing where they are. No democratic state that respects itself can be at peace without knowing where more than twenty thousand of its citizens are, and that was not the administration of Felipe Calderon. You stubbornly ignore that reality, leaving it unanswered in your letter of January 17," the letter reads.

The leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity and the teacher-researcher at the Center for International Studies at the College of Mexico indicate that not only is the government of Felipe Calderón  responsible for the growing violence in Mexico, but also U.S. authorities for allowing the sale and trafficking of arms and ammunition.

    "The degradation of public life stems from the recurring impunity for violators of human rights in Mexico. To do this, they have counted on the backing by many of the U.S. elite who, in most cases, have chosen to ignore or minimize extrajudicial executions, electoral fraud, kidnappings and disappearances" they decry in the letter.

They add:

    "A part of the United States has made the Mexican tragedy and their role in it invisible. A current example is the debate between the government of President Barack Obama and the National Rifle Association over over weapons. Neither of them mention the immoral and illegal smuggling of U.S. weapons into our country. For them, those who have been killed or injured by U.S. bullets and rifles in Mexico do not count."

They also decry that the list of persons missing since 2006, that the Attorney General's Office (PGR) allegedly compiled and released a few days after the conclusion of the Calderon administration, disappeared from official records.

    "On November 29, we learned that the Attorney General's Office had a list of more than 25,000 missing. As president, Felipe Calderon had two days in which he could have ordered that the list be made public. His only answer was the silence that he still maintains. Meanwhile, we have been informed verbally that this list disappeared from the files of the Attorney General's office."

In closing their letter, Sicilia and Aguayo confide that the attention that has been awakened by the presence of the ex-president at the Kennedy School, as a recipient of a scholarship, is serving to stir up interest in what is happening in Mexico.

    "Hopefully, Harvard University, during 2013, is oganizing colloquia, conferences and research projects on the epidemic of violence ravaging Mexico and the responsibilities that Felipe Calderon and the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have in our tragedy."

See Spanish original

Posted by Reed Brundage at Mexico Voices

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