The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), Amnesty International (AI) and the Memory and Tolerance Museum demanded that the governments of Mexico and the United States place on their agenda discussion of a new vision in the fight against violence that puts at its center the protection of human rights.
At the foot of the Angel of Independence monument, the poet Javier Sicilia warned that
"if issues such as money laundering and regulation of the sale of weapons, which are sold like candy in the United States, are not placed on the agenda, it will not be possible to stop the horror and barbarity that Mexico is living with.''Accompanied by Daniel Zapico, of AI, and the director of the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Sharon Zaga, Sicilia recalled that hundreds of thousands of deaths, disappearances and torture in Mexico are linked to the indiscriminate sale of weapons in the U.S., for which the final destination are criminal organizations in Mexico.
A couple of days before the visit of President Barack Obama to Mexico, the Sicilia lamented that, so far, neither the U.S. president nor President Enrique Peña Nieto have shown the stature of statesmen to solve the serious problems of weapons and money laundering.
Sicilia, Zapico and Zaga delivered to the U.S. embassy 18,000 signatures gathered through the Post for Peace Movement, demanding control over the arms trade.
The "virtual march" began at 1:00 PM, represented physically by a small dirigible cutting through the air from Avenida Juárez to the Angel of Independence. It made a small detour at Columbus Circle and stopped in front of the U.S. embassy, before finally arriving at the Angel. Symbolically aboard the airship were 18,000 emails sent both to the U.S. Embassy and the Secretariat of Government Relations (SG).
For the last part of the trip, the dirigible traveled on the shoulders of about twenty citizens due to technical problems with the airship.
Post for Peace aims to raise awareness among all Mexicans regarding the social cost of illegal arms from the U.S. to Mexico. These 18,000 signatures, which were delivered to the U.S. Embassy and the Secretariat of Government Relations, were collected in just two weeks through participation via social networks using the Twitter tag #adiosalasarmas [goodbye to arms] and joined the more than 50,000 signatures previously collected for the same purpose.
According to the organizers of the event, this activity
''is contributing to the debate on gun control in the United States and that the voice of Mexicans may be heard by Mexican authorities asking the government of Enrique Peña Nieto to strengthen the borders in order to stop the flow of arms and to demand that both countries ratify the international treaty on the arms trade."Spanish original