Proceso: Javier Sicilia
The government of Enrique Peña Nieto has had an ambiguous relationship with the victims. On the one hand, it has recognized them and, with the General Law of Victims, taken the road to assume the debt that the State has with them. On the other hand, it wants to delete the thousands of deaths that have occurred during its administration and whose number is as great or greater than that which occurred at the end of the administration of Felipe Calderón. There are states, such as Morelos, where there is the temptation not to take them into account, in order to avoid being dirtied by them, to want to return to the same explanations [of the deaths] with which the Calderón administration erased and despised them: "It's a settling of accounts", synonymous with "They are killing each other", which is an affirmation that the State is again beginning to abdicate its responsibility to the victims and against the criminals.
Two years after the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) appeared, this is the climate that we are living in. On one hand, there is recognition of the victims who have yet to find justice. We still have not seen real criminals sentenced; we have not seen appear even one of the disappeared who are on the immense list revealed by the Secretary of Government Relations; we have not seen the creation of either the protocols for or the establishment of scientific DNA laboratories or forensic archaeologists who would allow us to entertain a hope. Meanwhile, on the other hand, in this administration the accumulation of more victims continues, whose existence they don't want to take into account.
It is therefore symbolic--and we must always address the presence of symbols--that the second anniversary of the MPJD fell on Maundy Thursday. That atrocious date, commemorating the arrest of an innocent and the agony that would lead to his torture and execution, coincided, two thousand years later, with the commemoration of the second anniversary of the similar agony, torture and execution of seven innocent young people in Morelos, whose murder represents the innocence of thousands of others like them who were killed or went missing, and thousands more that are dying and disappearing in our country without finding justice.
Neither celebration is a simple act of memory. They are a real and concrete repetition of such acts. Commemorating brings to mind, with all the weight of reality, what once happened and continues to happen. In these cases, the pain and the cries of innocence murdered: "Why have you forsaken me?" Hence the painful memory. Hence the debt we have with the innocents we abandoned to their solitude and terror. From that there comes something else: we have no right to forget.
On that Thursday night, the innocent one called Jesus faced the same fate that, on a similar night seven innocents faced at a crossroads in Morelos. Surrounded by darkness and terror, looking at his companions asleep and, approaching them in the silence of the world, he woke them and told them not to sleep but to keep watch until the end of time.
If it is true, as Albert Camus said, "to forget is to abandon one's self a little to sleep", the duty of this anniversary is to continue calling ourselves and calling the new administrations, such as in Morelos, to not sleep, to watch, to refuse to take their eyes off this bitter reality that crushes us. Only through that love and loyalty to those who have been killed, to those missing who have not yet been found, to those who, in this moment, are being killed or disappeared, is it possible to build a road to justice and peace.
Assuming the debt to the victims, as the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and other new administrations, such as in Morelos, have done is a good step, but it is not enough if they erase the existence of victims who continue to pile up in their administrations in a terrifying manner and if they fail to carry out in their actions the justice and memory that they continue to owe to each one of them.
Until we see the General Law of Victims implemented, that is, so long as we do not see justice, so long as we don't begin to see the missing returning home, so long as a single human being is threatened and continues dying, disappearing or being corrupted by crime, so long as we don't have a clear memory of the victims, so long as there is no real change in the security strategy, we have a duty to be vigilant and demanding.
The only greatness of a State and its citizenry is to fight against that which crushes them. Therefore, on this second anniversary of MPJD, we demand that the intentions of the governments of this new administration not be ambiguous, but be instead that demanding greatness which is the only thing with which great tragedies can be faced. Not promising the victims of the past while denying victims of the present, while peace and justice are constructed, but assuming reality as it is, and performing with clear, profound actions equal to the size and force of our humanitarian tragedy. Only thus will it be possible to save justice and contribute to peace. The other way is to continue feeding and managing the hell that will, each time, become deeper, more profound and more terrible.
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