Proceso: Javier Sicilia*
Nov. 18, 2019
Even before your morning press conferences, the speed of reality and the short-term attention of the media have hidden what the heinous crime of the LeBarón family once again puts before the national conscience: our bloody house. Before we have another tragedy that shakes us again, I write to you.
To the contrary, you cling to your strategy and ask for patience. But the citizens who suffer the consequences of violence every day, for years, we see how the flames consume our house and destroy our families. We say to you that there no longer is any time.
A year ago, [at the Second Dialogue] you said you would govern for everyone and that together we would make history. A year ago, you said that the fundamental agenda of the nation would be peace, justice and security. A year ago, for the same reason, you signed us a promissory note [to make the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV) and the National Commission for the Search of the Disappeared (CNBD) central to the government's endeavors] so that what the criminals and the State have stolen from us would be returned to us. After a year - with 30,000 more murdered in addition to the hundreds of thousands of murdered and disappeared from the previous administrations, and with the massacre of the LeBarón family members - they have returned the check with a stamp that says "insufficient funds."
I will walk to remind us and remind you, Mr. President, of the overriding urgency of now. This is not the time to take the tranquilizer of gradualism that you ask of us. They are killing us, disappearing us, violating us in worse and worse ways. It is time to change the strategy for one equal to the national emergency and the humanitarian tragedy we are suffering. You know, Mr. President, that there are the instruments to do so. They were put on the table [in the Second Dialogue].
What is missing is the humility to listen and the political will of the one who governs. Without a foundation of truth, justice and peace - which also includes respect for autonomous agencies, indigenous peoples and the strengthening of the municipalities - there will be no history or democracy, but only hate, blood, graves, fire and ashes.
I will walk to pay a debt to Julián LeBarón who, with his pain in tow, walked for justice, peace and suffering for all the victims of the nation. It is a debt that now grows across the country.
I will trek (soon I will tell you the day) to the National Palace, to your house, everyone's house, to collect the check you owe us and the kiss you owe me.
Each trek, said Thoreau, is a kind of crusade that is declared from inside us so that we can start to rescue the land from those who destroy it. It is to purify one´s self and purify the way; it is to refuse to accept that the country becomes the slaughterhouse or concentration camp to which criminals, fear, division, deafness, bullets, hate and lies want to reduce it.
You can receive me or leave me empty-handed; you can listen to me or disqualify me; you can turn your face away again or give me the kiss that unites us. I may arrive alone or accompanied. It doesn´t matter. I will come because I learned from Albert Camus that the poet is justified only on the condition that he accepts, as much as he can, the tasks that constitute the greatness of his vocation: service to the truth, justice, dignity and freedom. Since his task is to keep meaning alive, he cannot accustom himself to lies or suffering.
So, despite my weaknesses, the nobility of my trade forces me to walk again to resist and to look again, with whoever else wants to, for the truth, justice and peace that one day I, you and the victims agreed upon [in the Second Dialogue], that you forgot and that you owe us, that we owe ourselves and you owe yourself, Mr. President.
We live in times of terror and signs of hope. We, whether few or many doesn't matter, have decided to turn our backs on terror and walk towards it. What will you decide, Mr. President? Will you continue to walk in the direction of the horror that your first steps have already traveled or towards the hope to which you once called us and to which today this bloody nation summons us? Spanish original
Even before your morning press conferences, the speed of reality and the short-term attention of the media have hidden what the heinous crime of the LeBarón family once again puts before the national conscience: our bloody house. Before we have another tragedy that shakes us again, I write to you.
MV Note: The LeBaron family is an extended family of Mormons whose ancestors migrated to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico from the U.S.in the 19th century to escape persecution. They live in a number of neighboring communities and ranches. They have retained their U.S. citizenship. Two weeks ago, three women and six children of the family were massacred and six children injured while they were traveling in suburban vehicles.
Javier Sicilia is a well-known poet, novelist, essayist and political analyst. In March of 2011, after his young adult son was murdered, along with six friends, in Cuernavaca by drug cartel members, he issued a national call against the war on drugs and for the government to recognize the countless innocent victims. From this arose the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), composed of family members of victims and their supporters. Júlian LeBaron was one of its leading spokespersons. It carried out caravans throughout Mexico in 2011 and to the U.S. in 2012 to give a public face and voice to the victims, and it held meetings with the candidates for the 2012 presidential election. It also worked for the passage of a Victims Law that would give legal, financial and emotional support to the victims.
On May 8, 2018, Mr. Siclia and representatives of numerous victims organizations met with all the candidates for the presidency to demand of them how they proposed to address the government's war with the drug cartels. After Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected in July 2018, Mr. Sicilia and these representatives met with the president-elect in September in what they called the Second Dialogue Regarding Peace,Truth (about the victims and who victimized them) and Justice (prosecution of criminals, including those in the military and the government). In that meeting, Mr. Sicilia laid out to the president-elect the victims' agenda for a process of transitional justice to address accumulated and ongoing injustices in which the State was an active or passive participant.
The plan set forth "four pillars of transitional justice ...: truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition" and proposed setting up several working groups composed of representatives of the López Obrador government and victims' representatives to develop concrete plans for their achievement. In the first dialogue, López Obrador had agreed "to jointly elaborate the plan of action [and determine the] appointment of those in charge [...] of attending to this matter."
Mr. Sicilia then said, "It will only be at the end of this long process that, we insist, there will be a State policy, that it will be possible to talk about forgiveness, amnesty and what has been called restorative justice. Those do not come before, but at the end. [López Obrador was, at this time, having his staff hold a series of public Forums for Peace and National Reconciliation where they were proposing forgiveness and amnesty, at least for low-level drug cartel members.]
Mr. Sicilia concluded, saying, "Without the truth, there is no justice and without justice, which implies reparation and guarantees of no repetition, there will be neither peace nor, for that matter, forgiveness or possible reconciliation in the country." See Javier Sicilia's Address to President-elect López Obrador at Second Dialogue for Peace, Truth and Justice.
None of what was laid out and agreed upon in the Second Dialogue has been carried out by López Obrador. Hence, this current, third direct communication with the President.During your campaign, Mr. President, you promised to make the nation's agenda one of truth, justice and peace. Unfortunately, you have put aside those promises to put in their place others that are meaningless while the country is on fire. You have promoted an effort to reduce or eradicate the violence with hugs and not guns and a handful of social programs that lack a true, in-depth state policy in the field of transitional justice. The consequence of the hugs is the same as that of bullets: suffering, helplessness and death. It is not, as Jacobo Dayán said, how many shots or how many hugs you have to give to stop the horror. Both strategies are wrong. It is about knowing how much the State needs to build justice and peace, and that implies in-depth state policies that you, Mr. President, promised to do and have not done.
To the contrary, you cling to your strategy and ask for patience. But the citizens who suffer the consequences of violence every day, for years, we see how the flames consume our house and destroy our families. We say to you that there no longer is any time.
A year ago, [at the Second Dialogue] you said you would govern for everyone and that together we would make history. A year ago, you said that the fundamental agenda of the nation would be peace, justice and security. A year ago, for the same reason, you signed us a promissory note [to make the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV) and the National Commission for the Search of the Disappeared (CNBD) central to the government's endeavors] so that what the criminals and the State have stolen from us would be returned to us. After a year - with 30,000 more murdered in addition to the hundreds of thousands of murdered and disappeared from the previous administrations, and with the massacre of the LeBarón family members - they have returned the check with a stamp that says "insufficient funds."
*MV Note: López Obrador has made government austerity one of his central efforts and cut budgets substantially without presenting any analysis of what is spent where or specific reasoning for cuts in specific agencies.But many Mexicans refuse to believe that the government's bank is bankrupt, that the vaults of the National Palace and other government palaces have no funds and are empty, plundered by organized crime and subdued as are our roads, our streets, our institutions. That is why I will walk [i.e. march] again with the only thing I have, my dignity, my anger and my word, to tell you and those who want to hear that everyone's house is still on fire and that we must give up the habit--that the violence has infected us with--of insulting, disqualifying, defaming, polarizing one another. We must shake off the bovine indifference to which, by force of horror and fear, the violence is reducing us until it normalizes crime. Only together can we make possible the only thing that matters: truth, justice and peace.
I will walk to remind us and remind you, Mr. President, of the overriding urgency of now. This is not the time to take the tranquilizer of gradualism that you ask of us. They are killing us, disappearing us, violating us in worse and worse ways. It is time to change the strategy for one equal to the national emergency and the humanitarian tragedy we are suffering. You know, Mr. President, that there are the instruments to do so. They were put on the table [in the Second Dialogue].
What is missing is the humility to listen and the political will of the one who governs. Without a foundation of truth, justice and peace - which also includes respect for autonomous agencies, indigenous peoples and the strengthening of the municipalities - there will be no history or democracy, but only hate, blood, graves, fire and ashes.
I will walk to pay a debt to Julián LeBarón who, with his pain in tow, walked for justice, peace and suffering for all the victims of the nation. It is a debt that now grows across the country.
I will trek (soon I will tell you the day) to the National Palace, to your house, everyone's house, to collect the check you owe us and the kiss you owe me.
Each trek, said Thoreau, is a kind of crusade that is declared from inside us so that we can start to rescue the land from those who destroy it. It is to purify one´s self and purify the way; it is to refuse to accept that the country becomes the slaughterhouse or concentration camp to which criminals, fear, division, deafness, bullets, hate and lies want to reduce it.
You can receive me or leave me empty-handed; you can listen to me or disqualify me; you can turn your face away again or give me the kiss that unites us. I may arrive alone or accompanied. It doesn´t matter. I will come because I learned from Albert Camus that the poet is justified only on the condition that he accepts, as much as he can, the tasks that constitute the greatness of his vocation: service to the truth, justice, dignity and freedom. Since his task is to keep meaning alive, he cannot accustom himself to lies or suffering.
So, despite my weaknesses, the nobility of my trade forces me to walk again to resist and to look again, with whoever else wants to, for the truth, justice and peace that one day I, you and the victims agreed upon [in the Second Dialogue], that you forgot and that you owe us, that we owe ourselves and you owe yourself, Mr. President.
We live in times of terror and signs of hope. We, whether few or many doesn't matter, have decided to turn our backs on terror and walk towards it. What will you decide, Mr. President? Will you continue to walk in the direction of the horror that your first steps have already traveled or towards the hope to which you once called us and to which today this bloody nation summons us? Spanish original