Mexicans march for an end to violence

Marches against violence have been planned for dozens of cities following the killing of Javier Sicilia's son

By Bronson Pettitt

Mexico Weekly / April 6, 2011

Marches will take place in dozens of cities on Wednesday to demand an end to violence and to call for peace amid escalating drug-related violence.

The mobilization in at least 32 cities and more than a dozen in other countries (http://marchaporlaseguridad6deabril.blogspot.com/ ) is believed to be the largest of its kind since late 2006, when President Calderón decided to launch an armed offensive against drug cartels that have left tens of thousands dead.

The movement, organized by the Network for Peace and Justice, was created in response to the torture and murder of five young people in Morelos last week.

Among the victims was Juan Francisco Sicilia, 24-year-old son of poet and columnist Javier Sicilia.

Sicilia met with Calderón Wednesday morning, but details of their meeting were not immediately known.

‘No More Poetry'

Wednesday's movement comes amid a widespread frustration of violence and homicides.

“The death of my son Juan Francisco has prompted solidarity and outrage of citizens and the media, which my family and I appreciate from the bottom of our hearts,” Sicilia wrote in a letter directed at politicians and criminals published in Proceso magazine Sunday.

The tragedy also prompted Sicilia to announce that he will no longer write poems.

He wrote his last poem, dedicated to his son, on the flight back to Mexico from the Philippines after he was informed of his son’s death.

The last half of the eight-line poem reads:

“And the pain does not leave me / There is only one world left / For the silence of the just / Only for your silence and my silence, Juanelo."

Failed Strategies

In his letter published in Proceso, Sicilia criticized politicians for their “poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly directed war” against drug traffickers that have left more than 35,000 people dead - 9,000 of whom have not been identified, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

“We are sick and tired, because the corruption of our justice system generates complicity with crime and impunity,” Sicilia wrote. “We are sick and tired because [as a result of violence] citizens have lost confidence in politicians, police officers and the Army.”

On Wednesday, Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna defended the federal government’s strategy against drug cartels, and said “protests should be directed against criminals,” not the government.

In a television interview with Carlos Loret de Mola, García Luna said the armed offensive against drug cartels was not “poorly planned” nor “poorly directed,” as Sicilia wrote.

“The strategy is dynamic, not static. I don’t share the opinion that the Mexican government should make deals with criminals,” he said, referring to reports that Sicilia had called on the government to negotiate with drug trafficking groups to put an end to violence.

However, in a press conference Tuesday Sicilia said his remarks were taken out of context.

‘Sick and Tired'

Mexican columnists have elaborated on the phrase Sicilia has popularized in recent days: “Estamos hasta la madre” (We are sick and tired).

In his Wednesday column in Excélsior, political commentator Ricardo Alemán said the phrase went from being a colloquial phrase of annoyance to a powerful call for street protests.

“The majority of Mexicans have adopted the poet’s call: ‘estamos hasta la madre’,” wrote Alemán.

One of Wednesday’s main protests will take place in Sicilia’s home city of Cuernavaca, where protesters will march to the main city square.

Other marches will be held in Mexico City, Cancún, Ciudad Juárez, and at least 21 other cities.

Elsewhere, marches will be held near Mexican embassies and consulates in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, The Hague, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Copenhagen and Santiago.

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Drug-related violence prompts tens of thousands to flee

Geneva-based organization claims more than 100,000 people have left their homes in 2010 as a result of drug-related violence

By Bronson Pettitt

Mexico Weekly / March 30, 2011

The number of people in Mexico displaced due to drug-related violence marked an all-time high last year, a new report suggests.

According to a report released last week by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), last year about 115,000 Mexicans living in violent areas decided to move elsewhere within the country as a direct result of increased violence.

In total, more than 230,000 people have decided to relocate since President Calderón launched an armed offensive against drug trafficking organizations in December 2006.

As opposed to refugees, who look for shelter in other countries, internally displaced people are forced to live elsewhere within their home countries due to violence, wars or disasters, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Most people being forced to leave their homes due to drug-related violence are from Chihuahua and Tamaulipas (most have moved to the neighboring Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz), the report says.

In 2010, there were 571 execution-style killings related to drug-trafficking in Tamaulipas and 4,246 in Chihuahua, according to official figures.

Ciudad Juárez is the city in Chihuahua most battered by drug-related violence while in Tamaulipas the most violent municipalities are Guerrero, Mier, Miguel Alemán, Camargo and Díaz Ordaz.

Back in November, as many as 400 people fled Ciudad Mier after the Zetas cartel threatened to kill everyone there, according to the IDMC. There were 93 homicides in the city of the same name last year and 21 in November, the federal government says.

In Ciudad Juárez, where there were 2,661 execution-style slayings last year, there are as many as 116,000 empty homes, according to local authorities.

'Government Has Done Little to Help'

“There have been few attempts to define the scale of displacement in small rural towns in Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, even though the violence is believed to be even more intense in those rural areas,” the report says. “Furthermore, forced displacement has taken place alongside strong economic migration flows, making it harder to identify and document.”

The report also says the Mexican government has done little to help internally displaced people.

“In 2010, federal authorities did not acknowledge, assess or document the needs of the people displaced, instead focusing their efforts on fighting the drug cartels,” the report says.

In the Americas, Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people with between 3.6 million and 5.2 million, the report says.

The report also states that the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti displaced more than 1.5 million people, 800,000 of whom were still in shelter camps in late 2010.

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Mexico developing national standards to identify cadavers

Disorganized, uncoordinated institutions cause 3,000 bodies to go unidentified each year

By Bronson Pettitt

Jan. 14, 2011 / Mexico Weekly

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is offering to help Mexico create a national forensic database on unidentified cadavers.

With the corpses of as many as 3,000 people each year going unidentified, ICRC forensic area coordinator Morris Tidball-Binz says Mexico could follow in the footsteps of Colombia, who after years of drug-related violence began a cadaver identification program in 2008, Milenio reported Friday.

The Colombian program uses a single methodology: Photographs of bodies must be taken at the same distance, and unique traits such as teeth, tattoos, scars or wounds must be identified and accurately recorded onto a secure national database.

Such is not the case in Mexico, however. In addition to structural shortcomings – the result of years of meager budgets – state institutions' organization is something of a mosaic, with different methodologies, doctors who are not specialized in forensic science and even an absence of proper record-keeping.

Obstacles of domestic mobility, the high number of immigrants who pass through Mexico and the growing number of unidentified cadavers also complicate efforts to launch a unified system, according to Milenio.

“One of the greatest challenges is how to overcome the diversity of procedures, laws and regulations that exist in a country such as this,” Tidball-Binz said. “But the identification of these cadavers is of great importance to put an end to many people's suffering.”

A Mosaic of Procedures

In September 2010, forensic service directors from across the country met for the first time in Mexico City to share their experiences and methodologies with the International Red Cross. The meeting made it obvious what had been ignored for so long: Procedures varied greatly from state to state, Milenio reported.

Worse yet, it was discovered that judicial agencies were uncoordinated. There is no way for the Attorney General's Office in one state, for example that of Morelos, to be aware in a short amount of time that a body was found in neighboring Mexico City that matched the traits of a missing person from the former state.

“That's why the idea is that we make sure that all of the forensic services operate with forms and standards to identify bodies, so that everyone can share the information,” Tidball-Binz said.

During the September meeting, experts from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Colombia and the Medical Legal Service of Chile offered some alternatives. The consensus was to implement two relatively simple solutions: create a single manual and set the foundations for a database of forensic information.

The Mexican system would consist of physical features, traits and fingerprints, but an option to include DNA samples was discarded due to its complexity and cost, Milenio wrote.

Rather, the program's success, Tidball-Binz said, will be based on a simpler approach: standardized paperwork distributed to all forensic services.

“With basic physical information that can be included on pre-established forms, so many searches can be shortened,” he said. “In Mexico these forms don't exist and authorities don't have anything to compare cadavers. But if there was a form that said, 'male subject, suffered such and such fractures, has these dental features, has this type of tattoo,' the possibility of successfully identifying a body is greater,” he said, Milenio reported.

Additional information:

* Sixty to 70 people are sent to a mass grave in Mexico City each week.

* Amid drug-trafficking-related violence in northern Mexico, mass graves in cities such as Tijuana have run out of space.

* Unidentified bodies have two destinations in Mexico: be buried in municipal cemeteries or mass graves, or be used for research purposes in universities, according to Milenio.

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