Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Two deaths in the left in one week: Adolfo Gilly and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo. Both, each in their own way, left teachings, theses, and paths. Both political militants: Adolfo, a revolutionary, and Porfirio, an institutional revolutionary. That slight difference distanced them, even though they coincided in the same ambits.
The context in which both revolutionaries died shows the disaster of the country they left to its fate. In the week they died, more Mexicans died of intentional homicides than in any other week of the year. 602 deaths. An average of 86 intentional deaths per day so far in the year 2023.
Violence and death are rampant in every corner of the nation. After so much repetition, the figures of the dead lull society to sleep. Between the President’s daily justification in his mañanera speech (“It is the fault of others, it is not me…”) and the impotence in the face of so many facts of inconceivable cruelty, gender violence also because it is on the rise, society enters a kind of disbelief stupor.
The stories of organized crime in the mountains of Guerrero ravaging entire communities and where children are armed to defend their homes and grandparents strangle consciences. The mayor of Chilpancingo makes pacts with criminals so, at least, she does not lose her life, even if she does not govern. So does all of Guerrero.
The deaths by the grace of the wars between criminal groups in Apatzingán and La Ruana, Michoacán, would not be believed if there were no fresh news with images of dismembered bodies, exploding car bombs, and a National Guard that does not dare to leave its barracks. Hipolito Mora was a witness to all that until he was killed.
In Tijuana, the mayor moves to the local army barracks because she does not dare to show her head at the risk of being blown off with shrapnel by criminals. Mutilated bodies pile up in the streets of the city. The situation is no better in the rest of the free and sovereign state of Baja California.
Priests in several states denounce the misgovernment, and the government attacks the church itself. Priests have already been murdered.
And what about the journalists who risk their lives to publish what is happening in their communities regarding organized crime and pay for their audacity with their lives? Yesterday, the journalist Luis Martín Sánchez Íñiguez, correspondent of La Jornada in Nayarit, was found dead in the municipality of Xalisco. The Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed, for the umpteenth time, its concern for the defenselessness of journalists in Mexico and the repeated and systematic attack on these professionals by President López Obrador in his mañaneras.
And the list goes on: Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Veracruz, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Jalisco, Colima… When will the trail of blood, death, and sadness in Mexico end? The federal government is notoriously incapable of at least recognizing and understanding that Mexico is mourning.
To me, personally, the deaths of Adolfo and Porfirio are relevant. Both contributed much to Mexico’s intellectual life and democratization. The country, however, is pained by the feast of blood and fear that takes over daily life as the days go by. Times of contrast deserve more reflection and accurate actions to save the country from itself. Because despite so much death, life goes on.
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