Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Mexico is experiencing a process of normalization of violence. Yes: drug trafficking violence, but also violence against women, abuse, and violence against children, in the family and school environments. Violence against businesses and the economy in general. The payment of extortion “derecho de piso” seems to be part of the letter of the United Mexican States Political Constitution.
Normalizing violence means resigning ourselves to the inevitability of its domination over our lives. No. Violence is avoidable and does not have to rule the lives of Mexican families.
The river of blood is spreading throughout the Republic. Young men executed in Jalisco, organized crime checkpoints used to kidnap and murder enemies and innocent travelers alike, women forced to act as drug transporters and then murdered, women incorporated into the ranks of community police or organized crime, and women murdered at the hands of their partners, fathers, uncles. Peasant men forcibly incorporated into the ranks of drug traffickers. Children turned into hawks and then as hired gunmen (sicarios) to join the ranks of criminal gangs.
What is happening in Mexico escapes the most feverish imagination. The stories multiply and become more and more terrible, day by day. At this moment, there is no place in the entire Republic free of violence and blood. And what accompanies it, as its origin and eternal master: impunity.
Violence could not have reached its levels without impunity as a system, custom, and tradition. And impunity speaks of a broken, ineffective, corrupt, and manipulated justice system. By whom? Who are the corrupters of the justice system that allow an impunity rate of over 94%, according to INEGI data?
The political system, both the current and the old one, it does not matter, is the main facilitator that opens the doors wide open to the purchase of decisions and resolutions. Isn’t that what we hear in the audios where the Attorney General of the Republic, supposed bastion and defender of justice equally for all, negotiates resolutions in exchange for resources and support, even with the Ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation?
Corruption, that phenomenon that was the central issue of AMLO’s presidential campaign, is not only still as rampant as ever in the country and the public administration, but it has even spread to the deepest ranks of his party. At the end of this six-year term, we will see the faces of a new bourgeoisie appearing in the corridors of whatever comes next. And that new breed of profiteers, born out of easy contracts, will be needy and hungry for more of the same.
So, without assigning total responsibility for the current situation of widespread corruption, the truth is that the President has done almost nothing to fight corruption. Some might even postulate that during his six-year term, corruption has grown and spread into new territories, such as the Armed Forces. Let us not fool ourselves. The abuse made through the massification of direct awards is an unmistakable sign of the presence of corruption. This is the case in Washington, Beijing, Buenos Aires, and Mexico.
This river of violence and blood marks us as a country in mourning and should not be normalized. Never. Let us fight not only against the normalization of violence in Mexican families but also let us learn to demand that the authorities correct their behavior in the face of corruption, starting with the President of the Republic. No hypocritical white handkerchiefs.
Action and more action to eradicate corruption and, therefore, violence.
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