I am writing this post in English in an attempt to reach out to my non-Mexican friends.
I think when you hear the word Mexico there are several ideas that come to mind, and most of them are true yet not absolute. It is true we are a warm and welcoming country, it is true we have the cartels tearing apart some of our territory, it is true we are MexiCAN, not MexiCAN'T, it is true we like spicy, we sing out of tune, we drink tequila, we are happy people, we have gorgeous beaches, bribery is part of our issues, Mexico City is a monster, etc. etc. etc.... It is all true.
But there is also another truth about my country: We are one of the most hard-working people you will ever meet, our young fight for a place in the world, for education, they fight and stand to be an educated generation willing to exorcise the ghosts of an old dictatorship-like democracy. We strive to change our country, to make it better. I do not know one single Mexican that lives outside the country that is not proud of being so, that does not try to be not just a good Mexican, but an ambassador of a country that is tired of cliches and of being looked down upon.
Today, we struggle. We face the sad truth of history repeating itself and not in a good way. In 1968, Mexico was to be the host of the Olympic Games. There was a major investment and suppression of unions' protest in an attempt to present to the world a united Mexico, a problem free, growing, developed country. As the PRI party's regime continued to turn away from the people's problems and focus on putting on a great show, protests started to rise, reached the student body, creating awareness of the undergoing injustice and unfairness that the regime had on our country. On October 2nd, 1968, students marched, and they were massacred. They were beat up, tortured, executed on site, disappeared, they were silenced, they were dead.
46 years later, 43 students took a bus from their home town in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, to go to larger cities with two goals: protest against the state's government discriminatory hiring policies, and to raise funds to continue their rural program of farming and forming teachers (look at this video). They were "disappeared" on September 26, 2014 by local police. In an attempt to find them (forced by the Mexican people), authorities found mass graveyards, burnt human remains, witnesses, suspects, but still "no proof" whether those remains are of the students nor if those confessions are final. Coincidentally enough, the same party is now in office, PRI, after 12 years without being in the presidential seat.
In what I can only describe as a bored department of transit office clerk tone, the Mexican Attorney General presented the "advances" of the investigation in a press conference, a statement that was cold, full of gaps, not even close to conclusive, and that ended abruptly by the Attorney General saying "enough, I'm tired".
We have marched, we have lit candles countrywide, we have demanded explanations, we have been present in social media. Like the Attorney General "we are tired". For this is just one of many unjust happenings in our country, we are tired of authorities' abuse, we are tired of this justice fog, we are tired of looking the other way, we are plain tired.
I personally wish I could be back home marching among my countrymen, but I can't, I'm 3000 miles away. But I can make noise, I can fill the cup of awareness until it is so full it spills. We cannot be ignored, we won't. We will raise awareness and force the world's judgmental stare upon our government, for it deserves to be judged.
Read, share, talk about it over drinks, heck! hate you spent 5 minutes reading this nonsense. Just know that there's something happening, and each person that knows is a drop that goes into that cup, that cup of awareness that needs to be spilled.
Help fill that cup of awareness, let us be noticed for our struggle, which is also yours. If you believe in freedom of speech, if you disapprove the abuse of power, if you believe that the future of this world is in young hands rather than in old vicious suits, if you believe in democracy, then this struggle is also yours.
READ MORE:
NEW YORK TIMES
THE NEWYORKER
CNN
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