• Thursday, September 22, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The Peace Caravan led by poet Javier Sicilia ended its tour through southern Mexico with a loud call for the creation of a truth commission to distinguish between murders committed by organised crime groups and killings by the security forces.

The 'Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity' held by the families of victims of Mexico's wave of drug-related violence has travelled a total of more than 7,000 kms this year. The first edition was a four-day march, the second a motorcade to the northeast of the country, and the third a motorcade this month to the south of the country.

The movement has documented 521 cases of violence, and the authorities were reportedly involved in many of them.

In the Peace Caravan that ended at midnight Monday in Mexico City, the activists toured eight states and met with organisations of Central American migrants and members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous movement that runs 'autonomous' villages in the southern state of Chiapas.

'What is happening is very serious. We can no longer tell where the State is and where crime is,' Sicilia said Sunday Sep. 18 in Xalapa, the capital of the southeastern state of Veracruz, on one of the Caravan's stops. People poured out on the streets of Xalapa to welcome the caravan, and to tell the activists about forced disappearances and murders.

In that city, the family of Joaquín Figueroa, a father of three who worked as a mechanic at the Trituradora Río Seco company, reported that he and two of his fellow workers were picked up by the police, tortured and killed on Jun. 17, supposedly so they could be passed off as 'sicarios' or thugs in the service of drug cartels.

Janet Figueroa, the victim's daughter, publicly accused the army and the state and federal police of killing innocent civilians to show that they are making inroads against the cartels by killing supposed sicarios in the military's war on criminal groups declared by conservative President Felipe Calderón when he took office in December 2006.

'When we demand justice, we are scorned and ignored because we are poor — they want to pay us off to keep us quiet, but no: we want them to know that my father was not a sicario. Joaquín Figueroa was an honest man,' the young woman said. Calderón's anti-crime strategy has caused more than 40,000 deaths, according to official figures which coincide with those of civil society organisations.

The president gave his assurances in April that only one percent of the murder victims were 'civilian casualties'. However, the movement of relatives of victims of violence in Mexico, headed by Sicilia since his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco was murdered on Mar. 28, has demonstrated that this is far from true.

The movement has registered 221 cases of victims of the security forces, including 116 forced disappearances. The states where the largest numbers of cases were documented were Guerrero, Chiapas and Veracruz in the south.

In Xalapa, Sicilia used a metaphor — 'mud, which is water and dirt mixed together' — to explain the confusion about who is responsible for the wave of violence in Mexico. 'We don't know if there are 'false positives' (the term used to refer to extrajudicial killings by authorities of civilians presented as guerrillas killed in combat), like in Colombia; we don't know who is 'disappearing' whom,' he said.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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