News stories by Daniela Pastrana, page 5

'I feel bad. They led me on with false hopes,' complained María Herrera, one of the pillars of the Mexican peace movement led by writer Javier Sicilia, hours after the activists' second meeting with President Felipe Calderón.

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, headed by Mexican writer Javier Sicilia, travelled through southeastern Mexico and reached the heart of the territory controlled by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), bringing a message of solidarity.

Lucía and her family left their village in Guatemala village at 8:00 am to join the Peace Caravan, but they had to wait for six hours at the Rodolfo Robles bridge between Ciudad Tecún Umán, in Guatemala, and Ciudad Hidalgo, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

With a huge hug, Olga Reyes from Chihuahua, who has lost six family members in Mexico's wave of drug-related violence, greets Araceli Rodríguez from Mexico state, the mother of a young federal police officer who 'disappeared' in Michoacán two years ago.

'And how do you escape this anxiety, this sensation that nothing we do does any good?' a Mexican journalist wrote on her Facebook page after the murder of two of her colleagues in Mexico City.

The murder of journalist Yolanda Ordaz, whose body was found Tuesday in the eastern Mexican city of Veracruz, once again threw into relief the dangers that reporters face in this country, which in the case of women are compounded by discriminatory and sexist treatment.

Chess player Roberto Galván, 33, was detained Jan. 25 by the police in the northeast Mexican state of Nuevo León as he sat on a bench in the central square of General Terán, a town 100 km from Monterrey. No one has seen him since.

'Our patience has run out,' says Mary, an indigenous woman with three children to care for on her own, since her husband was kidnapped from his home by an armed group. In this town in western Mexico, local residents have begun to defend themselves with sticks and stones against illegal loggers and organised crime groups that are their allies.

One after another, people add their testimonies about the wave of terror Mexico is experiencing. At each stop of the Caravan for Peace and Justice with Dignity, there is an outpouring of grief from Mexicans who are inconsolable after the senseless violent deaths of their loved ones.