At a garden on Shotwell: Estamos contigo, Javier Sicilia

Poet and activist Javier Sicilia met with illegitimate president Felipe Calderón yesterday. The killing of Sicilia’s son gave a face and voice to 40,000 people that have been killed due to Calderón’s war against drugs. Willivaldo Delgadillo thinks that, after the Zapatista insurrection in 1994, this is the next big social movement against violence in Mexico. Here is the last poem Sicilia wrote after his son’s death:

The world is not worthy of words

They have been suffocated from the inside

As they suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs

The pain does not leave me, all that remains is the world

Through the silence of the righteous,

Only through your silence and my silence, Juanelo

El mundo ya no es mundo de la palabra

Nos la ahogaron adentro

Como te asfixiaron, como te desgarraron a ti los pulmones

Y el dolor no se me aparta, sólo tengo el mundo

Por el silencio de los justos

Sólo por tu silencio y por mi silencio, Juanelo

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Andrea hails from Mexico City and lives in the Mission where she works as a community interpreter. She has been involved with Mission Local since 2009 working as a translator and reporter.

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1 Comment

  1. The reversal of the presumption of innocence in drug-possession cases is incompatible with the rule of law and is therefore unconstitutional in ALL jurisdictions. Furthermore, the ECONOMICS of the drug trade dictate that criminal sanctions are self-defeating unless concentrated on RETAIL SALES.

    See “The universally unconstitutional war on drugs”: http://is.gd/ccxry6 .

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