Peace

Can the Caravan of Peace End the War on Drugs? at The Nation

A new peace movement to end the US-sponsored drug war begins with buses rolling and feet marching from the Tijuana–San Diego border on August 12 through twenty-five US cities to Washington, DC, in September.

Named the Caravan for Peace, the trek is intended to put human faces and names on the estimated 60,000 dead, 10,000 disappeared and 160,000 displaced people in Mexico since 2006, when the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Pentagon and the CIA supported the escalation of the Mexican armed forces.

The caravan, which has staged mass marches across Mexico since 2011, is led by well-known Catholic poet Javier Sicilia, 56, whose son Juan Francisco, then 24, was killed in crossfire in Cuernavaca in March 2011. After his son’s death, Sicilia, vowing not to write poetry any longer, formed a Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) and penned an anguished grito, or cry, titled “Estamos Hasta La Madre!” The English equivalent might be “Fed Up!,” but the Spanish slang also means that the authorities “insulted our mother protector, they’ve committed a sacrilege,” Sicilia says.

This is something I want to see. It’s about time we had something like this here to wake a few more people up.

Here’s the Caravan route. It won’t be going through my town, but there’s a chance I can get to see it in Chicago on September 3.

If they’re passing near you, you might offer to help get the local media’s attention.