Forgetting Forbidden: Chapter Two, Life's Worth Nothing

Life's worth nothing.

Back in 2012, while living in New Orleans I perceived a growing number of violent events in Mexico City (included beheadings of monuments). At the same time, the Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, asked for proposals to reinvent monuments in the city. I found a Benito Juárez monument in Tremé which led me to work on this project.

I was interested on the fact violence was no longer reduced to a simple shot. In Mexico, people were decapitated and at some point, shot almost 300 bullets in one body. To me, I couldn't understand why one shot wasn't enough, two, ok three to make sure, but 300?

I was reading about a certain pharmaceutical drug two days ago. I really don't mean to get into this issue because it's beyond the limits of my knowledge, but I'm going to use it as an example of following statements. If, a drug's on trial, why is it possible to allow a number of deaths related to one drug. One death. Ok two, well, three just to make sure, but hundreds? In different countries? For a number of years?

Which brings me to the phrase of a Mexican song: Nothing is life's worth, Life's worth nothing, You start always crying and crying is the way it ends.

Why is life worth nothing? To a pharmaceutical company, to terrorists, to any government, to big corporations, to financial institutions, to narcos? How much really is a life's worth?

"The price of assigning a price tag to a life has always made people intensely squeamish. After all, isn't it degrading to presume that money can make a family whole again? And what of the disparities? Is a poor man's life worth less than a rich man's? Over the past 100 years, U.S. courts have crafted their answers to these questions. Forensic economists testify on the value of a life every day. They can even tell you the average valuation of an injured knee (about $200,000)." [source]

Feinberg is called the "Pay Czar", and maybe he would help me clarify, if 43 students are found (with scientific proofs) dead, how much would the Mexican government would need to compensate these families?

"Find your loved one's age and income and follow your finger to the magic number. Note that the lifetime earnings have been boosted by a flat $250,000 for "pain and suffering"--noneconomic losses, they are called. Tack on an extra $50,000 in pain and suffering for a spouse and for each child. The charts, while functional, are brutal, crystallizing how readily the legal system commodifies life. 

Then — and this is crucial — don't get too excited. That first number may be quite high — in the millions for many. But you must, according to the rules of the fund, subtract all the money you are getting from other sources except charities. A court settlement would not be diminished this way, but this is not a court, Feinberg repeatedly points out. Deduct life insurance, pension, Social Security death benefits and workers' compensation. Now you have the total award the government is offering you for your loss."

Now, how can someone dare to set a price on life is one cold notion about humanity I will not be able to understand. That's why I'm an artist and not someone who deals with these unethical issues. But, for the sake of hypothesising, let me just start on the $250,000 for the "non economic losses", forget about the "pain and suffering of each spouse and child". Let's do this calculus for the amount of deaths and disappearances of Calderón and Peña Nieto's governments.

Ok. 29.000 deaths and disappearances according to Mariana Benítez. Then the math gives us: 7,250,000,000 which is 106,919,375,000 mexican pesos. This math is inaccurate and just a stupid exercise but I wish someone would be able to make another math (the invisible and highly unlikely to be made) showing the illicit amounts of money made by Higa and the public figures in Peña Nieto's period. Those figures would show the real price of these terrible acts.

So embarrassing. Such gluttony and greed. These have no indemnification, no price and hopefully, no  oblivion.