Mal, Non and Misfeasance are the Mexican Malaises

Sometimes is easier to write about other places, but the closer the events get to your country, the hardest it gets to accept them. I still wonder why aren't we rising up to the circumstances and I have concocted 5 stories that may help understand or justify the lack of action from me or my fellow citizens.

1. Mothers Day, celebrated everywhere with nice displays of affection in most countries, yet in Mexico, a few days ago, specifically the day we celebrate it, a woman was shot to death in her house. Miriam Rodríguez, who in 2014 tragically found her daughter at a common pit in Tamaulipas after she went missing, became an activist and devoted her life to help other people in the same circumstances as hers.

A prison break last March, set the two men who killed her daughter on the loose and while one was captured, the other is believed to be the one that shot her on the evening of Mother's Day.

While Tamaulipas attorney general has stated in repeated occasions on how his team protected her, truth is, on the footage above, she tells how, she was forsaken by the authorities when she called in another occasion more than 30 times to the police force assigned to her case.

2. In Palmarito, Puebla on May 3rd. Mexican soldiers execute a man extra-judicially at point-blank range. Back in 2014, 22 people were massacred in Tlatlaya by military officials but there was no footage to show the evidence. In this case, a camera placed by the alleged "fuel thieves" (yes, we have those in Mexico for quite a few decades now) recorded most (edited by the agency that released it) of the clash between these two groups.

These fuel cartels have by now, like any other cartel, a number of songs and saints. As expected, the lyrics of the "corridos" depict a kind of Robin Hood whose anger against a crooked government makes a honest thief out of the "huachicolero" (a word originally used for an adulterated beverage now meaning these practices).

3. The 43 Missing Ayotzinapa Students

Parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students manifested themselves in front of the Mexican Senate demanding the reopening of the 4 lines of investigation left by the GIEI in 2016. 

The usual amount of people accompanying them has been reducing constantly after three years. They seemed so feeble, left behind, abandoned by all of us.

4. #SiMeMatan or #IfTheyKillMe

According to a new press release, an extremist ecological mob called Individualistas Tendiendo a lo Salvaje (Individualists towards Savagery) killed Lesvy due to the following rhetoric:

"The murder of a woman in the college campus was a brutal and suffocating reaction towards the gross actions of the modern human being. Do you think that someone walking in the middle of the night, stumbling due to the effects of drugs, ingested chemistry, is worth to be alive, we think not, that is why she got what she wanted and deeply hoped for, death."

Aside this and other presumed actions by the ITS, the #SiMeMatan became more of an issue than these sociopaths, which to be completely honest, already is an horrific situation. 

Turns out the PGJ feed, which stands for the Office of Public Prosecutor's Twitter account, a few hours after finding her body, instead of focusing on the investigation, they quickly "turned the attention on Ms Osorio herself, targeting in particular her lifestyle and romantic affairs." 

Victimized not once but twice, women all around Mexico started to express their anger and the everyday fears they experience in this country through social media: IfTheyKillMe is because I wear a short skirt, IfTheyKillMe is because I express my mind or go after my dreams...

At the campus where Lesvy was killed, Tlaloc the Aztec rain god spat blood from its bowels.

5. Dr. Mireles was set free this past May 12th. after 3 years behind an unjust apprehension by Peña Nieto's government. He was a leader of the self-defense groups in Tepalcatepec in the state of Michoacán and accused of carrying unauthorized weapons (provided by the government) and alleged drug trafficking.

"[...] what is the use of a government if there's no justice..."

The Self-Defense group started in 2013 because The Caballeros Templarios cartel basically ran the state, leaving all it's citizens exposed to the whims of this savage group as the Mexican military silently watched and aided them in their obscure purposes.

...

Truth is, no matter how long we can get organized, if a government does not expedite the work they should be exerting, after the days gather dust and the anger dies down, those who spoke louder get abandoned, then killed by lone gunmen, under strange circumstances, as an open secret everyone was foretold.

Impunity is corroding us, clogging our arteries, making us passive as we watch these events unfold. And just as Mireles on the video states above, I also hoped the "gasolinazo" or raise in the gas prices in January would be the thing that detonated our rage. But it didn't. Our economy was directly hit after we paid for the economic abuses our drunk and careless government had for six years yet we didn't cohere, individualism got us in our cars and it fueled us the following days to work.

Governors caught stealing and leaving in debt complete states don't sting anymore, nor the number of skulls found on lone pits. Why don't we get ofended by these blatant signs of abuse? Who is able to do the follow up of these cases? Is it because after the yelling, the organized become disassembled then vulnerable, then left alone, then killed, then become a number? There has to be a number of reasons...