The Mexican Wild West

"The teenager was arrested by police on Tuesday while taking photos in Azcapotzalco, in north-western Mexico City.Officers accused the student of stealing the mobile phone he was using to take the photos and took him away, a witness said.

His parents contacted the local prosecutor's office in Azcapotzalco the same day but were told their son had been released by the officers.

Yet when they did not hear from their son, they began to fear he had been abducted."[source:BBC]

Where is the safety in this country? I have been in Azcapotzalco and like any other large city, some areas feel safer than others, yet, Azcapotzalco or any entity in the State of Mexico has predominantly become synonym of no-man's land. [Not that I can vouch for the safety in any entity in Mexico City, actually.]

Through the interviews in the case (and some info from polls taken in 2012), some students acknowledge how the "Ant Sector" which is what they call the "security" forces in The Rosario area, are taking advantage of the students by 80 active police elements. One student narrated how some policemen once caught them drinking beer on the streets and asked for 1.200 pesos to let them go. This amount of money they obviously didn't have on them (these are high school students mostly from the Preparatoria #8 nearby), but the policemen waited patiently for their friends, who after some calls, came one after another with small amounts of money to help their friends out.

What happened to Marco Antonio Sánchez? We all wonder. If we base the conjectures on what we know happens in Mexico, the story could be chilling. Trying to reconstruct some of the facts, his best friend who was by his side when the policemen accused him of trying to steal the cell phone is the one that last saw him.

The policeman kept accusing Marco, who, scared, started running away. He was chased down to a bus station, where the footage shows how the police officers pin him down. [Please note the numbness of the people surrounding the scene]. His friend tells how, the officer that has him on his back against the floor, asks him why was he running if he had nothing to hide. Marco answers that they were lying about the robbery and asks the officer why is it they want to harm him. The police officer in response tells him, he's not harming nor hitting him and that if he wants to, Marco can hit him back. Marco, a black-belt karate student, hits him on the face. The policeman then, hits the boy back on the face with his helmet.

To watch Marco's detention: pic.twitter.com/QNfejP8xFM
— Milenio.com (@Milenio) February 1, 2018

The two policemen ushered Marco away from the bus station, as his friend pleaded both, to take him too, but the policemen dismissed him and took Marco away on the patrol. The policemen, said they diligently and following protocol (one they had previously broken by getting him into a police car with no reason in the first place) liberated the boy a few blocks after, 5 minutes tops. Rolled the red carpet, apologized for the misunderstanding and opened the door for him.

Arrestados, sin uniformes, asustados... hablan los agentes de la SSP_CDMX que detuvieron a Marco Antonio Sánchez y luego lo liberaron... pic.twitter.com/wcdYlGRbKm — Andrés Domínguez (@andresreportero) January 29, 2018

Let's assume we believe the officers' story for an absurd faith in Mexican mankind. Why did they rushed then, to make a video explaining the situation, without uniforms, whimpering, vulnerable almost, after four of them were held in custody to clarify the facts? Why is it two of them are now missing and pursued by the same authorities?

The convoluted story was not even close to being over nor clarified. After the alleged release of Marco, he first appears four days after, at a store almost 30 kms. away from where he was originally released by the policemen. He looks disoriented, unable to speak coherently; the owners ignoring the amber alert and the whole interest on social media around his "forced disappearance", hand him a chocolate and ask him to leave.

#MarcoAntonioSanchez

For stranger reasons (and by an alleged tip from an anonymous call), a few hours later, on what clearly seems a randomly drifting person wandering the streets, but what officers hint as a potential suicide scenario, he's found standing on a pedestrian bridge and taken to Tlalnepantla's police station. In the video, he seems to be rambling loudly behind some public bureaucrats who are standing by a counter, and after a few minutes, they let him go. Please note this case already had national and international relevance, yet they have no intention of identifying the boy, who's limping, showing signs of disorientation, and bruised on the right arm and face.

Marco leaves the police station and boards a cab. He tries to tell the driver he wants to go home and when they ask him for the address, he is unable to recall it. When the driver, tells him not to worry and that they can ask the police to help them, he descends immediately from the cab. It is after the police search for him through the surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, and after the large mediatic pressure on the Mexico City's governor that exerts some results; that they finally find the boy again after long hours of hauling his parents on a car around the city, almost stalling the encounter, with no apparent reason for the wait.

When his family meets him, he is wearing different clothes. His skinny boned legs are covered by a huge oversized trouser and though he recognized his father at the police station, he is not, the same person they took away from him. Today he is "recovering" in a psychiatric hospital but has not been able to communicate what happened to him. He has been sedated, sometimes violent, after denying the possibility of taking a urinalysis and their parents seem to be controlling what they can say to the media for fear of loosing whatever feeble support the government has provided so far.

Marco is 17 years old.

Anyone of us can become Marco. And what I mean is: anyone can be placed under that same position in this country; a vulnerable one by the same elements that are supposed to safeguard us. In some video, some reporters claim that Marco's parents "are lucky" because they got him back. Have they? Really? Is that the relief this situation calls for? "Oh, well, he's not dead, so I guess that's supposed to make their parents grateful? When did we as a culture, lowered our standards so much?

Mancera, our beloved (sigh) city's governor feels justice was served at the exact moment they found him. Whatever happened to him after the alleged policemen's claim as they escorted him out of the patrol has to be undoubtedly, energetically, categorically clarified, and the police forces who broke minor protocols will be slapped in the hand because they promise not to break these procedures ever again. 

To add a cherry on top of this badly torted and sociopathic reality cake, 20 elements of Mexico City's police forces were sent to apprehend one of the policeman that escaped from this case. They all rushed to the state of Guerrero, (where he is originally from) raided the policeman's maternal home and forcibly tried to take his 75 year old mother, as they also took some money from the house, a couple of cell phones and some tablets on their way out. Ironically, they were detained by local defenses, armed civilians that were alerted, and whose organization from previous abuses, managed to keep the woman in her house, after an apology from our city's exemplary police who also gave back the money they inadvertently took with them, I'm sure these fine people didn't mean to take it, they just borrowed it for a while.

Just like they didn't do anything to Marco. Just as nothing happens in this Mexican Wild West. Bang! bang! Take cover!