Homero Aridjis: “Only Civil Resistance Will Save Mexico”

“Students, Farmers, the Popular and Middle Classes, Can Do Something Against the Impunity”

By Carina Pérez García
Noticias.net.mx

April 18, 2011

Only the Mexican people can save Mexico, through civil resistance and protest, said the poet Homero Aridjis, in an interview after his participation in the presentation of the book What Is Poetry? by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

DR Carina Pérez García.

In the patio of the Oaxaca Graphic Arts Institute (IAGO, in its Spanish initials), under a ceiling of bugambilia flowers, the poet expressed his solidarity with his colleague Javier Sicilia, dedicating the night’s reading to him.

Homero Aridjis described the situation of impunity and violence that the country is suffering as grave. He said that the assassination of the son of Javier Sicilia not only was the story of a poet whose son was killed, but also of a father whose son was killed. The serious thing about this case is that it translates into one of so many crimes that remain impugn.

Violence Provoked by the Corruption of Bureaucrats

“We are crossing into an abyss of corruption that is already a crisis. This extreme violence that we are living has been provoked by an extreme corruption, over various presidential terms, by corrupt officials, and it has come to an intolerable climate. It has brought the country into the abyss. Only Mexican civil society can save Mexico,” he added.

Aridjis recommended that it will be through civil resistance and civil protest by all sectors of society: students, farmers, the popular classes and the middle class, will be able to do something against the impunity of a government that has turned a deaf ear to justice, evidently, from one side of the country to the other, and it has already exploded to intolerable levels.

Solidarity with Javier Sicilia

The poet clarified that to be in solidarity with Javier Sicilia is necessary not just because he is a poet, but because he is a father whose son was killed and that crime is something that doesn’t have a name. Another intolerable thing is that since they killed his son the crime has remained impugn, there are no trustworthy investigations. There are scapegoats who weren’t those who really did it. The true murderers walk free, which he also described as grave.

Aridjis mentioned what happened in his own state of Michoacan, with the bus of death and the murders of migrants, and he expressed that since the crisis stretches from border to border, from coast to coast, that it is already a global scandal. In Mexico there are now massacres every single day and nothing happens, and worse is that the people are accepting this violence as a way of life.

The Appearance of Intellectuals

The people cannot live in this social terrorism, Aridjis added, and he said that only with conscience and spirit can we confront this violence, oppose it in a critical voice: This is a very ignorant government.

“The intellectuals must appear. These politicians are becoming very courtesan and accommodating. We have to give voice to the discontent and inconformity of the Mexican people and attend to this clamor for justice. The Mexican citizen should stand up against the fear. We are in the middle of a social terrorism, and we can’t see a way to advance out of it.

He has already written an article titled, “The Horrible Year,” about 2011, in which he predicted that this is going to be one of the worst years in the history of Mexico, due to the violence. “To stop writing poetry is a personal and very serious protest. We need to be in solidarity and protest. We should be protesting every day, until the violence is changed.”

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