“It's Time to Stop Being Victims”

Words from Julián LeBaron to Congress and the Nation

By Julián LeBarón and Antonio Cervantes
Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, Mexico

August 3, 2011

My message is directed to the entire nation, to the one hundred and twelve million people who have witnessed and endured extreme pain, dehumanization and the violence that Mexico is living with today. You, the legislators, who claim to be our representatives, are blind to the death that surrounds you and deaf to the desperate cries of helplessness that drown out our dreams in contempt of a dark world. I invite you, starting today, with your actions, to stop our historic legacy from being suffocated while the eagle drowns in our own blood. You cannot be makers of laws that have permitted the impugn atrocity against tens of thousands of Mexican citizens; assassinated, disappeared, tortured, kidnapped and humiliated. Not yesterday, not today, nor tomorrow. Never!

Julián LeBarón (second from right) during a moment of silence at a meeting between the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity and Mexican Congressional leaders.

Mexican citizens: It is time to stop being victims and stop asking for solutions from the interlocutors who have proved their indifference and incapacity and to take charge of our own destiny. It is time to accept this responsibility and that’s why it is necessary that you, the legislators, if you are our representatives, you must also participate in this Movement for Peace.

Mexicans, citizens of the country and the world: appeal to your consciences! Now is the moment to recognize that we, everyone who makes up the country, are also responsible for this Holocaust. It’s not only the criminals and the politicians. Each peso we pay in taxes is a vote of approval to continue our misfortune, so let us reflect on how it is that we stay quiet and allow things to continue the way they are. We are giving consent to the mockery, the vileness and the slavery.

You so-called deputies and senators, who say you are our representatives but still aren’t, now is the time to show the citizens. It’s not the time to write dead letters that appear to be an instrument for mockery. It is time to go out into the streets and protest the dishonor and the dismay of the violence that brings us to our knees. It is time to shout the truth until it echos throughout all of Mexico. Citizens: the war will not bring peace; the drugs and the weapons are not the problem. The problem is us. Until now we have not been able to be outraged, to come together, or to even name our dead!

Neither the president, nor the deputies and senators, will bring us peace. Peace will be possible when we all recognize that the present is the consequence of each one of our actions, and that only through collective participation will we be able to change Mexico.

I walk with poets because they know what words are worth, that words matter, and that a man without words is a man without dignity. I’m asking you to measure your words and honor them.

I’ll end by quoting Pablo Neruda, in memory of my brothers and of our dead, which includes immigrants. “I must summon them here as if they were here. Brothers and Sisters: rest assured that our struggle on earth will continue.”

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