Promote Justice for Mexico and the Borderlands

Ciudad Juárez police officer Jose Alarcon fled Mexico to the United States in 2008 after a series of horrific events – he himself was injured and his partner killed in a shootout with organized crime, and then he was threatened by criminal gangs when he refused to accept bribes to overlook their activities.   Seeking refuge for his family, he sought asylum in the United States, but a Dallas immigration judge denied Alarcon’s request, ruling that this was a “risk that police officers are supposed to take.”

Last month, a congressional report noted that a staggering 70% of the weapons recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010— and submitted for tracing— originated in the United States, overwhelmingly from Southwest border states. The controversial and highly flawed ATF Operation Fast and Furious has drawn attention to not just the staggering number of firearms that flow over our southern border, but to loopholes and shortcomings in our policies surrounding firearms purchases that have enabled straw purchasers (people who claim to buy weapons for themselves, but then pass them on to criminal groups) and other gun traffickers in the U.S. to channel thousands of weapons to organized crime in Mexico.   

Imagine waking up to the sound of AK-47s in the morning and going to bed to the cries of grieving families at night. Imagine a place where children cannot play outside for fear of being caught in the crossfire or gunned down at a birthday party.

In too many communities across Mexico, such violence has become a frightening reality of daily life.  Over the past four years, roughly 40,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s  “drug war.”  And many of the guns that fuel this violence were smuggled over the border from the U.S. into Mexico. 

Calling for justice for their murdered or disappeared loved ones and peace for the nation, family members representing just a fraction of the 40,000 individuals who have lost their lives since President Calderon initiated his militarized crackdown against organized crime, crisscrossed Mexico in a week-long, 1,550 mile Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity. The caravan arrived at its final destination on Friday, June 9th, in Ciudad Juarez–a city dubbed the epicentro del dolor (epicenter of pain) by caravan leader Javier Sicilia, a Mexican writer and poet whose own son 24-year old son was brutally murdered earlier this year.