The security situation in the country can only be described as catastrophic. Wherever you look at it, it is impossible to verify the optimism of President López Obrador and several officials about it. But the loss of sensitivity in the government about a drama that affects tens of thousands of families on a daily basis, that hurts society, women, young people, the elderly, everyone, is much worse. If the federal government exhibited even the same indignation towards the victims of violence, when they are murdered, killed, kidnapped, extorted, to which it agitates when a son of the president is unfairly mocked on the networks, it could significantly improve the social and political climate, and one could even try to understand some of the reasons for his now incomprehensible optimism regarding the future of public security.
We did not see on networks or in the morning the presidential outrage or its main officials for the cold-blooded murder of two Jesuit priests inside a temple at the hands of a hitman, in one of those areas of hegemony of a cartel in which, According to the official discourse, there is not so much violence. Neither the President nor any official on his behalf went to the ceremonies or the wake for the murdered priests or police officers, but we did see the mockery of one of his officials, Jenaro Villamil, against Pope Francis because he said he was “dismayed” for that crime. We did not see it with the death of the priests, but neither with the ambush in which six police officers from Nuevo León were killed by criminal groups, leaving four others seriously injured. Nor with another ambush, in Ciudad Mante, Tamaulipas, where they murdered another police officer and left several wounded.
He spoke, once again yesterday, of how before there were massacres in Mexico, but he forgot, nor did he remember it in the morning, those that occur daily in the country, greater than those of yesteryear. This weekend, in Tijuana, at dawn on Friday, there were 12 murders. On the border between Yucatan and Quintana Roo, seven people were executed. In Cuernavaca there were kidnappings, deaths, shootings in a shopping mall. In Guerrero, where the President was for the weekend, several communities, including the state capital, Chilpancingo, suffer from mass extortion that makes it difficult even to trade basic necessities. Not a word was said about that in two days of touring Guerrero.
It is not about self-flagellation or cutting your wrists, nor, if you are convinced of your strategy, about denying your own policies, which sooner or later will be judged by the vote of the citizens, but it is about showing a little empathy with the victims , with their families, with the institutions, with the attacked communities.
We have never seen the president in a tribute, one of the ceremonies to the fallen, civilians, police or military. On innumerable occasions he has spoken of Ayotzinapa, but not of the more than 120,000 dead so far in his six-year term, of the 30,000 who have disappeared. In the first three and a half years of his term, together Calderón (from December 2006 to May 2010) and Peña (from December 2012 to May 2016) had, between the two, just over 108,000 murders. In that same period, December 2018 to May 2022, the López Obrador administration, according to official data, had almost the same number: 99,784 homicides, according to data from the public security system. And higher figures, for the same period of three and a half years, in extortion, rapes and total robbery. And we are already in the second half of a mandate, the argument that everything is the fault of the past is not enough, especially when it was first assured that in a hundred days there would be changes, then that in six months, later than in a year and already We have been almost four and the numbers of insecurity continue to grow.
But I insist, what is most worrying is the insensitivity towards these figures, towards these victims, the lack of empathy regarding the suffering of tens of thousands of families. As if enjoying a moral superiority that puts the government above these earthly issues.
The Court and abortion
With all our daily tragedies there are issues where there has been undoubted progress. In contrast to what is happening in the United States, with the ruling of the Supreme Court, to end the right of women to abortion, in Mexico progress has been made and it is guaranteed in a good part of the country. Many women, especially from Texas, travel to Mexico for a safer abortion or to purchase birth control medication.
Throughout our northern border, this right must be guaranteed with certainty, because many of these women are our countrymen, because the right to interrupt pregnancy for those who live in Texas, Arkansas and many other states is not respected and has become a crime prosecuted by the authorities. Those who have less cannot afford to go to “sanctuaries” like California or New York, to have care guaranteed by the health system. Guaranteeing that right in Mexico is, and should be, one of the important differences to be established throughout the country, but especially on the northern border. It can do more for the bilateral relationship and for our countrywomen than many speeches.
#Presidential #violence #empathy