A reminder from Rosario Ibarra de Piedra

Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, head of the Senate´s Human Rights Commission, reminds us of a truth that needs to be repeated ever more often in these days of disappearances and extrajudicial executions: 

“I am worried about the situation that happens in the country. One has resorted to a means very much utilized by the government, which is to detain citizens and claim  they are narcos, that they are delinquents and belong to organized crime, because now everyone is walking around masked with hoods, blaming everything on crime, but I say that the fault, the responsibility, is of the government."

Words to consider. It brings to mind what happened in the early months of the organized mass murder under the Argentine dictatorship, beginning in 1976. As men dressed in civilian clothes snatched away young men and women from the streets, it was not uncommon to hear, from their neighbours, "Well, por algo será. They must have done something."


While some of the murdered and kidnapped politicians, police officers, functionaries, members of social movements in Mexico undoubtedly had connections to organized crime, one must fall into the temptation of thinking this as a first resort: The ¨War on Drugs" provides a very convenient cover for powers that be to rid oneself of bothersome opponents or mere witnesses.