Pubdate: Mon, 9 May 2011
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Elisabeth Malkin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Javier+Sicilia

TENS OF THOUSANDS MARCH IN MEXICO CITY

MEXICO CITY -- Javier Sicilia, the poet who has become an unlikely 
hero in a movement calling for an end to Mexico's drug war, asked for 
five minutes of silence at the end of a Sunday rally in this city's 
giant central plaza.

The silence was to honor the dead -- more than 35,000 since President 
Felipe Calderon sent the military to fight drug cartels four and a 
half years ago.

Among the dead is Mr. Sicilia's son, killed seven weeks ago in the 
colonial city of Cuernavaca.

Since then, Mr. Sicilia's grief and fury have resonated with many 
Mexicans who believe they have become the ignored victims in a battle 
between organized crime on one side and soldiers and the police on the other.

At the rally Sunday, Mr. Sicilia called on the government to change 
its strategy in the war, calling first for the resignation of Genaro 
Garcia Luna, the director of public security and an architect of Mr. 
Calderon's battle against the drug gangs. "We want to hear a message 
from the president of the republic that with this resignation, yes, 
he has heard us," Mr. Sicilia said.

The city police estimated that as many as 150,000 people took part in 
the march, although the number of people who finally gathered in the 
plaza late Sunday afternoon to hear Mr. Sicilia and other grieving 
families speak, seemed considerably smaller.

Since Mr. Calderon began his crackdown, sending soldiers to patrol 
large parts of northern and western Mexico, the government has argued 
that the dead are almost all members of rival gangs killed as drug 
cartels fight over territory and smuggling routes to the United States.

But the violence continues to increase and the toll of innocent 
victims has mounted as drug gangs have become more ruthless. 
Authorities have failed to check the killings because of a what even 
the government admits is a combination of corruption, fear and inefficiency.

New horrors have been revealed in the past few weeks. Mr. Sicilia's 
son was found dead along with six other people, supposedly killed by 
a drug cartel. Then, soldiers found mass graves in the northeastern 
state of Tamaulipas that held 183 bodies, many believed to be people 
kidnapped from public buses on their way to the border. Meanwhile, 
the authorities have pulled 168 other bodies from pits in the central 
state of Durango.

The government has remained on the defensive, presenting the choice 
as one between either backing down and letting organized crime take 
hold, or continuing the fight along the same lines.

On Thursday, as Mr. Sicilia set on his march from his hometown, 
Cuernavaca, Mr. Calderon insisted that he would not pull the military 
from the streets, as many Mexicans have asked. "We are right, we have 
the law and we have the strength, we will win," he said. 
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