Ensenada: 4 Bodies discovered on the highway
I struggle to write these "headlines" sometimes. How can I convey what happened, without sensationalism, but without bland casualness, similar to American local news anchors, who discuss atrocities, degradation with the conviction of discussing office gossip?
They are embarrassed, uncomfortable, bothered only by the intrusion into their other stories, who don't involve brutality, wrenching violence.
So, I go for a balance. Try to make it up in the article. But, I don't always feel one. I wonder who cares? And how do I care? Do I write that these can break me, and beat me with the relentlessness....the cruel realities of violence?
I know the why's, the how's, the players, the victims, and it doesn't change that for me.
There are two realties, both cruel, both cut me, one that I am saddened and broken by violence, and two, that I know it won't change, and I know why it happens, and why it has to happen.
Let me straighten myself out here, wash my face, my hands, for I am in the abyss. Four bodies of unknown individuals were discovered at dawn in Ensenada, in an area known as "Las Mallas De Garcia", in the Elijido Jaramillio location. They have bullet wounds to the head. They are wearing street clothes, and appear to have had they're hands tied, bound, before being thrown on a dirt road.
The killings are done by men who have done them before, and will again. They will also meet a similar fate, very few who bind hands, and carry corpses, and the still living dead, end up as old men, who remember the killings they did as young men. There is symmetry in death, in killings. It's not karma, or at least I don't believe in it. It's simply that blood washed with blood, will never wash out.
The killings are doubtless linked to retail drug traffickers disputes for control of territory, routes, plazas, areas of influence. The men will be locals of Baja, Sinaloa, and maybe Guerrero, Jalisco. The authorities won't announce any arrests, they will be examined, exhumed, buried.
Look at the picture, look at the men, look at their lifeless bodies. Let the images stay with you, as you work, drink, run, dance. Let them enter into your dreams, as they have mine, let the silence of the dead consume you with it's cries.
The morning fog not yet lifted, it looms over the scene, a hauntingly cruel portrait of a rural land, and the savagery of men who walk in it.
AFN Tijuana