By: Óscar Balderas
Editor's Note: “Shouting in Michoacán: Voices against the surrender” is a journalistic work that goes into social networks to give a voice to the victims of violence in that state. It is by anonymous citizens- from websites dedicated to fighting organized crime- for the first time they say what happens on their land.
Part 1: Here
Fernando, 16, speaks in this second installment, from his school in Los Reyes, Michoacán, where the people are already preparing their own community police.
August 21, 2013— I hope my parents never find me on the cover of “La Extra”, that bloodthirsty Michoacán newspaper. I don’t even want them to see me hanging from a bridge, swinging, without any strength in my hands to take off the noose from my neck, with socks soaked in blood, with a lost look on my face bruised by asphyxiation.
I don’t want them to ever eat breakfast, after a sleepless night looking for me, and they find me on the police blotter, where those who are unfortunate end up by the narcos who catch them for being thugs or for finding them in the act, place or at the wrong time. May I never be picked up at a medical examiner, at some public ministry, in a local police truck stuffed in a black bag or on an operating room bed bleeding from gunshot wounds.
But if my wish cannot be fulfilled, and my death is inevitable here I want my murderers to have the decency to throw my body beside a road or near my town, Los Reyes, Michoacán, where I can be found. Let my mother have a mass in which to mourn me and my father a tomb on which to put flowers on. If those assholes have a heart, and my destiny is to die before the age of 30, then they shouldn’t have me disappear or put away in a narco grave. It’s not for me, but for my parents, because I’ve seen my neighbors die without finding living relatives, who’ve probably been killed long ago.
I know that from the computer you winced when you read this. You think I should aim higher. I know that. Finish school, find a good job, get married, build my house and have a fucking great old life, surrounded by grandchildren and a green field. If I lived somewhere else that would be my ideal life but since I live here, my aspirations are cut off on living life as much as possible.
I didn’t always think like this until a year ago. In Los Reyes one could’ve gone out for a beer, eat in the nocturnal street markets, buy clothes in downtown and insult the sun with a popsicle that you could eat in the main square. Not anymore. If you do any of those things, you could end up like Francisco who, for having light-colored eyes and wearing a red shirt, was mistaken for a member of the Knights Templar cartel and someone shot him eight times with an AK-47.
The narcos have already caught the town. We are like sheep surrounded by wolves who avoid the roads that we used to drive on in order to be next to the sugar canes because now trucks crammed with armed men who call themselves “los señores” use the roads.
And those “señores” have changed everything. They are the kings of Los Reyes. If they get in line at the market, if they hit your car, if they point a grenade at you, if they take your daughter, you should duck down, quickly walk home and finish thanking God that you’re not Francisco and that they didn’t button your shirt with eight holes.
Be thankful that you’re not one of those two corpses that they hung from a bridge on the road Los Reyes-Jacona on August 12, that you’re not one of those five bodies lying on the steps of City Hall on July 22, or that you’re not one of those who have a scary history like Adrián, Edna, Guillermo, Leonardo, Rafael and Sara.
But the odds of not being a corpse increase as the days pass. Each day, Michoacán and Los Reyes is worse. I see more deaths closer to me. One day, perhaps not far away, they throw an unfortunate person in my garden and then I’ll know that I only have days left.
I wish they don’t make me disappear, that they find my body, that they shoot me in my stomach so I can have an open casket, that they leave my face intact so everyone can say their goodbyes; that they don’t make “stew”, hang me, or find me in the paper with my head open by gunshots.
If everything continues to be the same—please—write down my wish.
Source: Revolución 3.0
Source: Revolución 3.0