"No More Blood" and other Mexican groups held a vigil at the Mexican Inspector General's office January 12.
Last week, in a counterpoint to the unrelenting grim news coming out of Mexico and particularly from Ciudad Juárez, a new peace initiative was announced by civil society and religious organizations who are saying: No More Blood.
On Saturday, Jan. 29 there will be a high profile public fast on the first anniversary of a massacre of 18 teenagers in the Villas de Salvárcrar neighborhood of Juárez. The fasters, who will arrive from across Mexico, seek to make visible their collective moral outrage, pain; as well as the hopes of Mexicans, that the violence sweeping their country – claiming more than 15,000 lives in 2010 alone – can be challenged and stopped.
Our partners in Mexico have asked us to support the people of Juárez, and their brothers and sisters throughout Mexico, with both our physical presence and through letters of support.
This appeal comes to us from ten parishes in Ciudad Juárez, as well as the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center, Migrant Human Rights Center, Woman Worker Pastoral Center and Citizen’s Medical Committee of Ciudad Juárez. Activities in Juárez will include a bi-national rally on Saturday, January 29.
If you are interested in joining the fasters in Ciudad Juarez, please contact Ted Lewis for more details.
As additional background, we recommend:
- New Wave of Cross-Border Activism: Border reporter Kent Patterson describes events and organizations “galvanized by the recent murders of two women from Ciudad Juarez, activist mother Marisela Escobedo and poet Susana Chavez.”
- Dispatch from Juarez: Fear and Happiness at War: How life goes on in Juárez in the face of tragedy and terror by Colorlines reporter, Debbie Nathan.
- Arming Mexico’s drug cartels: A year-long investigation by The Washington Post that for the first time reveals the top 12 stores that sold guns traced to Mexican crime scenes.