YOLANDA CHAVEZ LEYVA
  • Home
  • Fierce Fronteriza Blog
  • Callegrafias Fronterizas
  • What I do
  • Publications
  • Comunidad
  • Connecting
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • South Central - Alameda Street
  • Untitled
  • Callegrafia
Fierce Fronteriza
Picture

Confronting truth in a time of alternative facts

5/8/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
In a Trumpian-era of "alternative facts" what does the truth mean? And what does the truth mean when we are complicit in obscuring it?

A few days ago, I heard the testimony of Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez whose recent investigative book, La Verdadera Noche de Iguala, describes her findings around the disappearance of 43 normal school students on the 26th of September 2014. Speaking to an audience at the University of Texas at El Paso, Hernandez described how the students at la Escuela Normal Rural "Raul Isidro Burgos" in Ayotzinapa were disappeared in Iguala in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. They are among 26,000 people who have been disappeared in the country, including women, men, children, and babies. Hernandez believes in naming names and she says she has the names of every person on the list of 26,000 disappeared. Over 100,000 people have been killed in the past decade as part of Mexico's war on drugs.

Picture
Anabel Hernandez has uncovered evidence that the attack on the students that left the streets like "a river of blood" and their subsequent disappearance was the result of a collaboration among several levels of law enforcement with the military. The attack was an effort to disappear witnesses to the military removing two million dollars worth of heroin that had been hidden on the buses that the students occupied. The students had no knowledge of the heroin. They had "sequestered" the buses in order to get to a commemoration in Mexico City of the 1968 Massacre of Tlatelolco.

The 43 first year students whose faces stare at us from the poster above have been missing for over two and a half years. Their parents continue to insist that the search for them must continue.  On April 25, the parents arrived at the office of the Ministry of the Interior to request a meeting, continuing to demand that their sons be returned alive. After a hour of waiting for their request to be "processed," they began symbolically touching the wall that surrounds the Ministry building. They were met with tear gas grenades that injured five of the parents. Ayotzinapa students who were returning to Guerrero to inform the school of the attack on the parents were attacked by state police.

Picture
So what does all of this have to do with the truth and with us?

It has everything to do with us. Shocking images of the tragedies created by the opioid epidemic in the United States are increasingly reported in the media. The Center for Disease Control reports that 91 Americans die each day from opioid overdose. Increasingly heroin substitutes for prescription opioids. As a result of the increasing demand for heroin in the United States, Mexican drug cartels are turning to heroin as the profitable drug of choice. Heroin abuse has grown most dramatically in the Midwest and the Northeast. Whites between 18 and 45 years of age now have the highest death rate from heroin overdose.

Increasing addiction to heroin is a complicated issue and the racial/ socio-economic politics behind how our government is treating this epidemic are another story. But we have to start by confronting the truth that the deaths and disappearances in Mexico are not solely a consequence of Mexican governmental corruption nor cartel criminals.

The truth is that our government is complicit. The truth is that we are complicit as a society that consumes the drugs. The blood of the 43 Ayotzinapa students is surely on our hands as much as that of the Mexican government.

Anabel Hernandez says that no nation can move forward without knowing the truth that they have a right to know. We not only have the right to know the truth, we have an obligation to take responsibility for the truth. This is even clearer during these times of "alternative facts" and a President who lies, exaggerates, and misrepresents.

Only when we look truth in the fact can we begin to understand how our actions reverberate well beyond the borders of our nation.






0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    September 2019
    August 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    Categories

    All

Picture
My father used to tell me about sneaking into this theater to watch movies as a kid in the 1910s. It showed Spanish language films. In the 1940s, it was transformed into a "whites only" theater but that didn't last long. By the 1950s, it was headquarters to the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union, a radical labor organization. Before it closed, it housed the Mine and Mill Bar.
Picture
Picture
This message is painted on the east side of the old Mission movie theater.
Picture
The bell tower of Guardian Angel Catholic Church, built in the 1910s to serve the growing Mexican immigrant community in what was then the "east side" of El Paso.
Picture
This pinata shop caught my attention as I was driving west on Alameda Street on my way to work.
Picture
Hawaiian dancer, Alameda Street.
Picture
Unicorn pinata on Alameda Street.
Picture
Proud graduate pinata.
Picture
Love message on the east side exterior wall of the old Mission Theater.

Segundo Barrio
Father Rahm Street
​July 2022

Picture
Looking into Padre Pinto Plaza, Sagrado Corazon Catholic Church.
Picture
Treasures on the window sill.
Picture
La bici
Picture
Tres vatos.
Picture
Esperando el bus.
Picture
Two generations.

 La Virgensita en la frontera
Picture
Woman reflected on la Virgencita, Segundo Barrio, 2021.
Picture
La Virgen de Guadalupe, 12 de diciembre 2017, Centro de Trabajadores Agricolas, El Paso
Picture
Protecting Barrio Duranguito 2019

 Cd Juarez downtown
​December 2017
Picture
Raramuri father and son musicians, downtown Juarez, 2017.
Picture
The smell of copal, downtown Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Ciudad Juarez limpia, downtown, December 2017.
Picture
Selling at the mercado, downtown Juarez, December 2017
Picture
Telcel payaso, downtown Juarez, December 2017


 La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, 2017

Picture
Dos perros, La Mariscal, December 2017
Picture
Mujer con cabello verde, La Mariscal, Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Beautiful death, La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Tin Tan, La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, December 2017.
 
Montana Vista 2019
Picture
Red high heels in the desert 2019
 El Centro July 2022
Picture
A tree reaches out to Oscar Zeta Acosta (mural by Lxs Dos), El Paso, Texas July 2022
  • Home
  • Fierce Fronteriza Blog
  • Callegrafias Fronterizas
  • What I do
  • Publications
  • Comunidad
  • Connecting
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • South Central - Alameda Street
  • Untitled
  • Callegrafia