Javier Sicilia, poet and leader of the Mexican anti-drug group Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, will lead a 50-cross procession on the Loyola Marymount University campus on Wednesday, April 25, to focus attention on the drug wars in Mexico and the United States.
The procession is modeled on cross-bearing caravans he has led in Mexico to protest drug-related killings. Each cross represents 1,000 victims of the drug violence in Mexico, where 50,000 people have been killed or disappeared in the drug wars. Sicilia, a mystical Catholic poet who is a national hero in Mexico, turned to activism after drug traffickers murdered his 24-year-old son last year.
The death of his son inspired Sicilia to pen an anguished manifesto that was published in Mexico’s leading political weekly, said Rubén Martínez, Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature & Writing in the Department of English, who is helping organize the event at LMU.
“Sicilia invoked la madre (mother) as Mexicans often do, using it as a metaphor,” said Martínez. “Sicilia wrote that ‘We are up to our mother in this suffering (Estamos hasta la madre); we can take it no more; it has violated the most profound and sacred spaces of our spirit.’ ”
The huge Mexican immigrant population in Los Angeles feels the impact of the violence in the most personal way, through the death of loved ones back home, cross-border extortion and the impossibility of being able to visit family because of the lack of security. At LMU, students and staff have experienced many such heartbreaking stories, said Martínez.
The message Javier Sicilia brings is simple: the responsibility for the violence resides on both sides of the border—and so does the solution for it, he said. This summer, Sicilia will return to the United States to lead a caravan across America, from San Diego to Washington, D.C.
At LMU Wednesday, Sicilia will meet with students and staff at 10 a.m., with the procession starting at 11:15 a.m. from Sacred Heart Chapel, followed by an assembly and speech in St. Roberts Auditorium on campus at 11:30 a.m.