Tijuana: The casual atrocities of a war

The casual atrocities of a war

I am not numb to the violence. I am not immune to the killings.  Yet, there are many, and they are endless, but I am not numb.  I am overwhelmed, stunned into silence, stunned into inaction.  I cannot write another story of a killing.  Or I cannot today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.  

I have described the killings as actions, defined by players and reasons, applying logic to a slaughter. This cell or that group.  Nicknames and dates, brief, often ill sources histories of men, and women whose songs are sometimes played in bars in Tijuana, and San Diego.  To apply business rules to the killing is to create order where there appears to be none.  And there is value in this, to not know, is to be ignorant.  If you want to walk in this world, you need your guide. 

There is a place you reach.  I have read it in the works of Bowden, and Grillo.  You begin to question yourself, lose your grasp.  The killings do not make sense in the way they used to, before you immersed yourself.  They are simply blood, and pain, and death.  They are simply the way things are, the way things have become.  I see it in myself now. 

July 9th: A body appears in Laurel, with a plastic bag wrapped around the head, half naked, and signs of torture, ligature marks on his hands, bruises across the body. 

July 8th:  Two bodies found in Ejido Diaz Ordaz in Ensenada, the bodies are bound, and have been executed, in the style as the 4 found in Ensenada 10 days ago.

July 6th: A body is found, decomposing in a well, in Valle De Palmas.

I have described the killings with the feelings they leave in me, intimate, broken, feelings.  I have described the process of death.  The aftermath of bodies laying in the street.  I have conflated and confused and mixed up my own personal life into the process.  I have taken myself into the killings to give me perspective, and I have sometimes lost any perspective I had.  

It's summer, and I'm in parties, tanned and relaxed, in coffee shops and lounges, and new restaurants and I cannot always keep them from me. I don't always want to.  People don't like these things, they don't interest them. They have music, they have drinks, they have affairs, sex, a welcome touch, or wanting gaze from across the table, and I have these things to.  But, I cannot look away.  And I cannot help enough to heal.  I've come to that place. 

Sources: AFN Tijuana