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| Photo by: Cuartoscuro |
By Lourdes, Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat
This article is part of a digital project by Animal Político called “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) released in late 2015.
This article is part of a digital project by Animal Político called “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) released in late 2015.
I’ve been a witness to
the “levantamientos” (kidnappings)
and deaths of youths in my neighborhood, some of them with whom I grew up
with. Among curfews, abductions,
kidnappings, murders, shootouts, and death, everyday life develops in my
neighborhood.
One of the most violent
nights left five dead, all of them youths.
Now, it’s a militarized place. Now,
you just don’t protect yourself from “the habits” but also of the Mexican Army
and the police who extort and threaten.
We have learned to live
in fear, we have reshaped violence and created strategies to survive the terror
that causes us to live in a place without security and justice.
In the block,
solidarity networks were strengthened. Even
in some places, directories were developed with the phone numbers of neighbors
in case an emergency occurs.
I remember after the
killing of four youths in one night at the hands of organized crime, cardboard
signs appeared in busy public places, like in sport fields, announcing a
curfew. The message was more or less as
follows: “To whoever comes out after 8:00, you’re fucking dead.”
Faced with this threat,
every night, mothers and some fathers would be seen pilgrimaging throughout the
empty streets, on their way to pick up their children at the bus stop. They would say: “I’m going for him, I don’t want
them to confuse him.”
I also remember hearing
from people that they would have to be very careful when driving a car in the
town since any behavior that was read as an insult to “the habit” could cost us
our lives. So then the drivers knew that
if there was a car in front of them driving at a very slow speed, they knew
that they should try to pass them, or much less honk the horn to pressure them
to increase their speed. The playing of
loud music in cars even stopped, especially of narcocorridos.
