Tijuana.- "I don't want to grow up among bullets," "40,000 dead and counting" or simply "No more blood in Tijuana."
The signs captured the anguish, anger and hope of an estimated 300 people who demonstrated Sunday at one of the city's main intersections, part of a nationwide march against violence.
Noted writer and journalist Javier Sicilia had called on Mexicans everywhere to organize against violence following the recent murder of his 24-year-old son in Cuernavaca.
The protest began at 3 p.m. at the Independencia glorieta, in the heart of the financial district in the Río zone, and ended two hours later. Some participants shared stories about their experience with violence while others read poems. At one point they sang the Mexican national anthem.
The sign that read "40,000 dead and counting" referred to the number of people who have been killed across the country since President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug traffickers four years ago.
A university professor and poet, Víctor Soto, said he participated because he wants the situation in the country to change, most of all for the new generations.
"The news stories are shocking. You can't sleep when you see that they are digging up hundreds of bodies, that hundreds of people have disappeared, that there are so many people in pain; you can't forget, you can't stop thinking about it, you have to live with this," he said.
For filmmaker and member of the artistic collective Bulbo, Paola Rodríguez, who was carrying a poster that read, "The city is the sum of all of us," the government's strategy against organized crime is wrong.
"To fight this with more violence doesn't make sense and will cause more pain," she said. "What I believe is that in your daily life you can begin to rebuild the social fabric that's torn. For example, have a good relationship with your neighbors, with the community, participate more."
Organizers had used social media to invite citizens' groups and activists to the demonstration and were expecting a greater turnout than materialized.
"I don't know what else has to happen so people will react," Rodríguez added.
Social anthropologist Víctor Clark, who attended the event, said one key element has been missing in the crime crisis Mexico is weathering: The active participation of society outside of Mexico City.
"It's just beginning," said Clark, who is the director of the Binational Center for Human Rights.
While some motorists honked their car horns in the glorieta seemingly in support of the demonstration, others waited in a long line that stretched to the Tijuana Cultural Center to cross the border.
Liliana Rosales, 54, a decorator, and her husband, Alejandro Garza, 64, a veterinarian, were participating in a demonstration for the first time. They said they were fed up with the violence, fed up of being afraid to step out into the street.
"We don't need for someone in our family to be killed for us to protest. No, we need to prevent," Rosales said. "We have to make the politicians understand that we are fed up with what is happening."
Garza suggested that the government has not done enough to stop the violence.
"You don't have to be a Sherlock Holmes to know who is involved in drug trafficking," Garza said. "Yes, many people have been caught: killers, drug dealers. But I have not seen one money launderer, one banker, one corrupt industrialist caught. The money from drug trafficking is not under the mattress, it's in the banks. Fighting trafficking the way it's being done is only bringing more violence."
A few feet from the couple was 76-year-old Victoria Vela, who also expressed that she was "fed up with so many orphans, so many kidnappings, seeing so many families destroyed."
She said that no one in her family had been a victim, even so, she said the violence hurt her as a Mexican citizen.
At 5 p.m. the demonstrators began to leave. They left behind a few fliers with the image of a blood stain and the words "No more."
Omar.millan@sandiegored.com
