The Urgency of Organizing in the Young Mexican Movement Against the War on Drugs

After Eight Months of Struggle, the Death of Nepomuceno Moreno Obliges the Peace Movement to Reflect and Train Leaders


The Urgency of Organizing in the Young Mexican Movement Against the War on Drugs
By Marta Molina – 8 December, 2011 – NarcoNews

The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD, in its Spanish initials) began with six deaths in the early hours of March 28 of this year. One of them was Juan Francisco, son of the poet, Javier Sicilia. After a long road the victims began to organize and learn to work together toward the same goal: An end to the war on drugs, but there are still giant steps to take toward grassroots organizing for the movement to achieve its goal.

A series of attacks against the peace movement (or at least that’s how it considers them) in the form of harassment and even assassinations are placing obstacles that impede the next step necessary after bringing together the victims: Training in nonviolence and community organizing so that each step or decision or action undertaken leads to a sequence of actions that are initiated by the movement instead of having to react constantly to nearly inevitable tragedies.

Far from what some think, being part of the movement does not provoke as a consequence these attacks that certainly would continue happening with or without its existence. This violence has been constant for the past five years since the militarization of the drug war. That’s the reason why the movement was formed. What the movement does make possible is that these cases are now more visible, their struggles are continued and the names of the assassinated are remembered, one of the tasks of the movement since it’s beginnings.

What really can become a growing obstacle for the movement is the matter of “going from crisis to crisis,” which steals the time necessary to organize, train and implement adequate protocols for each action. Successful nonviolent resistance movements throughout history across the world have demonstrated that organizing and training their members was the key to victory.

At present, the Movement for Peace is defending a terrain that it has not yet won, and the crises impede the steps necessary for the preparation of its nonviolent troops which have been recruited since the first march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, May 5 to 9 of this year, through the Caravan of Solace to the North, in June, and the Southern Caravan, in September. …more