An Open Letter from an Artist to a Mexican Crime Cartel Boss
Source: In These Times
Senor,
Lord of the heavens and the beaches, the highways and the trailers:
1. I have never met you and I truly hope I never do. I am one of the hundreds of thousands of post-national Mexicans whose umbilical cord to my homeland has been severed by you. I don’t look forward to my decreasing visits to Mexico. I have lost my country of origin to violence and fear — to the violence you helped create and the fear you continue to perpetrate.
2. I haven’t had the opportunity to cry for Mexico. I haven’t had the time to cry for the 30,000 “documented cases” of people killed by organized crime in the past three years — Mexicans killed by other Mexicans like you, not to mention the thousands more who have simply vanished in the Arizona desert, lost in the bi-national sex trade or buried in some mass grave.