Movement for Peace with Justice: Javier Sicilia Posts First Names on Drug War’s “Vietnam Wall”

The Field: Javier Sicilia Posts First Names on Drug War’s “Vietnam Wall”: "Together with human rights leader and Catholic priest Miguel Concha, the three family members of drug war martyrs held a press conference for about three dozen local, national and international reporters and cameramen, at which Sicilia said he and his Morelos neighbors would be hanging plaques on the Governor’s Palace with the names of 95 state residents killed in prohibition-related violence since January 1 of this year. They also read each name aloud; 95 human lives in 100 days, all those human lives in just one of Mexico’s less populous states. Family members of various were there, standing tall and silent, relieved, surprised, proud that something the regime promised them would never be allowed them happened today: a dignified memory of their fallen.

Many – your reporter, included – thought that Javier's declaration simply meant they would hang banners on the walls of the state government seat, but the plot would soon thicken as he and others took up a power tool and began to drill metal plates, the first with the name of Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega (1987-2011) into the grey stone visage of State power, under the glare of TV network lights (including those of NNTV)." NarcoNews