Movement for Peace with Justice: Ciudad Juarez: The Long (and Bloody) Road to June 10

Ciudad Juarez: The Long (and Bloody) Road to June 10 - Salem-News.Com: "On June 10, hundreds if not thousands of people from Mexican non-governmental organizations are expected to gather in Ciudad Juarez to sign a pact that organizers say is the first step in bringing a halt to the so-called drug war and putting Mexico on a new road to peace, justice and democracy.

“Paradoxically, Ciudad Juarez, this city broken by institutional abandonment, by a neo-liberal economic policy and by the disdain of the government for decades, could be the hopeful beginning of this citizen movement that is so needed at the national level in order to provoke change, to initiate a new stage in the life of the country,” wrote Proceso columnist Jose Gil Olmos.

In truth, no one can say with any certainty what will come of the movement inspired by poet Javier Sicilia, who transformed the murder of his son in the state of Morelos last March, into a national crusade for reform and national reconstruction that’s stirred the imagination of many Mexicans.

But a trip back in history reveals a trajectory that leads straight to Ciudad Juarez.

The date, June 10, is an important one in the Mexican memory. On June 10, 1971, a big squad of goons known as the halcones, trained and coordinated by the Mexican military, viciously attacked a pro-democracy march of 10,000 students in Mexico City, killing dozens and injuring many others."