I have not been aware of the idea of 'flash mobs' which seems to be a decade old. Mexico is a singing and playing place where it seems popular. Here is a very elegant flashmob performance on the corner of the street where we will stay in Mexico City.
Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Monday, 26 January 2015
Ya me canse
The expression Ya Me Canse entered the vocabulary of protest in Mexico when these words, meaning "I've had enough" were uttered by the Attorney General of Mexico, after wearying of answering media questions about the murderous disappearance of forty three rural poor student teachers in September 2014.
The students had, according to a tradition, taken two local buses to ride to a protest event in Mexico City, commemorating a 1968 massacre by government of students before the Mexico City Olympic Games. Here speaks a survivor of what happened to these students in September.
Ya me canse was taken up as a cry by wider population, fed up with murders and evidence of state involvement in them in many places, or arising from the state's war on narco gangs.
Francisco Goldman's articles in the New Yorker provide useful independent insight.
There is now a website yamecanse.mx with a short video introduction.
We have no intention of involving ourselves in Mexican politics, but we visit Mexico acutely aware of the pain of the killing of many tens of thousands of innocent people in the last decade or so. We will go to places deemed safe, much safer than many cities in the United States.. but aware of the need to skirt around troubles. Aware that ordinary Mexicans mostly do not have the luxury to absent themselves from dangers. Aware of the courage of those who take a stand against the present situation.
The picture postcard is a delight, as I discover the value of pinterest for assembling information. But we do not want to wander through the tourists' postcard world unaware.
For those filled with the sporadic wild international media reporting of demonstrations in Mexico City about this here is a real account of a 'flash mob' demonstration in the Zocalo, the central square in Mexico, second largest public urban square in the world after Red Square, paved with stones that Cortes acquired by tearing down the Aztec Palace that stood there.
The students had, according to a tradition, taken two local buses to ride to a protest event in Mexico City, commemorating a 1968 massacre by government of students before the Mexico City Olympic Games. Here speaks a survivor of what happened to these students in September.
Ya me canse was taken up as a cry by wider population, fed up with murders and evidence of state involvement in them in many places, or arising from the state's war on narco gangs.
Francisco Goldman's articles in the New Yorker provide useful independent insight.
Mexico’s rural teachers colleges have a long tradition of leftist activism, but this would be the first “actividad de lucha” for most of these youths. They were to block a highway to solicit travel funds for the annual October 2nd march in Mexico City, which commemorates the 1968 massacre of student protestors in the Tlatelolco Plaza by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) government of Díaz Ordaz. In keeping with protest traditions, they would temporarily commandeer busses from private bus lines for the trip to Mexico City.Francisco Goldman, "Crisis in Mexico: The Disappearance of the FortyThree", New Yorker, OCTOBER 24, 2014
That Friday, the students left in two busses, but needed two more, which is how they ended up in the small city of Iguala. They didn’t know that the politically ambitious wife of Iguala’s mayor, José Luis Abarca, was giving a speech that evening. They also didn’t know that her brother, known as “El Molón,” was reputedly a leader of the narco-trafficking gang Guerreros Unidos, which, with the mayor, ruled over Iguala.
There is now a website yamecanse.mx with a short video introduction.
We have no intention of involving ourselves in Mexican politics, but we visit Mexico acutely aware of the pain of the killing of many tens of thousands of innocent people in the last decade or so. We will go to places deemed safe, much safer than many cities in the United States.. but aware of the need to skirt around troubles. Aware that ordinary Mexicans mostly do not have the luxury to absent themselves from dangers. Aware of the courage of those who take a stand against the present situation.
The picture postcard is a delight, as I discover the value of pinterest for assembling information. But we do not want to wander through the tourists' postcard world unaware.
For those filled with the sporadic wild international media reporting of demonstrations in Mexico City about this here is a real account of a 'flash mob' demonstration in the Zocalo, the central square in Mexico, second largest public urban square in the world after Red Square, paved with stones that Cortes acquired by tearing down the Aztec Palace that stood there.
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