A land where the storyteller is the story
What actually happens to the people in a country under the yoke of violence? The image of Mexico as a violent country risks ultimately becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jennifer Clement, poet, until recently president of the Mexican PEN and author of several works of creative nonfiction and in-depth reports reflects on the real violence and its shadow online.
For Mexicans today it is hard to interpret the words around us.
In these sad and crazy times we read newspapers where messages from the drug traffickers have been published right beside the real news; or in the classified section where narco messages appear in the broken thumb language of text messaging.
We read the writing on walls and on the enormous white cotton sheets covered with messages that hang from bridges and trees.
In news coverage we try to decipher letters that were pinned to kidnapped people or to dead bodies. We also try to read words actually carved into the skin of victims as if it were paper—across a belly or down an arm. We read skin graffiti.
In October 2010, after the assassination of photojournalist Luis Carlos Santiago, some narco graffiti appeared on a wall in Juárez signed by the La Linea Cartel that stated: Nosotros no matamos periodistas (We do not kill journalists). It was a highly unusual declaration.
I logged on to the Blogdelnarco to see the response to this new graffiti. Blogdelnarco is an internet site that appeared two years ago and is covering stories that the mainstream media are feeling threatened to stay away from. It is a place where all sides seem to communicate—drug traffickers, law enforcement and ordinary citizens. This controversial site contains everything from violent videos of torture and decapitations to a section on Mexican narco ballads or corridos and even narco jokes.
Regarding the graffiti that claimed We do not kill journalists written on a white wall in red spray paint to look like blood, I found 390 posts. They were not about the message itself or the violence against journalists but were 390 vitriolic and sarcastic comments about the abominable spelling and poor syntax of this graffiti.
One blogger said he was ‘ashamed by the narcos’ lack of education’ and, he continued, ‘even our narcos are Third World’.
Another stated that, ‘it is not the alphabet that kills: bullets kill’.
One person wrote emphatically that she preferred to read the messages and graffiti from the rival cartel because, ‘at least they knew how to spell’.
After I read over more than one hundred outraged comments a sheepish and mortified ‘spelling apology’ was posted, which might have been placed there by the cartel.
To this expression of regret one blogger answered, ‘You criminals are so good at killing you’ve even killed the Spanish language’.
Yes, these are sad and crazy times for Mexico. It is a country that is a victim of corruption, US drug consumption and amoral gun selling, poverty, human trafficking, and where the constant killing of journalists means that the storyteller has become the story. But we cannot think that this, that seems so specific, is Mexico. No. This is the world we are all living in.
