Last sum­mer, the eyes of the Mex­i­can peo­ple were fixed upon Javier Sicil­ia, a poet, colum­nist, and the spokesman of a new social move­ment, the Move­ment for Peace with Jus­tice and Dig­ni­ty. As Sicil­ia and his fel­low activists toured through Mex­i­co in a ​“Car­a­van for Peace,” they called for fun­da­men­tal polit­i­cal and social reforms and for a rad­i­cal reassess­ment of Mex­i­can (and U.S.) drug poli­cies. In August, he will lead the Car­a­van from San Diego to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Hope is always an opening to the possibility of something miraculous happening, to something happening that allows for the transformation in the hearts of human beings, to allow for life to change.

Sicil­ia was pro­pelled into his new role when his son Juane­lo, 24, was mur­dered in Temix­co, More­los, on March 28, 2011. Juane­lo is but one of tens of thou­sands of Mex­i­cans who have lost their lives to the ram­pant vio­lence that has gripped Mex­i­co in recent years. In the wake of his son’s death, Sicil­ia wrote his last poem, which began, ​“The world is no longer wor­thy of the word.” He has no inten­tion of writ­ing poet­ry again.

Pri­or to Juanelo’s death, Sicil­ia was a writer at Pro­ce­so, an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine not unlike In These Times, based in Mex­i­co City.

On April 28, Pro­ce­so jour­nal­ist Regi­na Mar­tinez was mur­dered in Xala­pa, Ver­acruz. Accord­ing to author­i­ties, she was found in her bath­room with signs of ​“heavy blows to her face and body.” In These Times spoke to Sicil­ia ear­li­er that month, when he was vis­it­ing Chicago.

What is your assess­ment of U.S. drug policy?

It has led to a war in Mex­i­co that has cost us almost 60,000 lives, more than 18,000 miss­ing and 230,000 dis­placed. And these num­bers keep growing.

How does the cri­sis fac­tor into Mexico’s upcom­ing elections?

As we say in the Move­ment for Peace with Jus­tice and Dig­ni­ty, these are the elec­tions of ignominy. There can’t be valid elec­tions in a coun­try with 60,000 deaths, with near­ly all crimes com­mit­ted with impuni­ty, with areas of the coun­try com­plete­ly Balkanized.

What role do the social move­ments of Mex­i­co play in the elections?

The two move­ments with trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial are the Zap­atis­tas and the Move­ment for Peace. The Zap­atista move­ment is besieged by the mil­i­tary, and the Move­ment for Peace is at risk of being dis­man­tled by the absence of media atten­tion, and by the scorn of Mexico’s polit­i­cal class who con­sid­er us a peb­ble in their shoe.

When you say that ​“the Zap­atista move­ment is besieged,” what do you mean?

It’s try­ing to sur­vive in hand­cuffs, local­ized and enclosed. The state of war that Mex­i­co is in gives the state the pre­text to declare that we have a nation­al emer­gency and need to con­trol the social move­ments, the polit­i­cal move­ments, the ones that are tru­ly legit­i­mate and impor­tant for the life of the nation, like the Zap­atista movement.

What can peo­ple in the Unit­ed States do to sup­port the Move­ment for Peace with Jus­tice and Dignity?

If the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States were to take notice of what is hap­pen­ing, they could put pres­sure on the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, or who­ev­er comes next, to change the cur­rent, absolute­ly failed poli­cies. When oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties have been pro­posed, like legal­iz­ing drugs, con­trol­ling guns and attack­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, the U.S. gov­ern­ment hasn’t want­ed to try them. Instead they respond to vio­lence with more violence.

What are you hop­ing to achieve with the Car­a­van north of the border?

First, to raise con­scious­ness of the cost that this war is hav­ing on our polit­i­cal life, our nation­al life. Fam­i­lies are being destroyed, as in my case. There is a large num­ber of peo­ple who are in the Unit­ed States ille­gal­ly not because they want to be, but because there is no longer any secu­ri­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties and they have been tar­get­ed by vio­lence. But they get here, and they are not secure here either. They are iso­lat­ed. They are refugees, depend­ing on the kind­ness of safe houses.

What role do artists and writ­ers play in social movements?

An impor­tant role. The two great social move­ments of the last 20 years in Mex­i­co, the Zap­atis­tas and the Move­ment for Peace, are both the prod­uct of a poet­ic dis­course. Sub­co­man­dante Mar­cos is a poet. The pow­er of the Zap­atis­tas is root­ed in the man­ner in which that man was able to trans­late social demands into poet­ry, and break through the uni­lat­er­al dis­course of the polit­i­cal elites – a fun­da­men­tal change in the nation­al con­scious­ness was achieved. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Move­ment for Peace dis­rupts the one-sided polit­i­cal dis­course – it breaks it. And this has to do with the struc­tures of cul­ture, of poet­ry. These move­ments have their own poet­ry. And they reju­ve­nate the life of the coun­try, at least at the dis­cur­sive lev­el. What’s need­ed is for these dis­cours­es to become incar­nate in terms of real jus­tice, peace and dig­ni­ty. So it’s essen­tial that the poets and the artists erupt into pub­lic life.

What role does the media play in the drug war and the Caravan?

It was thanks to the press that we were able to mobi­lize and demon­strate this new dis­course and give vis­i­bil­i­ty to the vic­tims. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, once we start­ed threat­en­ing the press with demands for the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the media, they began to erase the dis­cus­sion, to erase the vic­tims from real­i­ty. Now we almost don’t exist in the media. News­pa­pers, tele­vi­sion and radio imply by their lack of cov­er­age that we are no longer there, that the vic­tims are no longer there.

Peo­ple get tired. It’s old news.

Exact­ly. There’s no depth. They don’t report on the depth of polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion. The vic­tims dis­ap­pear because they are no longer news. Polit­i­cal dis­course freezes.

How has the Car­a­van been received in the bat­tle­ground of Mexico’s north­ern cities?

With a lot of affec­tion, a lot of respect, a lot of hope. The peo­ple there are real­ly in a state of despair, for­got­ten by the state and total­ly defense­less. When we arrived in these com­mu­ni­ties, the streets were once again full. The peo­ple in the towns came out. We did some­thing very impor­tant. We said, ​“Ladies and gen­tle­men, this is a suf­fer­ing coun­try, and we are here to embrace you.” The move­ment did some­thing that was very impor­tant for human dig­ni­ty. We have picked up vic­tims who have been reduced to pieces. Not sim­ply because nar­co-crime killed their chil­dren, but also because the gov­ern­ment crim­i­nal­ized them, because there is no jus­tice, because they are threat­ened. And many of them have become activists. Their fight, like mine, becomes the fight for oth­ers. The fight for per­son­al jus­tice becomes the fight for jus­tice in the country.

Why did you stop writ­ing poetry?

I wrote my final poem for my son. For me, poet­ry is the most sacred of the lan­guages. I write in my poem to my son, ​“El mun­do ya no es dig­no de la pal­abra” (“The world is no longer wor­thy of the word”). As Theodor Adorno said, ​“To write poet­ry after Auschwitz is bar­bar­ic.” I didn’t under­stand this until I lived through my Auschwitz. When they kill your child, it feels like Auschwitz. When one feels the pain of so many vic­tims who have died in this war, it’s an Auschwitz. It’s not about the quan­ti­ty; it’s about the inten­si­ty and the hor­ror. And in Mex­i­co, there’s an unnat­ur­al inten­si­ty. I think that ulti­mate­ly my words aren’t capa­ble of speak­ing, re-estab­lish­ing, or resus­ci­tat­ing a lan­guage degrad­ed by crime and polit­i­cal imbecility.

Are you hope­ful about the future?

I’m very pes­simistic about the prospects of mankind. There’s a blind­ness, a deaf­ness, a need to pro­tect polit­i­cal inter­ests, and a scorn for human­i­ty. I’m hard­ly opti­mistic. I have an opti­mism in the order of my faith – in a mir­a­cle. Hope is always an open­ing to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some­thing mirac­u­lous hap­pen­ing, to some­thing hap­pen­ing that allows for the trans­for­ma­tion in the hearts of human beings, to allow for life to change. But it’s a the­o­log­i­cal hope because of the real­i­ty I live in: the rot­ting of the insti­tu­tions of my coun­try. I don’t see a future.

You have some hope. If not, you wouldn’t be orga­niz­ing the Caravan.

I move a bit in this ter­ri­to­ry of the­o­log­i­cal faith and hope. It’s a hope that’s dif­fi­cult to live out because one always hopes for a hope and a faith in human beings, like the shad­ow of hope in God. There is a love­ly anec­dote about Mar­tin Luther, in which Luther is plant­i­ng a tree. One of Luther’s stu­dents approach­es him and asks, ​“What would you do if an angel of our Lord appeared before you and told you that the world would come to an end in five min­utes?” Luther respond­ed, ​“I would plant my tree.”

That is what I am doing. Hop­ing against hope, I keep try­ing to plant a tree.