Upon the homecoming from the catholically denominated spring break “holy week”, very possibly the least holy week lived in this country all year long, we find ourselves up against what seems to be a rather bored newspaper. Architectural plans are being made for a new art museum, Mexico in general and especially Guadalajara, seem to have ever worsening troubles with child obesity, one of the longer reports of the day solely to confirm that 34,000 students are indeed reattending school after the two week break, a brief mention of the earthquake in Baja California, and many dressed in white in the Tec de Monterrey to commemorate those lost in last week`s atrocities. I sit before today’s paper with an unshakable feeling that something must be missing. But oh well, let`s work with what we`ve got.The assassinations in Monterrey have been big news since their occurrence, during the mourning of it´s victims, the marches, and now during this recent pacific gesture of ‘Enough!’ In the New York Times this has been only one of many news events, often up to one or two daily, pertaining to the many wounds that a country suffers under narcopolitics. It`s an immense topic, and dangerous, as it implies becoming entangled in a web of need and excess, supply and demand, hero and villain, but at the same time brings any critical eye to another series of questions on a more concrete theme, and perhaps one easier to understand; the press. Considering that the NY Times is the most respected newspaper in the US, still, how is it that there it can contain so much more information on a plague of violence than the papers of the affected country itself? However the magazine Proceso just came out with a special edition on the Mexican drug war, glorified, as to be expected, with so many horrific images that as a photo of three heads sitting upon posts appears among the last pages one finds themselves disturbingly left without even the instinct to cringe. But from behind the blood splattered and streaming over each page the reader is offered a long deserved concrete and logical explanation of names, cartels, territories, trafficking routs, assassins and politicians which has apparently been lacking from the pages of the Informador to the moment. And among the last pages of Proceso a series of signs are shown hanging from bridges, in car windows, over cadavers of victims, posted on buildings, that can perhaps give us a small window into the enormous news-void in the most respected newspaper of Jalisco: “If you want the violence in this country to stop, you, Calderón, stop protecting the Narcos. El chapo…”
