Mexican President Felipe Calderon made an impassioned defense of his military assault on organized crime in an unusual public face-off on Thursday with his biggest critics: sometimes weeping relatives of murder victims who blame the government for the bloodshed.
Poet Javier Sicilia, who lost his son to drug violence in March, opened the publicly televised exchange by demanding that Calderon take the military off the streets and apologize to victims for a failed strategy that he and others say have caused more than 35,000 deaths since Calderon took office in late 2006.
“Where are the benefits of this strategy?” Sicilia asked Calderon, ticking off a list of cases where people have gone unpunished, from drug violence to a 2009 day-care fire that killed 49 children.
“You don’t have anything to show us, and we are not politicians, we are citizens,” he said.
The meeting at Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Castle was emotionally charged, with a mother breaking down in tears as she demanded results into the investigation of her four missing sons, and a relative of two slaying victims of drug traffickers holding back tears while he asked for an update in their case.
Sicilia said that Calderon is “obligated to apologize to the nation and in particular to the victims.” Surrounded by grim-faced top Cabinet members and the first lady, the president pointed his finger and pounded the table to emphasize that with criminal gangs seeking to control Mexico, it would have been irresponsible not to act.
“I agree that we must apologize for not protecting the lives of victims, but not for having acted against the criminals,” Calderon said. “One thing I regret is not having sent [the military] before.”
Several people have been arrested for the March 28 slaying of Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco Sicilia, a college student who authorities say was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Calderon repeated what has become the mantra for his administration: Criminals, not the government, are causing the violence. “Francisco was killed by criminals, not federal forces,” he said.
Some saw the public confrontation as benefiting Calderon, giving him a wide audience for his message, while Sicilia’s proposals to clean up institutions and attack corruption are things the government says it is already doing.
However, Calderon said he could not wait to clean up institutions before launching an attack.
“If you can stop a crime and you only have stones, then you do it with stones,” he said.
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