Pubdate: Sat, 25 Aug 2012
Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX)
Copyright: 2012 Austin American-Statesman
Website: http://www.statesman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/32
Author: Ciara O'Rourke
Cited: Caravan for Peace: http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/

GROUP PROTESTS AMERICAN DRUG POLICIES AT CAPITOL

Ricardo Rivera was watching TV in his bedroom in Monterrey when he
heard gunshots.

Fifteen armed men stormed his house wearing hoods, ordering him, his
brother and his mother to the floor. They filled a backpack with money
and jewels, beating Rivera and his brother, Roy. The bulletproof vests
they wore bore the symbol of the police.

When they left, they took Roy Rivera with them.

"My brother never came back," Ricardo Rivera told a crowd gathered at
the Capitol on Saturday.

The 18-year-old's cheeks were wet with tears. He was holding a sign
with a picture of his brother: "Donde esta Roy?"

Rivera is among more than 100 people traveling from San Diego to
Washington whose family members disappeared or have been killed in
Mexico. Led by well-known Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, the Caravan for
Peace with Justice and Dignity has snaked across the country to
protest American drug policies and the violence the movement says they
fuel.

Sicilia decried the war on drugs as one of the most absurd in the
history of the world.

In 2011, his son and six of his college friends were slain in
connection to drug violence.

"It's a completely failed and erroneous war, and it's opening up the
doors to hell," he said in Spanish.

American prisons are disproportionately filled with African Americans
and Latinos, Sicilia said. He urged the U.S. government to stop
criminalizing drug use and reconsider it as a public health issue. And
the United States needs to take responsibility for the violence beyond
its borders, he said.

"Don't wait for them to come for you because it will be too
late."

Luis Hernandez Jr. drove up from San Marcos with his mother to attend
the rally. His father went missing while on a trip in Mexico in 2010.
He said he wants to know what happened. He said he wants justice.

But in every case of a missing or murdered person in Mexico,
injustice, corruption and impunity reign, Rivera said.

"That's why we're working today, so what happened to us won't happen
to you," Rivera said.

In Spanish, the crowd chanted its support: "You are not
alone."

Photos of family members murdered or missing lay on the ground in
front of them. In one portrait, a girl wore a pearl necklace, her hair
combed, the corners of her glossed lips slightly upturned.

She disappeared in September 2004.
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