On Benito Juárez’s Birthday: What Would He Think Of Mexico?

March 21 commemorates the birth of former Mexican President Benito Juárez, a man who clearly outlined the rights of his country’s inhabitants.

• What did he think about respect?  Respecting the rights of others is peace.
• What did he think about principles? Men are nothing, principles are everything.
• What did he think about democracy? Democracy is the destiny of humanity: freedom is its indestructible arm.

History has taught us many lessons about what one country can live through.  Now, it seems like only a dream that at one time the principles of respect, peace, democracy and liberty existed.  Mexico has become a slave to itself, no stranger is destroying it.

From Mexico’s very inside comes self-destruction and the collapse of its principles, security, and, most importantly, the lives of its inhabitants, which worsen everyday.  The war that lives in Mexico today is a war that affects everyone, but it’s not everyone’s war.  Civilians live wondering what will happen to themselves and their families, as they are the victims of those who fight only for their own selfish interests and by their own rules, robbing and stripping innocent people of their most precious treasure: life.

The pain, grief, and threat of death have created citizens in crisis, people without hopes or dreams, without options or alternatives or expectations for change.

• How do we remind them what respect is?
• How do we reclaim the right to be alive?
• How do we demand security for our families?
• How do we teach them these principles?

This is not our Mexico, for we must bring back the struggle that we lived through before.  Freedom is a right that is exercised, not given away. Mexico deserves all that it once achieved and no one has the right to take it away.