A divided society that forgets its troubles

Masks for sale in Chilpancingo (Shutterstock)
The conflicted Mexican state of Guerrero saw the decade out with some of the country’s — and the world’s, grimmest figures — at least 544 people disappeared in the last five years, most famously the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa teacher’s college. Its homicide rate has been among the highest in the country, as a result of the ongoing conflict between crime syndicates that operate and dominate society with apparent impunity.
The seasonal fiestas of the holiday period began on December 22 in the state’s capital, Chilpancingo, with the 194th Paseo del Pendón, which traditionally marks the beginning of Christmas and New Year celebrations.
The Pendón, which features a parade of dancing groups from different parts of the state, has been held in Chilpancingo since 1825, when it was established by Mexico’s then-President Nicolas Bravo. It is a rich collection point for diverse indigenous, Spanish colonial, and modern Mexican traditions, all slung together in a city-wide, 24-hour party that seems simultaneously ordered and frenzied.
Among its many features are fighting tigers straining at chains, big-bustled old women passing out shots of mezcal, whip-cracking farmers called “tlalocoleros” in the local language and sword-swinging children.
Collectively speaking, Guerrero arguably has good reason to party hard like this, and there’s no doubt that the annual festive event offers some release from a social reality in which corruption, violence, insecurity, and loss of life are constant features.
Crime in the Americas is often associated with cocaine, but in 2019 it was the marked fall in the price fetched by the opium poppy, a staple crop of many small farmers in remote parts of the state, that proved significant. The price drop — related to a rise in the use of fentanyl, an opiate much stronger than heroin and which doesn’t require opium for its production — put the farmers in the crossfire of conflicts associated with the cross-border heroin trade. Crime syndicates have been competing in their attempt to dominate new illicit activities and that has brought violence.
This has resulted in the forced displacement of hundreds of people, among them Marisela Castulo Guzmán, who with around 300 of her neighbours in the mountainous La Sierra region of Guerrero, was forced to flee her village in November 2018.
On the day of the Pendón, she was still sheltering in an adopted town with her young daughter. It appeared that the Christmas-New Year period would again be spent away from home. Several of her fellow desplazados, “displaced people,” have headed north to attempt to seek asylum at the US border. That is a Herculean task considering the many restrictions placed on people from Central America, Mexico, Brazil, and a number of African countries, who currently live in border camps and who are waiting for an ever-dwindling opportunity to cross.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that 2019 saw an uptick in the number of applications for asylum in the United States from Guerrero.
For all this, there is no doubt there are many Guerrerenses working to tell positive stories about their home, to show resilience and to fight corruption and impunity and the deadly violence that has accompanied it.
Amapola Periodismo, named for the opium poppy that dominates so many narratives about Guerrero, is a newly-formed independent media outlet that is seeking out stories of peace-making and community-building, to combat the daily dirge of brutality and blood, and to fight its normalisation.
On the week of the 2019 Pendón, they introduced readers to the fight of an 11-year-old girl to be included in the parade among the whip-cracking “tlacololeras”, as well as a group of dramatists, artists and psychologists seeking to “combat bullets with theatre”, by teaching theatre skills and putting on productions with young people from peripheral neighbourhoods of Chilpancingo and other neglected parts of Guerrero State.
With significant problems to overcome in Guerrero, the 2019 Pendón was nonetheless an event where resilience, joy and local pride showed itself in abundance, to carry the people of this troubled region into the New Year. In even the most fractured societies, there is hope. That is a lesson that we can all welcome.