NPR: Artists React To Mexico’s Drug War With Music And Poetry

Astrid Hadad performs in Mexico. (Betto Arcos / NPR)

By Betto Arcos.

Javier Sicilia is a novelist and a poet. In 2009, he was awarded Mexico’s prestigious Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize. This September, he read a poem dedicated to his son, Juan Francisco, at a rally:

There is nothing else to say
 The world is not worthy of the word
 They drowned it, deep inside of us
As they asphyxiated you
As they ripped your lungs apart
And the pain does not leave me
 All we have is a world
 For the silence of the just
 Only for your silence and my silence, Juanelo.

This was the last poem Sicilia wrote. His son was murdered in the central state of Morelos in March, along with six other people, by members of a drug cartel.