SMU 'Migration Matters' series raises questions on anti-drug fight

By Dianne Solis
Reporter

Among the many take-aways tonight at a screening of the Mexican documentary "Una Ruta Nada Santa," the Unholy Route, was an anti-drug message. The SMU audience seemed wound tight after watching a simply told narrative on the lost lives of a 15-year-old Salvadoran girl and a 30-year-old Salvadoran man in a 2010 massacre at a ranch south of the Rio Grande.

"What is really important is that we don't take drugs," Mexican film-maker Moisés Gómez said. "If we take one gram more, ...this cancer continues."

The drug cartel believed responsible for the massacre at San Fernando is never named in this heart-felt film. But many will remember that the violence was linked to the Zetas.

The event was the second in the "Migration Matters" series at SMU. To bring it home even further, SMU's Assistant Police Chief Jim Walters told the crowd a member of the SMU community had lost her husband in the narcotics-related violence now sweeping up ordinary Mexicans.

More than 50,000 have been killed in the last five years, the film-makers said. And many thousands more have disappeared and are unaccounted for, said Héctor Hugo Jiménez, the film's director and newspaper journalist.

He told the crowd he hope they disliked the documentary.

In shared rage, there might be solution.

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