Peaceful action

The end of a busy week at work, but one in which there have been many positives - its the challenges in life that make you learn the most!  I’ve got to deal with some interesting issues and tricky situations which I will hopefully be able to draw upon in the future.

In the evening I watched an interesting edition of Channel Four’s Unreported World about the growing violence in Cancun, one of Mexico’s main tourist resorts.  Its driven by drug traffickers and extortionists and many innocent people, including children have been murdered.  The film showed one woman who had lost her 21 year old son to extortionists.  Like so many of the murders, it remains unresolved.  To remember him she made an embroidery about him and his life.  For the last nine years she has gone on to make an embroidery about every person murdered by extortionists in Cancun - so far she has made 80.  Each week she goes to the park and hangs up the embroidery as a line of flags.  Its beautiful and eye catching and causes people to stop, read, talk and listen about what is happening.  Some people stop and help her to embroider. She explained how she was trying to make the violence visible, to ensure there was a memory of what was happening - ‘without memory there is no truth and without truth we cannot have justice’ she said,…’in this little corner of the world humanity has not succumbed’.  I thought it very moving and a great reminder about what a difference we can all make doing only small things.  Its so easy to feel powerless and yet simple actions can empower great emotions and action.