Lately I’ve been doing alot of thinking, pondering actually. I know where I come from, I know our history. I know about the Aztecs, Hernan Cortez, and the Spanish Peninsulares. I know our politics, religion, sociology and the statistics of all three. I know about psychology, poverty, pain and dispair. I can tell you all about our corruption, greed, transfers of wealth, deception, manipulation and our ‘enemies within’, the narcos.

I know the narcos now hold the power to manipulate, corrupt, terrorize, and destroy. Death is their friend and executions are games. I know they kill eachother and others, both friends and foe, male, females, any and all. What I can’t wrap my finger around is why, or maybe what I don’t understand is how.

Everyday I open the newspaper to these images and everyday I open the paper to news about what type of monsters are leaving behind these scenes of torture and sadistic destruction, our lost generation.

The average age of a narco sicario, or executioner, is 23. How did it come to this? As a parent, I try to imagine what type of childhood could possibly create such evil. What would it take to cause one not only to take another life, but to torture it first and butcher it after?

Does it stem from their parents? Where they abused as children by cruel hands? Where they left hungry, scared, in pain and broken? Where they never loved, never taught to love and respect?

Or did society deal and losing hand? Have the injustices passed down to generation after generation simply become too much? Can poverty, lack of education, and loss of faith cause such hate?

I need to know HOW WE GOT HERE and more importantly WHERE ARE WE HEADING?

I can’t help but wonder if all the narcos where to suddenly disappear; if there were no more killings, corruption, bullets, beheadings, extortions, kidnappings, if it all just went away and we were left with nothing but peace and tranquility....Would we be free, could we move on without scars?

If the we win the war against drugs, will we really be winners; and if so, at what cost?

We have become desensitized: man, woman, and child alike. No longer to we retract in fear and disgust at such images, instead we make comments like: He deserved it, just another narco, or just another corrupt politician who sold out our country.

We no longer question if the unknown body void of limbs had a family, we assume it too was evil and deserving of whatever pain and suffering it received.

We no longer stop to wonder if ‘it’ was innocent. We no longer feel pain for it’s family or name. We no longer care.

What will become of future generations? What will become of children born to parents who no longer recoil when facing such images, to parents who no longer feel for mankind?

Will our future generations be able to draw the line? Will they be able to see good and bad, or like us, will every deceased be found ‘guilty as charged’ pre and post mortum? Will they ever remember life before the war on drugs? Will we?

Is there really a difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, good and evil, or is the monster in each and everyone us, just waiting to be set free? Are we simply products of our environment? HOW DID WE GET TO THIS?

Are there ever winners in any war? Will we ever be the same?
WHERE ARE WE HEADING?