Fear in Monterrey

By Ceser Manjarrez

The day I left a military vehicle was parked right at the entrance. And not only that, the place was crawling with soldiers, patrol cars and members of the federal police. Inside yet more security paced the hall of what is, in reality, a small bus station, the bus station of Monterrey. "You have to be kidding?" I said to myself.

While waiting to catch my bus, federal police started frisking a couple of men sitting in front of me. They protested their innocence while members of the police looked at them sceptically, people in the waiting room looked on with a mix of curiosity and fear.

I glanced over noting their clothes, baggy trousers and T-shirts. More tellingly they were darker skinned. Criminalised for looking like a homie? I thought. When the fuss had died down the men got to their feet and started making their way out, if their idea was to leave they were sorely mistaken. At the exit they were detained by the federal police and taken away. Where to? to what? I boarded my bus.

The night before saw, until recently, the most deaths registered in a Mexican city, my city of Monterrey, a grand total of 35. We are outdoing ourselves, not just in our ability to generate violence, but also to tolerate it.

A week before I had arrived in the capital of Nuevo Leon with Javier Sicilia's Caravan of Peace, where I was filming for a documentary. On arriving to the city, those travelling with me on the press bus were taken back by the heavy police presence in the streets. We were late arriving, it was past nine in the evening, and turn out in the main square was disappointingly low. I admit that I felt let down. In my head I had imagined that the city would have shown its discontent by filling the streets.

The event was followed by a march to the Attorney General's office and a demonstration outside. Luck was not on my side. Both my camera cards were full and I needed to go back to the bus. I stepped away from the main group and began walking. After going around 100 meters I was taken over by an unpleasant feeling: the streets of central Monterrey were empty. A tense loneliness when one is walking alone carrying a camera on a tripod. The sensation becomes worse when you realise that in reality you are not really alone. They are watching you. Little by little you realise that their eyes on you. Those taxi drivers who slowed down as the march went by didn't do so to offer you a ride, they were observing your every move.

That night I did not sleep with the rest of the group, my brother came to pick me up. As we were driving through the streets of Monterrey I expressed my disappointment with the turnout. "People were waiting from five," he responded. "If they had arrived at the time they said they would, there would have been more people." He drove without hiding his anxiety at being in the streets at night. "The streets are empty from ten," he stated. What I thought was a lack of interest had now become almost a heroic act, everything had an explanation: fear.

Translated by Ela Stapley