Thursday, October 21, 2010

Marisol Valles Garcia - Mexico's Joan of Arc?

My heart ached when I read this, because you just know it is not going to end well:

She's only 20 years old, has a baby son and is still in college -- but now she's also the top cop in one of the most dangerous towns in Mexico.

Marisol Valles Garcia was sworn in Monday as police chief of the border city of Praxedis
Guadalupe Guerrero -- which has been plagued by horrific drug-trade bloodshed -- after literally everyone else considered for the job refused to take it out of terror of becoming the next target.

"We're all afraid in Mexico now. We can't let fear beat us," said the brave, or foolhardy, Valles Garcia after being sworn in to protect the 9,149-resident town -- where eight people were slaughtered in the past week alone.

"I took the risk because I want my son to live in a different community to the one we have today. I want people to be able to go out without fear, as it was before," said the petite new chief -- who amazingly won't carry a weapon in her new job.

Praxedis is part of the Juarez valley region, where the 2,500 drug-related murders so far this year have made it the most violent region in Mexico.

Will her youth and femininity protect her? Or is she doomed to be a martyr, with her death being the rallying cry across Mexico to end the rule of the drug lords once and for all?

Pity the Mexicans, where the only citizens willing to stand up and fight evil are young girls, barely beyond their teenage years.

Joan of Arc won many battles (including lifting the siege of Orleans in just nine days), doing the work that lesser men feared to do, before being captured and burned at the stake. Will Marisol Valles Garcia suffer a similar fate?

I will pray for her. But it will take more than that to save her, and Mexico...

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