Unfortunately, Mexico is a country of discrimination, even among Mexicans themselves. I was at the Congress when they were discussing the Amnesty Bill. [The Amnesty Bill, passed by the House of Deputies in December 2019, would provide an amnesty to nonviolent offenders, including woman who had abortions or the doctors who performed them, political prisoners, indigenous people who did not receive due process in their language, and in cases of minor theft without battery. Its passage is pending in the Senate.] I tried to explain that someone who has lived comfortably, who had his parents, who had money, and then one day goes out and kills someone is a different case to someone whose environment is violent, and who has to survive. You cant judge them the same.

And thats where the amnesty comes in. What are we going to leave to the younger generations? I decided to get out of the gang world because I didnt want my children to inherit my problems. We need to get rid of the stigma that a person with tattoos or a shaved head is bad, that the dark-skinned person doesnt deserve to sit next to me because Im white.

Look: there is a crisis of power. I have the power to kill someone because I want to, and I do it. There is a crisis of impunity. You see my cell phone; its worth $25,000 pesos and you decide to steal it because you know it wont cost you that much. Why?

Because even if the police catch me, they wont respect the chain of custody. Then theyll take me to the public prosecutor who wont do their job right, and then the judge will see that they didnt follow due process and let me go, even though Im guilty. But what if the police do their job, the prosecutor does theirs, the judge does theirs, and what you thought was going to be cheap winds up costing you a lot.

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The War on Drugs Victimized a Generation. Now We Have to Give Them a Future. - Jacobin magazine