Mob justice and extreme violence in Copilco Universidad — @Alcaldia_Coy @CopilcoUniv @CopilcoVecinos @manuelnegrete22

Some days ago I read a piece of news that shocked me at different levels: Three blocks away from my home, and after being “unclearly” denounced for harassing a woman, a guy was beaten to death. Several sources for this: El Diario MX: Por acosar a mujer lo golpean hasta la muerte; El Siglo de Torreón: Asesinan a hombre por presuntamente acosar a mujer en Coyoacán; Zócalo: Matan a hombre en Coyoacán; Milenio: Por presuntamente acosar a mujer, golpean y matan a hombre en CU.

Of course, when anybody cries for help, it should be our natural response (everybody’s!) to rush and try to help. However, stopping an aggression is a far cry from taking justice in our own hands and killing a guy.

Mob justice is usually associated with peri-urban or rural areas, with higher socioeconomic margination and less faith in authority. Usually, lynching mobs generate a very bad and persistent name to wherever said acts of brutality happened. While I don’t want to say we are better than…, it shocks me even more to have found this kind of brutality in the midst of the Universitary neighbourhood, at a very busy pedestrian street, at all times (this happened somewhat after noon on Thursday) full of teachers and students.

Not only that. The guy who was attacked was allegedly a homeless guy, in his mid 20s. Some reports say that after the beating took place, he was still alive, but when the emergency services arrived (30 minutes later!) he had died. We are literally less than 200m away from Facultad de Medicina, and hundreds of students and teachers walk there. Was nobody able to help? Did nobody feel the urge to help?

If this guy was a homeless person, quite probably he was weak from malnutrition, maybe crossed with some addictions, and that’s what precipitated his death. But, again — This raises other suspicions. Maybe he was pointed to by some of the store owners that wanted to drive him away from their premises? (he was attacked inside a commercial passageway, not in the open street)

Also… While there is not much information regarding this attack, I’m quite amazed almost no important local (or even national!) media have picked this up. We are less than 1Km away from the central offices of Grupo Imágen! This is no small issue. Remember the terrible circus raised around the Tláhuac lynches in ~2005 (and how Tláhuac still carries that memory almost 15 years later)? What is the difference here?

No attack on women should be tolerated quietly. But no lynchmob should be given a blind eye to. This deeply worries and saddens me.