By Scout Finch

The dates March 23 – 25 have been circled on my calendar for weeks. They mark the days that the family of Brad Will will be in Oaxaca. My days are full, there is a lot to do, but mentally I am preparing for their fast approaching visit. I never met the Indymedia journalist, I arrived in Oaxaca just days after he was killed, but his death and his family’s visit affect my life in many ways. Of the five witnesses that will be testifying in front of the Federal Attorney General on behalf of the family some are my friends, and another, the only family I have here in Oaxaca. All five of these witnesses are aware of the danger they face in testifying; the events of this past year in Oaxaca have left little doubt as to the danger one faces when speaking out against the State Government. Each witness has been subjected to harassment and intimidation by various government agents; one witness was forced into hiding and their houses are under constant surveillance… yet they are all willing to take the risk now, and they do it in honour and in memory of Brad.

Like I said before, I have never met the Will family, but I am imagining the trauma they will go through during their visit here. Like them, I am a foreigner here in Mexico, like them I come from a place where conceptions and expectations of responsible government, the law and the justice system are different. I come from a country where death isn’t quite so common, where faith isn’t quite as strong, and the everyday horrors that people face in Mexico are merely images we see on the television. Our ability to cope, our ability to understand the death of a child, the death of a son, a daughter, a sister, a brother, are distinct, only because government sanctioned assassinations are anomalies in our countries. Without living in Mexico there is no context for us to understand the system here; a system where corrupt politicians are able to manipulate investigations, and state attorneys build cases around hypotheses aimed only at absolving the state of any wrongdoing.

So I am worried, because at this point, I’m not sure just how much of the state prosecutor’s story Brad’s family believe, or how much, for that matter, they believe the stories in the press. All I know is that they are coming to demand a just and impartial investigation into their son’s murder and to ensure that those responsible for his death are held accountable. I can only continue to hope that the compassion and the integrity their son displayed here in Oaxaca is a reflection of the kind of people they are.

On March 21, we are scheduled to have a private meeting among the witnesses, the family, the lawyers and the translators, before retracing Brad’s last steps from the Calicanto Barricade. When the day finally arrives, we set up the video cameras and the audio equipment under the shadow of 27 black crosses, painted with the names of the 27 fallen activists who have died during the ten-month struggle. In the centre of the room, the cross that reads Bradley Roland Will has two red flowers tied under his name. No one is speaking very much, just sitting quietly on the wooden benches arranged in a semicircle. We wait.