(MENAFN- AFP) Mexican poet Javier Sicilia has led massive marches against the war on drugs since his son's murder and a "peace caravan" across the United States, making him a top voice against violence in his country.Two years later, the bearded man with the cowboy hat can no longer write a verse and admits that the weight of the grief caused by so much violence has exhausted him, but he refuses to give up his cause."I feel tired. It's tough," Sicilia, 57, told AFP in an interview from his home in the city of Cuernavaca outside Mexico City. "But love gives meaning to life. And love is serving others. I put this love above the exhaustion."The poet was in the Philippines when he received the news that his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco had been found dead along with five other people in an abandoned car near Cuernavaca, a popular weekend retreat for residents of the capital.Investigators said the group was kidnapped in a bar and killed later after one of them had complained about a theft.On his flight back to Mexico, Sicilia wrote what would become his last lines as a poet: "The world is no longer the world of the word/ they drowned it inside us."The words of poetry, he said, "do not reach me" anymore.The winner of the 2009 Aguascalientes Prize, Mexico's most prestigious poetry award, founded the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity to give a voice to the victims of the mayhem that has left more than 70,000 people dead since 2006.Last year, the movement traveled across Mexico and the United States in a caravan that took them to Washington to protest the US-backed drug war and the militarization of the battle against cartels by former president Felipe Calderon, whose six-year term ended in December.Calderon met with representatives of the movement and apologized for his inability to protect victims."I am the most visible part of the movement, the voice, but the movement is a horizontal process and the decisions are taken by consensus," said Sicilia, who is also a journalist and still writes articles for newspapers. He is drafting an autobiography.The organization commemorated its two-year anniversary on Thursday with a meeting at the foot of a 104-meter (340-foot) high tower in Mexico City called the Pillar of Light.The movement wants the controversial tower -- which was inaugurated a year ago and over budget -- to be turned into a peace center and memorial for victims.Aside from monuments, Sicilia said, "what is missing at the national level is the construction of the memory of all the dead in the country."The peace activist praised the "good intentions" of a victim protection law passed by new President Enrique Pena Nieto. But he stressed that results of the legislation and the application of the law are what counts.Sicilia, who planted a tree in memory of his son "Juanelo," urged fellow Mexicans to get involved in keeping pressure on the state."It is an obligation in this country for every place to be a suitable and for every hour to be a suitable hour."
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