“We are not very clear why we were attacked, but in my judgment, I know that the pressure was on them heavily; so upon that they attack us,” wrote Lance George Brown in an email to this reporter. “Clearly they are covering up some truth around young Malcolm’s death.”
Brown is talking about how approximately 1,000 officers dressed in riot gear beat men, women and children who had gathered in front of the Federal District of Mexico City’s Governor’s Palace on July 11 for the eighth day of their hunger-strike protest.
“Well, people are shocked with what has happened to Malcolm X’s grandson, many Mexicans feeling very bad about his death,” stated Brown, explaining why the hunger strike was organized: “Knowing what Malcolm X has done for us all, and to see his grandson die in this brutal way—for us there are no words to explain our feelings.”
Brown is a co-founder, along with human right’s activist Dr. Wilner Metelus, of the organization Citizens for the Defense of Naturalized Afro-Mexicans (CCDNAM).
Malcolm Latif Shabazz, 28, the son of Qubilah Shabazz, daughter of Minister Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz, was murdered in a Mexico City bar on May 9, according to authorities. According to news reports, Shabazz was in the Palace Bar with one Miguel Suarez, a Mexican construction labor activist who had been deported from the U.S. on April 18.
Suarez told the Associated Press that the two men argued with bar personnel over a bill for $1,200. Suarez has not explained why he left Shabazz alone. Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Rios stated that an autopsy revealed the young freedom fighter died of blows to the head, face and torso, possibly inflicted by a pipe or baseball bat, according to Huffington Post.
Rios said two bartenders, Alejandro Perez de Jesus, 24, and David Hernandez Cruz, 24 were arrested, and that he was seeking to question the bar’s owner. Unfortunately, that’s where the investigation ends.
Suspicions of the Afro-Mexican members of CCDNAM were confirmed when the police rapidly closed their investigation into young Shabazz’s death.
“The police action closely mirrored a pattern witnessed before when a Black Mexican was brutally murdered on May 9, 2011. Many believe it was a racial killing done by the police,” said Minister Dr. Randy Short, a Baltimore, Md.-based human rights activist and U.S. spokesman for CCDNAM, said in an email to the AmNews.
He said the Mexican authorities refused to address the concerns of CCDNAM in 2011. “Many viewed the killing of Malcolm Shabazz as a copycat lynching. Afro-Mexicans began protesting the young activist’s murder, saying there is a sense that if Malcolm X’s grandson can be lynched, none of them were safe,” Short noted.
Short reports that Mexico is a deeply racist society where Afro-Mexicans are not counted as a “distinct” ethnic group, and that they face “severe racial” discrimination and social-economic disparities.
“We ask support … for our brother, Malcolm Latif,” said Dr. Metelus, a Haitian-born Mexican citizen, on his Facebook page. “Malcolm Latif was a model for the youth of this century. We demand a response!”
Short informed the AmNews that he will join the Ma’at Academy in front of the White House on July 20 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. for a youth rally to protest the killing of young Shabazz.
“We are extending an invitation to the Mexican Embassy to come out and assure the youth that if they travel to Mexico today, they won’t be assassinated; and we extend an invitation to the White House to come out and speak to the youth about what really happened to young Malcolm,” Short told the AmNews.
“Viva Malcolm Latif!”
