TENS OF THOUSANDS MARCH IN MEXICO CITY

MEXICO CITY -- Javier Sicilia, the poet who has become an unlikely
hero in a movement calling for an end to Mexico's drug war, asked for
five minutes of silence at the end of a Sunday rally in this city's
giant central plaza.

The silence was to honor the dead -- more than 35,000 since President
Felipe Calderon sent the military to fight drug cartels four and a
half years ago.

Among the dead is Mr. Sicilia's son, killed seven weeks ago in the
colonial city of Cuernavaca.

Since then, Mr. Sicilia's grief and fury have resonated with many
Mexicans who believe they have become the ignored victims in a battle
between organized crime on one side and soldiers and the police on the other.

At the rally Sunday, Mr. Sicilia called on the government to change
its strategy in the war, calling first for the resignation of Genaro
Garcia Luna, the director of public security and an architect of Mr.
Calderon's battle against the drug gangs. "We want to hear a message
from the president of the republic that with this resignation, yes,
he has heard us," Mr. Sicilia said.

The city police estimated that as many as 150,000 people took part in
the march, although the number of people who finally gathered in the
plaza late Sunday afternoon to hear Mr. Sicilia and other grieving
families speak, seemed considerably smaller.

Since Mr. Calderon began his crackdown, sending soldiers to patrol
large parts of northern and western Mexico, the government has argued
that the dead are almost all members of rival gangs killed as drug
cartels fight over territory and smuggling routes to the United States.

But the violence continues to increase and the toll of innocent
victims has mounted as drug gangs have become more ruthless.
Authorities have failed to check the killings because of a what even
the government admits is a combination of corruption, fear and inefficiency.

New horrors have been revealed in the past few weeks. Mr. Sicilia's
son was found dead along with six other people, supposedly killed by
a drug cartel. Then, soldiers found mass graves in the northeastern
state of Tamaulipas that held 183 bodies, many believed to be people
kidnapped from public buses on their way to the border. Meanwhile,
the authorities have pulled 168 other bodies from pits in the central
state of Durango.

The government has remained on the defensive, presenting the choice
as one between either backing down and letting organized crime take
hold, or continuing the fight along the same lines.

On Thursday, as Mr. Sicilia set on his march from his hometown,
Cuernavaca, Mr. Calderon insisted that he would not pull the military
from the streets, as many Mexicans have asked. "We are right, we have
the law and we have the strength, we will win," he said.