The matrix

By Virginia Pasalo

 

PART 3 of the love story, “Driving Dilemma” will be continued in my next column. I am taking a break from love stories, and would like to refocus my energies to other stories, stories of life and death.

Lately, I have been surprised that some people I know are part of a list they call, “The Matrix”. Matrix comes from Old French matrice “womb, uterus,” from Latin matrix (genitive matricis) “pregnant animal,” in Late Latin “womb,” also “source, origin,” from mater (genitive matris) “mother”. It is a place, a medium or an environment where something develops, like a child. It is a feminine word, ascribed to the power to grow and create life, currently being used with sarcasm and disdain, by the current administration’s war on drugs associated with deaths.

I am not questioning the basis of this matrix, it is something I know nothing about, and have no expertise in. This list had been there for very long, in the hands of several Presidents, which for reasons of their own found it expedient not to disclose it. It did not mean that they did not act on this list, and in fact they may have made advances to curb the problem, if data from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Annual Report is to be believed.

The seriousness of the drug problem was presented in an article by Rappler dated 27 August 2016, “In 1999, the DDB estimated 1.8 million regular users and 1.6 million occasional users of illegal drugs, totaling 3.4 million users. In 2001, the 5.8 million figure is the average of the 2.2-9.3 million users estimated by SWS. Subsequent figures were obtained by the DDB through surveys. Source: DDB Annual Report (various years).” Based on this report, the prevalence of drug use was actually reduced over the years by a combined strategy of reducing drug supply and reducing drug demand.

The current strategy has flushed out users and drug pushers from the lowest rungs of the chain, an unprecedented feat that has not been achieved before, but the “successful” statistics have to stand comparison with previous data as officially reported. What is the current nature and extent of drug use based on independent estimates by reliable sources?

In recent reviews by academic institutions abroad, the world’s drug policy had failed. It failed in Mexico, in the US and other countries faced with the drug problem. It is this failed policy that the country now uses, with “success”. By what measures can we consider success? Is it the number of those who surrendered, the number of those killed and the number of “collateral damage”? Or the exhibition of a matrix where the unnamed are now named?

The matrix

08 September 5:17 a.m.

in the list of names,

top guns in a deadly game

the face of a friend

 

in the morning news

feasted on by the ugly

a naked body

 

a tango of desires

an object of immense joy

a driver of dreams

 

mimics of a voice

blurring faces in a kiss

a copied body

 

that was her, they said

not bothering to measure

the length of her legs

 

her legs are short

made longer by a desire

to stop her walk, her talk.

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