In recent years, my native Mexico has been gripped by a crisis of violence. Organized crime, political corruption, and lawlessness have led to mass killings, forced disappearances, and a growing sense of fear and despair among ordinary citizens. Thousands of young people have been murdered or vanished without a trace. Their bodies—when they are found—often bear signs of brutal executions, and in some cases, entire communities have been terrorized into silence. While official reports debate the numbers and the methods of these atrocities, the deeper reality is clear: violence has become a governing force, shaping the lives of millions.
Violence is spreading, and with it, the most difficult and uncomfortable questions emerge.
This is not just a problem for Mexico. The normalization of violence, the deadening of conscience, and the erosion of basic human dignity are dangers that extend far beyond any one country. And yet, history shows us that even in the face of such horror, human resilience endures.
Wanda
She was not a tall woman. Her white hair and deep wrinkles conveyed both gentleness and an unshakable strength. Twice, she asked me to accompany her to visit the tomb of her “brother” in the Vatican grottoes. She walked slowly. When we reached the marble slab embedded in the floor, she stood still, reading the inscription: Ioannes Paulus PP. II. In a quiet voice, she whispered a prayer. A single tear slipped down her cheek. Her name was Wanda Półtawska.
In 1941, the Gestapo captured her. She was tortured in Lublin, then sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where Nazi doctors subjected her to unthinkable experiments and mutilations. She was liberated in 1945. She lived for decades more, finally passing away in 2023.
Her story is a testament to both the depths of human cruelty and the resilience of the human spirit. But it is also a reminder that violence is not just a relic of the past. Today, as brutal killings and forced disappearances devastate entire communities, we must ask ourselves: How does a person become capable of such evil? What happens to a society when violence becomes routine? And how can we ensure that those whose lives are stolen are not erased from memory?
Meeting Wanda Półtawska in 2006 left a deep impression on me. I knew that her spiritual director had been Karol Wojtyła, but I was unaware of her book, I Am Afraid of My Dreams, in which she recounts her time in the Lager—the concentration camp. When I finally read it, I realized that the sheer absurdity of systematic violence surpasses our ability to fully comprehend it.
I remember one detail from the book, a moment that encapsulates the horror she endured. In the final pages, Professor Półtawska describes an encounter with Dr. Karl Gebhardt, one of the most infamous Nazi doctors working for the SS. One day in the camp, he approached her, leaned in, and whispered in her ear, “Was für ein hübsches Mädel!”—“What a pretty girl!”—as he examined her legs, grotesquely deformed from the brutal experiments performed on her. The sheer perversity of the scene is staggering.
How does a human being become capable of such evil? What happens within a person that allows them to deaden their conscience and descend into the vilest cruelty—into torture, into murder? And what does it say about a society when hitmen and their accomplices orchestrate the disappearance and deaths of thousands? How do we make sense of a world where battered human bodies are reduced to ashes, erased as if they never existed?
The Long Shadow of Violence
We can no longer pretend that these horrors are foreign to Mexico. The debate over whether cremation ovens exist or if bodies are simply burned in open pits, the exact number of disappeared persons, or the daily execution count—these may be useful for official reports and statistical analysis. But the deeper truth is far more chilling: death now governs entire communities, territories, and institutions. Violence is no longer just an aberration; it is being normalized, used as a tool to intimidate, silence, and erase any form of solidarity or resistance.
Again, I think of Wanda Półtawska, a woman who spent her life fighting for human dignity. We must not allow evil to dictate the rules of the game. The sacrifice of so many young people who have been murdered in recent years must not be in vain. Those who seek to erase their stories with gasoline and fire are driven by a desire to annihilate the very existence of others. But we must never forget: the perpetrator of injustice fails in their humanity, while the one who suffers injustice—through their endurance, through their very existence—silently proclaims the truth that human dignity is transcendent and inalienable.
Even in the most profound humiliation, a person’s dignity does not vanish. It is indestructible. And for that reason, the struggle for justice must never lose its meaning.
An earlier version of this article was published in Spanish here.
Image: “Memorial a las Víctimas de la Violencia” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Carlos Adampol
Rodrigo Guerra López is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Originally from Mexico City, he graduated in philosophy from the Free Popular University of the State of Puebla, Mexico; he was then awarded a higher degree in university humanism from the Ibero-American University, Mexico, and a doctorate in philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein.
He has held the role of academic coordinator of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute in Mexico City and has served as professor of metaphysics, bioethics, and philosophy of law at the PanAmerican University, Mexico. In 2013 he held the Karol Wojtyla Memorial Lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
From 2004 to 2007 he directed the Observatorio Socio Pastoral of the Latin American Episcopal Council. In 2008 he founded the Centro de Investigación Social Avanzada (CISAV), of which he is professor-researcher of the Division of Philosophy and member of the Consejo de Gobierno.
He is a member of the theological commission of the Latin American Episcopal Council and of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and is the author of numerous publications in the field of anthropology, bioethics, and social philosophy.
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