By José Sulaimán: Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who was the intermediary between the Government and the Indian revolt years ago in Mexico, passed away last week. The tears and sad public demonstrations of the Mexican Indians showed the holiness, the care and compassion that the bishop showed during all of his life for these people, who are the real owners of the Mexican land. All others, even those born in Mexico like me, are only immigrants. Most Mexican fighters are Indians or “Mestizos, and on their behalf the WBC renders our deepest sympathy, in all humility, to a Catholic Bishop that lived a life like a saint. May he rest in everlasting peace.
I happened to live during my childhood in a center of the Indian civilization and had the opportunity to know them well. My father Elías and my mother Wasila owned a department store and became the Godparents of many Indian children, among whom we learned their devoted passion for the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Catholic church. They used to walk Saturday nights from the mountains to Ciudad Valles to sell their goods of food, handcrafts, and animals, proceeding afterwards by the thousands to attend the Sunday Mass, and go to the stores to buy their weekly needs.
I will never forget it for as long as I live, as it was the time of my first steps in life from where I met the first boxers that I ever knew. They have not received what they deserve from the rulers of Mexico, who have not given recognition and respect to them for being the authentic, real owners of the Mexican land. All of us are only and sincerely the immigrants. I hope and demand the Federal Government to establish a planning to bring them into our society and give them all what they need, with the respect, love and compassion that they deserve.
By seeing how they are being left behind, it brought my mind to the fact that boxing has not yet entered the 21st Century and forms a part of the social differences now reigning all over the world. Science is so advanced that we must run to come close to improve the safety of the sport and the protection of our athletes. Science is also leaving boxing behind, as the great power of the giant TV corporations, based on their technology and the money that they offer, are trying to change the system to give opportunities only to selected boxers and promoters, but leave out of opportunities all those that do not belong to their business, strengthening the only objective of modern times, which is money and nothing else than money.
I sincerely hope that we could sit down with the giant TV corporations to make them understand that the top of the cream in boxing, which is their only interest, does not come nor will it ever come from their flanks. The boxing clubs, amateurs, preliminary and top professionals, until they become the champions and heroes that they are waiting to catch, could never exist if the clubs, the leagues, and the international organizations like the WBC would not create them. They must understand that their boxing could only be created by us, and no one else. We are the feeders of their top of the cream that they are only interested in. If this is not understood, boxing might be led to be only a spectacle with invented heros until the wind of time comes in about 25 years and blows the real sport of boxing away. Our objective is to help and carry boxing to live forever as being the first sport to appear on our earth. We have the best of good will, and hope to get the same from them. It could be a good union for the sake and welfare of the sport and its boxers.
There is so much work to be done, but the organizations cannot do it alone and help is needed. We should eradicate for good all those gym pirates who come to take boxers away, without condition, no medical care, taking them in mismatches against local heroes and paying them peanuts, many times abandoning them in the countries where they took them to fight, many times with illegal papers.
Abuse of boxers even by some commissioners still exist, discrimination is alive, and only a few have compassion, and boxers really need specific programs for protection as the human beings that they are, and the present super heroes and super millionaires are covering the thousand who are living and boxing every day only to eat.
Understanding, humanitarian feelings, and compassion are needed to bring unity to lead boxing to the top, as the sport that most poor people of the world follow with a passion. LET’S WORK TO KEEP IT ALIVE, and stop extinction for good.
I thank you, and will see you next week.