Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday declined a meeting with organizers of an anti-violence march led in part by a family member of nine Americans who were murdered by cartel gunmen in northern Mexico last November. 

The event was organized by family member Julian Lebaron, who is a member of the dual-national family that came under attack, and local activist Javier Sicilia, reports The Hill. López Obrador made several Cabinet-level security officials available to Lebaron, Sicilia, and other relatives of the victims, but still remained critical of the march during his daily press conference Monday. 

"There are conservative-leaning organizations who on the topic of violence are not demanding … an explanation from governments who took the decision to confront the security situation with force," López Obrador said, referring to the security policies in place by prior administrations. 

He also accused some activists of suffering from "amnesia" because they are not seeking investigations into former high-level officials who have been accused of corruption.

He wouldn't say if he was referring specifically to the march's organizers but called on members of the media to investigate "the ones who haven't denounced crimes, the policy of disappearances that was enforced. Now they yell like town criers when they were silent as mummies."

However, Lebaron and Sicilia criticized the president's predecessors, after losing family members to organized crime violence in 2009 and 2011. 

The president's supporters, meanwhile, called the marchers "traitors" and demanded they "go back to their country, the United States.

López Obrador said he will visit the Lebaron family survivors in two months' time. 

In 2019, more than 34,000 people were murdered in Mexico, marking the highest number since the current statistical model was adopted in the 1990s, and likely the most people in the aftermath of the 1910-1921 Mexican Revolution, notes The Hill. 

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