Walk for Peace honors victims of area violence

The first time Ashley Pires marched in the peace walk, it was for a good cause. Last year, she marched to honor the memory of a murdered friend.

This year, her reason for marching was more personal. She walked to remember her cousin, Ismael Canuto, 19, who was fatally shot June 28 as he sat on his grandmother's porch in Roxbury.

''We're losing all the people that we love," said the 15-year-old as she stood near Groom Street in Dorchester, where the Parent and Children's Sixth Annual Walk for Peace began yesterday.

About 400 people, many of them Cape Verdean, participated in the roughly mile-and-a-half walk this year, held one day after Jose Maria Neves, the prime minister of Cape Verde, called on the community to help end feuds between rival groups of youths, which a police official says have been tied to at least one slaying and four other shootings in Boston since late last month. Canuto's funeral was Thursday.

''It was very sad, when . . . three days before the walk, I have to go bury someone," said Isaura Mendes, the organizer of the walk and the mother of Bobby Mendes, a Cape Verdean man who was stabbed to death in 1995 at Wendover and Humphreys streets in Dorchester.

Before the march, the crowd gathered in an empty lot in the small neighborhood near Uphams Corner. Some stared at a sheet that held pins bearing the names and faces of victims. On a table was a cake with the names and faces of four victims. One of them was Malik Alexis Andrade Percival, a 3-year-old fatally shot in his Dorchester home in 2002 during a botched home invasion.

During the march, Malik's mother, Belmira Andrade, walked alone, pushing a stroller carrying her year-old son, Alexis Malik.

She chose the name, she said, ''in a way to keep him alive." ''But I didn't want to name him Malik because he's not Malik," she said. ''So I switched it."

Andrade had walked in the march before she lost her son, but she never imagined she would walk to remember her own child.

''Now he would be six," she said, staring at the ground as she pushed the stroller. ''They need to stop. We're all family."

With a police car leading them, marchers walked down Groom Street to Dudley Town Common, holding signs, wearing T-shirts, and bearing pins with the faces of victims. They sang songs and chanted calls for peace, as Police Superintendent Paul Joyce quietly walked with the crowd.

''This is an important statement," he said. ''This is a community coming together and saying we want a quiet summer."

When the marchers reached the common, the Rev. Walter J. Waldron, pastor at St. Patrick Church in Roxbury, asked how many had lost a friend or relative to violence. Nearly every participant's hand went up.

''I would ask, I would beg, I would pray before we take on the decision that one person should not live, please remember that person's mother . . . brother . . . friend . . . who all die a little inside," Waldron said.

People skeptical that the walk, or cooperating with police, could stem the violence were among the marchers. One man wore a black T-shirt with a blue Welcome to Dorchester sign on the front. Scrawled on the sign were the words ''Welcome to The Hood . . . No snitching."

The man, who declined to give his name, said he was walking for a slain cousin, though he declined to be specific about the victim or what happened.

Talking to police is no help, he said. ''It is what it is," he said. ''If someone killed my brother and I told police what happened and the person was in jail, what's that going to do? My brother is still dead."

But Emma Harrison, 69, said she held tight to the hope the community will know peace. Until then, she will march, she said. ''I'm going to keep walking till I fall," she said.

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.