MARAVILLA DEATH AND 9/11
In my home we often speak about harsh realities, killing, death, war, 9/11, the barrio. My eldest son attended a funeral a few weeks ago in East Los Angeles. The body of a 23-year old lay in a coffin. It had been riddled with 9 or 10 bullets. He was a soldier with no uniform, no gun, well read, innocent, not guilty, a warrior, and a martyr for good. Like so many before him and those that never know who is next, I want to blame someone, something, for their murder.
President George Bush is telling the people of Iraq that ending the violence in the street is in their hands. They must assist the American soldiers in capturing those guilty of terrorism in their country. But the question Bush and all of us should be asking and answering is, from where does this violence originate? The people of Iraq were not killing, or bombing anything; it was the government of Saddam Hussein that set the example of how to murder the innocent.
We must ask ourselves, where did our children learn to kill the innocent? Timothy McVeigh learned when he saw federal troops kill men, women and children at Waco. In East Los Angeles, killing the innocent is sanitized by the glorification of war in high schools by military recruiters. “Oh sometimes innocent people die when we drop bombs, sorry.” Governments teach us all that killing the innocent is just the way we do things. It has become a way of life.
What do most mothers tell their children at home? Do not kill. Emma Goldman’s words from June 14, 1917, in a “Speech Against Conscription and War,” still hold true today:
“Prisons have never solved any problems. Guns and bayonets have never solved any problems. Bloodshed has never solved a problem. Never on earth, men and women, have such methods of violence, concentrated and organized violence ever solved a single problem. Nothing but the human mind, nothing but human emotion, nothing but an intense passion for a great ideal, nothing but perseverance and devotion and strength of character—nothing else ever solved any problem.”
So as parents, like those in the streets of Baghdad, here in East Los Angeles we must teach our children ideals greater than war, greater than terrorism, greater than governments.
They must use peace to attain democracy, democracy to maintain peace and change to insure there is a peaceful democracy for all. Violence, revenge and vengeance belong to the animal kingdom where the brain is small and simple, which is what must separate us from the beast. The most brilliant minds of humankind must step forward to seek solutions to hunger, disease, and illiteracy and end the search for profit, greed and violent domination. It must stop on the streets of Baghdad, it must stop on the street corners of East Los Angeles, and it must stop in the minds of all of us who pass a coffin of a young body riddled with bullets. Robert Bracamontes 9/11/03 braco8@msn.com