Today, I experienced the reactions of two different cultures to the same provocations--two different communities responding to violence. Nothing in the world is as simple as we write it, but there was still a lot that made me think--about culture, about power, about the beliefs that we have about the people that we...aren´t.
Last Saturday in Cuenca, a local man was killed in the crossfire between bank robbers and police. Yesterday, in Los Angeles, a verdict was reached in the trial of Johannes Mehersle, a white cop who shot an unarmed black man in a BART station two years ago.
In Oakland, the newspapers reported an entire city a few beats short of panic in the hours before the verdict was read--announcements on loudspeakers in all the major businesses, urging employees to stop and hurry home. Churches and youth centers setting up Speak Out centers, hoping to give people a way to express themselves without the violence that was considered almost inevitable, whatever the verdict. Merchants boarding up windows downtown, sometimes scrawling pleas to the rioters who might come: this building is black owned, please don´t loot it. Hundreds of police officers, preparing for chaos, readying barricades and packing their batons.
The verdict was read, appalling thousands who saw in so light a conviction yet another instance of unchecked police brutality. Throughout the afternoon and for most of the evening, the anger was expressed in honorable, safe ways by citizens who wanted justice, not destruction.
In the later hours, though, parts of the city erupted in riots, largely provoked, by most accounts, by white rioters from outside Oakland who used this charged event as a platform for mass unrest.
In Cuenca, there was another protest, this one organized by a local women´s organization for nonviolence and attended by dozens of friends and relatives of Carlos Salamea, the man killed in the crossfire during the robbers´attempted escape. The rally began in the park facing one of Cuenca´s oldest churches, with locals gathering in white clothing, holding placards and banners asking for peace, wearing shirts with the lost man´s photo and the words, ¨for you, Papa.¨ The group marched toward the office of the provincial government, where they clustured, chanting their request that the governor come down. Two demands were made: one, that the name of Carlos Salamea be cleared of any association with the gunmen who had seized him before the bullets flew, and two, that action be taken to curtail what was seen by all as an unprecidented amount of insecurity in Cuenca. The chanting was raucus, but polite--yet another chance for this gringa to recognize the Ud. subjunctive form as the crowd asked the governor to come down. A woman held up a handmade sign asking her fellow Cuencanas to teach their children in the ways of nonviolence; five men marched behind a blue banner with a dove. My Spanish teacher, who supports the women´s group, brought me to the march and I found myself walking arm in arm with a widow in her seventies who needed a little help navigating the cobblestone streets: as the crowd waited for a response from the governor´s office, Carlos´s grandchildren played with white balloons. The little old lady took leave of my teacher and I, thanking me for coming and saying, ¨So many people think the Americans are bad people--they are wrong! ¨
I wanted, in that moment, to tell her that the errors go so often both ways--go so often in all directions. To tell her about how, back in the United States, so many people see South America as a dark, wide smear of violence, a place where the robbery that has so convulsed the heart of Cuenca happens every day. To tell her about the looters in Oakland, striking dumbly at family businesses to protest a system outside both parties´ control. And to reaffirm what she said also, to tell her about the churches and youth centers and the family of Oscar Grant, the words they were saying in search of the same peace.
So many ¨bad people¨ . So much of ¨violencia¨ . And so many ways to be right, and to be wrong.
To put it lightly: Well said.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's frustrating that most people feel this way, but a few people who are attracted to violence for violence's sake have a much greater impact. A thousand people can refuse to strike, but one punch to the nose stands out above all else.