CPTnet
20 May 2005
COLOMBIA: Commonplace
By Irene Erin Kindy
CPTers quietly ate lunch with family members as we listened to the news on
the radio, a common activity as we go on visits from house to house in our
work. The news extensively reported a young man stabbed to death in a
soccer stadium in Bogotá, the country's capital.
I wondered aloud why this killing received so much air time when so many
assassinations occur in Bogotá and when in the smaller city of
Barrancabermeja not all the murders even get reported in the news.
Reporters seemed to imply that the violence of the stabbing was somehow
worse because it occurred in a soccer stadium. How could it be worse than
taking someone from his house and killing him on the
riverbank, shooting a son in his mother's kitchen or assassinating someone
outside a bar? Deaths like these happen regularly in Barrancabermeja.
Claudia* and I reflected together about how sad it is when the pain of
losing a loved-one to a violent death can become so common that, unless it
strikes very close, one no longer feels the events deeply. Neither one of us
have had to watch the dead body of someone's loved one float by in the
river, but we know most inhabitants of these communities have.
Our human nature cannot withstand the realities of such frequent violence,
whether around the corner or across the globe, without some sort of coping
mechanism. A possible long-term result of one coping mechanism is that
violence is no longer appalling; it no longer elicits the need for
alternatives or moves us to action. Passivity in the face of violence-- the
killing of one person's loved-ones to reach someone else's ends--
strengthens the status quo.
* not her real name
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