Words That Kill

In a country as accustomed to violence as Mexico is today, observing how Americans have reacted to the shooting outside a supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona that left six dead and 14 injured this past Saturday should prompt us to reflect.

We must remember that, that same weekend in the town of Acapulco, we witnessed one of the most violent days of the last few years, in which 28 people were executed; 15 of those were beheaded. That makes a total of 34,612 deaths in the past four years because of the war against drugs, which is sanctioned by the federal government. The open conflict between the Mexican government and organized crime gangs linked to drug trafficking left 15,253 dead in 2010, over double the death count of 2009 and triple that of 2008.

We have to consider that, in the few days of 2011 that have already passed, there have already been three mayors killed in this country, in addition to the 19 already killed since 2008, as well as many officials, candidates and police officers involved in this war.

The reaction of the people and the political class in the United States may seem excessive to us, given the reality that we live in, but it is the reaction of a people not accustomed to massacres. There was a similar reaction when 32 students were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007 in a state that, like Arizona, facilitates access to weapons — and in which, amazingly, an unstable person could buy everything necessary to create the massacre without any major difficulty.

Perhaps if congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had not been injured, the news would have been reduced to titles like “Unstable Man Kills Six and Wounds 12 Outside Tuscon Supermarket”. The debate would have revolved around the question of how someone clearly out of their mind could buy a semi-automatic pistol, and the day before the shooting go to Wal-Mart and buy ammunition as if it were candy. The sad thing is that we cannot assume this massacre will lead to legislation that will reduce, or at least impede, access to high-caliber weapons. The Virginia massacre resulted in a call for students to be allowed to carry weapons on campus! In fact, two days after the shooting, Arizona weapons sales went up 60 percent in comparison to sales on the same day of 2010, according to the Bloomberg agency.

However, this unfortunate event does not occur in isolation, but rather in an environment which has fostered division and confrontation, and in which talk about violence, coupled with these recent events, has ensured that this shooting will not be ignored by American society.

President Barack Obama dedicated a large part of an emotional speech to Christina Taylor Green, the girl born on September 11, 2001 who was killed in the Tucson shooting, in a ceremony to bid farewell to the victims and to address all citizens about the tragedy.

In this speech, Obama said: “…what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

Later in the speech, Obama said: “They believed — they believed, and I believe that we can be better… We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.”

A clear concern for the President of the United States is ensuring that his compatriots monitor the level of violence and intolerance that has been escalating for years for various reasons. Maybe Obama is thinking in the words of statesman, scientist and co-founder of the American nation Benjamin Franklin, who once said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

In our country, we don’t see this preoccupation over changing dialogue to improve the civility of interactions between Mexicans. Political leaders always try to confront, question, and divide, especially in recent times. Words wound, but they can also heal.