Violence on the Home Front

"Do you have to read all of that awful stuff? It's so depressing."

I was recently asked this as I sat hunched over a stack of books including Charles Bowden's Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future, Diana Washington Valdez's The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women, and Marjorie Agosin's Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez. As can be inferred from the titles, they are indeed depressing and deal with horrific content, but nevertheless, I was surprised at the question. It is understandable, I mean, I could have found something far more enjoyable to do rather than watch Lourdes Portillo's Senorita Extraviada: Missing Young Women and nearly throw up at a description of torture.

Despite all this, I firmly believe it is important to read this information. I have the privilege (like the person who asked me) to ignore this information. I could very easily continue my academic career without actually letting accounts of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder bring me down. These are stories that happen to someone else, in another time another place. What can Thunder Bay and Juarez possibly have in common?

In December of 2011 Thunder Bay took on the title of Murder Capital of Canada, due to the number of homicides that occur due to the drug trade and gang activity. As a border town Thunder Bay shares many similarities with Juarez in terms of violence the publicity of said violence.  The Mayor of the city has argued that the issues plaguing Thunder Bay are unlikely to reach national headlines because of their origins in alcoholism and drug use...an interesting comment, to be sure. It makes me question how these origins somehow make the acts less publishable, and what (racial, cultural, age, economic) demographic is being stigmatized and therefore ignored by the media. While I attended high school in the city the number of suicides alone in young First Nations women of my age group was staggering. The number of rapes that I personally am aware of are equally so. Good luck finding any investigation on either of those problems.

Although femicide, gang violence, substance abuse and the drug trade in Juarez is far more extreme than in Thunder Bay, it too is unlikely to reach national headlines for different reasons (namely, police and governmental corruption). It is so extreme and so horrific that it borders on desensitization. It is easy then, to say that life in the "first world" is different, less violent, etc. We assume that because we live in a location that we are aware of the problems around us, and if you are privileged enough to be safe from violence it is seductive to assume that there is no violence nearby. It's depressing and uncomfortable to even think about, so why not slip into something a little more complacent, like ignorance.

In Senorita Extraviada, the groups of family members of the murdered girls try to bring this information forward, in an effort to educate those around them and protect other women. Their argument is that "to remain silent is to acquiesce" and that it is entirely unacceptable.

So, to the person who asked me if I had to read all that awful stuff: yes, I do. Not just because I'm writing about it in my thesis, but because it's happening in my world, and what happens to others affects me. It's absurd to think that we are ever completely removed from other human beings in this world--especially when such atrocities are being committed. It's easy to ignore them, to turn a blind eye when looking at reality depresses us, but what this does is create a sterilized fiction for ourselves. And I refuse to perpetuate that.