Editor's Note - The Reality of Violence
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Three years ago, my father got a job as a Foreign Service Officer, a job he'd been pursuing for the past eight years. They spent two years in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and it was exciting for a first post...the government sort of fell apart. Protests in the streets, curfews, etc. They're now stationed in Nogales, Mexico, where the government is stable. But the job isn't exactly risk-free.
They have a fairly nice house. The State Department takes care of their own. The problem is that drug lords like nice houses too. And early Friday morning, on March 18th of this year, it became a bigger problem. Members of one drug cartel made a hit on the house across the street.
My dad posted pictures a few days later, along with the following report: "When we got home Sunday night, we saw the damage from the shooting. These are photos of the house directly across the street from us, as well as some of the damage to our house. We were blessed -- really -- to be out of town at a funeral when it happened early Friday morning. There is not much damage to our house because it was pretty one-sided, more of an assassination than a shootout. The hit men stood on the hill alongside our house and fired more than a thousand large calibre rounds into the house across the street, then went in and finished them off. As they sprayed bullets at the neighbor, they also ended up hitting our house, an old satellite dish on our roof, and tore through the fence, fence posts, power, cable, and phone lines. The consulate staff picked up more than 100 spent cartridges in our patio."
My parents are okay, and if anything like this happened while they were there, they have a safe room. Which is comforting. But looking at these pictures, I was struck by how real the violence was. In our media age of 20-minute film car chases, glorified gun battles, and violent music, we begin to feel that violence isn't real. Or if it is, it's distant.
But I'm here to tell you that it's not. It's in your backyard. It's across the street from your parents' house. It's in the city that made your shoes. And it's real.
It sounds trite and sort of "hippy dippy" to parrot the old "give peace a chance" thing. It seems like a phrase that fell out of style sometime in 1972. But I wonder what our world would be like if we had listened those forty years ago. I wonder what our world could be like if we were to listen now.
We at Peacemonger believe that it's not too late. We believe it's got to start with the individual. We may not share the vision that was so prevalent in the 1960's...dancing in the streets, flowers in everyone's hair. But maybe our world could do with a little more love. And that's what we're all about.
They have a fairly nice house. The State Department takes care of their own. The problem is that drug lords like nice houses too. And early Friday morning, on March 18th of this year, it became a bigger problem. Members of one drug cartel made a hit on the house across the street.
My dad posted pictures a few days later, along with the following report: "When we got home Sunday night, we saw the damage from the shooting. These are photos of the house directly across the street from us, as well as some of the damage to our house. We were blessed -- really -- to be out of town at a funeral when it happened early Friday morning. There is not much damage to our house because it was pretty one-sided, more of an assassination than a shootout. The hit men stood on the hill alongside our house and fired more than a thousand large calibre rounds into the house across the street, then went in and finished them off. As they sprayed bullets at the neighbor, they also ended up hitting our house, an old satellite dish on our roof, and tore through the fence, fence posts, power, cable, and phone lines. The consulate staff picked up more than 100 spent cartridges in our patio."
My parents are okay, and if anything like this happened while they were there, they have a safe room. Which is comforting. But looking at these pictures, I was struck by how real the violence was. In our media age of 20-minute film car chases, glorified gun battles, and violent music, we begin to feel that violence isn't real. Or if it is, it's distant.
But I'm here to tell you that it's not. It's in your backyard. It's across the street from your parents' house. It's in the city that made your shoes. And it's real.
It sounds trite and sort of "hippy dippy" to parrot the old "give peace a chance" thing. It seems like a phrase that fell out of style sometime in 1972. But I wonder what our world would be like if we had listened those forty years ago. I wonder what our world could be like if we were to listen now.
We at Peacemonger believe that it's not too late. We believe it's got to start with the individual. We may not share the vision that was so prevalent in the 1960's...dancing in the streets, flowers in everyone's hair. But maybe our world could do with a little more love. And that's what we're all about.
Liz Chapman, Editor in Chief
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Liz Chapman is a junior at BYU-Idaho, studying English and Theatre Education. Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area and southern Oregon, she is a hopeless hippie at heart. She loves learning about different cultures and she believes firmly in the power of art to change lives. She hopes to teach overseas with her husband someday.