Francisco Miraval
Many things have been said and many more will be said in the days ahead about the massacre of 20 students and six female teachers in Connecticut. In cases like this, it is better to let the experts share their opinions. I am not one of those experts. However, with sincere respect for those who are better qualify to analyze this tragic issue, I would like to share just two thoughts.
First, in the same way that the most powerful rivers in the world, be it the Amazon or the Nile, have very humble beginnings at usually forgotten places far remove from the mouth of the river, the mass killings at schools, churches, malls, theaters, temples, hotels, and stores in the United States also have long-forgotten historical precedents in distant places.
Unfortunately, massacres are part of the history of the United States. Perhaps the “new” thing is who kills and where the killings take place. But, in the same way that the beginning and the end of a river are not the same, but are connected, the massacres of the past and of the present are not the same, but it seems they are historically connected.
In fact, it is said that the first serial killer in what it is today part of the United States was Felipe Espinosa, In 1863, Espinosa (with the help of his brother and other relatives) killed dozens of people in southern Colorado.
However, those in charge of enforcing the law did not act in a nobler way. On November 29, 1864, 700 men of the Colorado militia attacked and killed dozens of women and children of the friendly Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes in the area known as Sand Creek, also in southern Colorado. As many as 163 persons were killed that day.
And on April 20, 1914, two women, 11 children, and an unknown number of men were killed when the Colorado National Guard attacked a group of miners in Ludlow, Colorado. The miners were on strike and the killings escalated the conflict. Before the strike was over in December 1914, almost 200 people were killed.
As these examples show, mass killings of innocent people are nothing new in our history. There are, unfortunately, many more examples. However, at the same time that we erase our own history, we also cut and reduce our own humanity.
Just one day before the massacre in Connecticut, Yahoo Education published an article about a list of useless, unwanted, and not marketable careers. That list includes philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, ethnic studies, and other careers in humanities. That is, everything I have been studying for more than three decades now.
The article says there is nothing wrong with any of those careers, but, at the same time, it suggests it is better to study something more marketable. In other words, let us stop thinking about who we are, what we believe, and where we come from. When humanness and history are reject, mass killings are not surprising.