Last week something horrible happened in Denver. An 8-year old Hispanic girl was kidnapped and sexually abused. At the moment of writing this column, police had identified, but not arrested, the man thought to be the perpetrator. But the issue is not that horrible action, but what happened when I proposed to write the story to one of the media outlets I write for.
First, I got a short answer: No. Then, I got a larger answer: Because we don’t want to. Finally, I got something closer to an explanation: Because it portraits the Hispanic community in a bad way. That “explanation” had on me the same nauseating and disorienting effect as a bucket of cold water or a punch into the stomach.
Are we going to write only “good” stories that make us look “good,” while at the same time ignoring real problems in our community? By the way, the suspect in this case is not Hispanic. And what is worst, an innocent girl being attacked or thousands of Latino students never completing high school? Both are bad, of course.
Are we going to close our eyes to our reality and report only about “good” things for our community? Such irresponsible attitude will prevent us from speaking about the high level of poverty among Latino kids, the problem of suicides among Latinos, the small percentage of Latinos going to college, and countless other problems we created or we now suffer.
We should be asking why we are so willing to close our eyes to reality and seek refuge inside a fantasy world, and why we don’t want to see our present situation, but we are so happy to accept an illusion, even knowing it is just an illusion.
The answer is more complex of what we can discuss in this column, but we would like to respectfully suggest that one reason why we discard anything that could mar the reputation of our community (regardless of the community we belong to) is because we don’t know our own ancestral and historical origins.
For example, recent research at the University of Colorado in Boulder suggest that among hominids living in South Africa millions of years ago, men remain close to the caves while women traveled long distances searching for food.
In other words, according to this study, under the leadership of Professor Sandi Copeland of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the ideas we have about our human origins are closer to Hollywood than to real science.
Another example, closer to our time. According to an article recently published by Dr. Miguel De La Torre -professor of Social Ethics and Latino/a Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver- in EthicsDaily.com, United States was not founded as a Christian nation, contrary to what it is usually said. In fact, De La Torre says that such belief is just “political mythology,” with negative consequences for our society.
Ignoring our origins and denying our present will prevent us for building our future.