Do they not also bleed?

 

The news media has widely reported the capture yesterday of the notorious Bosnian Serb war criminal, Ratko Mladic, wanted for his leadership role in the massacre of 7,500 men and boys from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.  He will now be handed-over to the International Criminal Tribunal to face trial.  It’s justice long overdue.

Concurrently, yesterday saw the capture of one of history’s worst mass killers since Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and yet it’s a story you have to search for diligently, since it’s been so grievously under reported by Western newspapers in their callous, ethnocentric dismissal of third world people. Do they not value their own lives, too?

In any event, the UN announced yesterday the arrest of 52 year old Bernard Munyagishari in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  He was wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda in 1994.  Bad as Mladic’s crimes are, they pale in the context of Munyagishari’s chilling machete bloodbaths, resulting in the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in 1994, while the Western world and Africa itself looked the other way.  Obviously, white, European Yugoslavia and African politics were in play, not the black members of a minority tribe in a distant country once colonized by the Belgians.  Former President Clinton, however, did recently express regret for his administration having looked the other way and the American government has been offering a 5 million dollar reward for information leading to his capture.

A former teacher and soccer coach, Munyagishari  became the major leader of the Hutu militias that carried out the genocide taking place in just 100 days between April and June 1994. He also co-founded the Interahamwe, a militia whom he stocked with weapons.  Their specific mission was to capture, rape, then murder Tutsi women.

Munyagishari will be extradited to Tanzania, where he will stand trial before the Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).  Since 1994, it has rendered 46 judgments, with 8 acquitted and 9 under appeal.  Recently it sentenced army general Augustin Bizimungu to a 30-year term for preparing lists of Tutsis to be executed.  Unfortunately, there are still nine other major players being sought, among them Felicien Kabuga, a financier at the time.  A number of Hutu militia may have emigrated to Canada.

It’s been 17-years, confirming that often the wheels of justice grind slowly and, alas, sometimes not at all.  What sticks in my throat, however, is our frequent Western indifference and ignorance, for  cruelty has no border.  I remember the poet Yeats’ trenchant observation of volatile contemporary life:  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  We are all brothers and sisters, whatever our color, ethnicity, religion, or politics.  The horrors of Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo retain their indelible wounds and cry out for justice, but do those of the third world bleed any less?

Amigo stores no mas!

 

In a trend that should help ease anxiety that the good ole USA is becoming an extension of Mexico, Baldwin City, CA, even with its Hispanic majority, has turned down developer proposals to launch a shopping center with a “Latino feel.”  As Baldwin mayor Manuel Lozano put it, “We want what Middle America has as well.  We want to go to nice places like Claim Jumpers, Chilli’s and Applebees. We don’t want the fly-by-night business, the ‘amigo store,’ which they use to attract Latinos like myself” (“Latino Yes, but with New Tastes,” Latino News).  It’s a sentiment multiplied many times over in Latin communities across the country.  Following historical precedents of other immigrant groups, they want in.

Me, I’ve been pursuing the Spanish language over the years.  I like the people, their culture and language.  When you know another language, you gain access to a whole people.  And Spanish is everywhere these days in America. Still, I Iaugh at big business with their penchant to promote commerce via bilingual signs.  Do they really think  Hispanic immigrants will avoid shopping at Lowe’s if they don’t see entrada and salada on their sliding doors?  Asian and African immigrants don’t seem to have a problem.

I marvel too at the craze to teach Hispanic school children in their native language, which research indicates can actually hamper their acquiring a good grasp of the vernacular language, English, which they’ll need to achieve the American dream. 

For all immigrant groups, the truth is that their children do acquire the host language and prefer it in most scenarios.  By the third generation, the language of heritage is rarely spoken.  This is what happened in my own family.  Except for my Irish grandmother, my grandparents were French-speaking.  My own parents, however, didn’t speak a lick.  And here I am, trying to master Spanish rather than my heritage language.  That’s the way America works.

And I like it.  We assimilate.  New census data indicates we’re marrying each other in record numbers, too (“Interracial Marriages on the Rise,”  www.urbandigital.me).

I used to wonder when I subscribed to the Spanish version of Reader’s Digest, Selecciones (no longer in existence), why I’d see ads in English; same thing when tuning into Telemundo or Univision. Then I happened on a Hispanic news article explaining it’s done because so many of the younger generation actually use English as their primary language in school, at work, or when socializing.

I can believe this readily, being a baseball nut.  Increasingly, many of our big league ball players sport authentic sounding Hispanic names, take Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, for some examples.  Then, when you see them in an interview--hey, they talk just like you and me.  Their heritage may be Hispanic, but their daily life is American. 

Some of the older Hispanic population are troubled.  In Santa Ana, another California community with a largely Hispanic population, Ray Rangel, who runs a Mexican western wear store, laments the City Council:  “I’ll tell you one thing about the City Council. Before, when the council was more mixed, we could get along with them. Now that they’re all Latinos, we have more trouble getting things. They want the upscale, something more Anglo”  (“Latino Yes, but with New Tastes,” Latino News).

Council woman Marlen Garcia responds:  “We’re not against our culture, nothing like that. But we want something that speaks to every culture”  (“Latino Yes, but with New Tastes,” Latino News).

I like to think of this as an aspect of the American dream, or as in our country’s motto, e pluribus unam, “one out of many.” 

Amigo stores?  No algo mas!