"To kill a cannibal"

Three weeks ago there was a relevant event that riveted the attention of everybody. A thief stole a butchery and the butcher chased him back, ran over him and then an angry mob hit the thief several times. An ambulance drove the thief to the hospital but there he died because of inner hemorrhage.

The topics of these past three weeks until now have been "Would death penalty be a solution for this?", "It's okay to deal out justice with our own hands?", "Who is the victim in the end?", etc. These topics and the vast yellow press have been boosted by more events like "the butcher's" on all over the country.

So, my idea for this entry was to express some thoughts that are running through my brain. I'm going to analyse three topics that are different but related in some way, that construct a whole idea.







(Click here or the image to watch the news about the butcher, in case you live isolated from this "civilization")

A matter of taking sides?

As we all know, our country has the bad habit of divide into groups whatsoever. This is nothing new and historically, we have lots of examples that confirm that it has always been like that: : Unitarianos vs. Federales, Radicales vs. Peronistas, Peronistas vs. Peronistas, Boca Junior vs. River Plate, Caramelito vs. Panam, and so on. We have the habit of creating a conflict or a situation in order to clash. This may have to do with identity, our identity, which is diverse and confusing, but that's another issue that I will talk about some other time.

Currently, there seem to be a side which defends thieves argumenting that they do it because they need to do it, because they can't find a job and there's no other way out for them. So this seems to be a justification, a circumstance and a reason to steal from other with the risk of killing or dying while trying.





The other side state that, giving the chance, we should kill the thief because he can kill us first while he's stealing our possesions.

The thing is that if you believe in death penalty or justice by our own hands you "belong" to the "right wing" and you're a neo-nazi, fascist, pro-military, etc. but if you defend the thief and justify him, because material things are no worthy, you're from the center left/ left wing and you're thinking the right way because you're in favor of human rights and the right to live, yadda yadda, yadda.

Considering these sides, my question is: Is it a matter of taking sides? Can't we just talk objectively and stop thinking the way some groups are wanting us to think? It's a total shame that we have to condition ourselves, our way of thinking and even the reality that surrounds us and the way we see it and live it, because of a reduced group of people with power who wants it to be that way.

Media trivializes the issue.

As we also know, media is profiting from this kind of events and from the fact that it is aware of how much shock can cause in people expecting on the other side. So media just take it as a massive income based on rating and a constant bombardment of questionable information while people are worrying more and more about what to think and what to do.

Channels like TN, C5N, Crónica, etc., webpages like minutouno.com, infobae, etc., "journalists" like Nelson Castro, Victor Hugo Morales, Gustavo Navarro, all they just intend to make money with controversial news and predictable opinions -from one side or the other- underestimating people's capacity to think by themselves and to tell what's right from wrong.

As a result, I guess you have three options: you avoid getting involved on issues like this one, ignoring completely "what is happening in the world"; you resign to fall in the clishés of the informations and opinions and conform with that mediocrity or else you absorve content from the media and opt for a cartesian doubt and a critical thought. I prefer to stick to the third one, if you ask me.

Death penalty is not the way.

It's impossible for me to justify a thief in any case -and I can't believe people justify thievery- because I've know plenty of poor people that never occur to them to go out and steal because they couldn't cope economically with their basic needs. In my opinion, a beggar has dignity but not a thief.

We cannot ignore the reality that surrounds us: there is a latent danger and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Without being paranoical, you can feel the danger every time you go for a walk and you realize you are a walking target but you have to live your life with and without fear anyway.

Although it's a fact that people are evidently not protected by the Estate, death penalty is not the solution to an issue like this. Why do I think so? Let's take EEUU. There are a lot of cases where a person was sentenced to death and years later authorities realized they've judged him wrongly and he was actually innocent. So just take OUR country, our slow and flawed justice and all the corrupt people on high positions who have the power to do what they will: it would be a chaos, worse than this one we have now. And even if we were a "clean" or "tidy" country, the fact of sentence someone to death would turn us in the same monster we want to beat. As Friedrich Nietzsche stated:

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

As a conclusion, I would like to say that the best way of dealing with issues is debating them objectively. We should stop thinking that there's someone who's right or wrong about things or a group of people that is going to lead us to come to fruition and we should try to be more democratics. Democracy is not led by politicians or by the media but by ourselves: the people.


-Jorge Vallejos