FOTO Crime Scene, Villanueva, Guatemala City
Yesterday, a friend linked to a piece from Tijuana's El Zonkey Show (The Zonkey being a beast unique to the once-touristed streets that would be a donkey, had it not been painted with black and white for aforementioned touristic attracting). It features a picture of a small dog with a massive bullet wound, who later died. The dog was shot by a Juárez cop, in Juárez. The story is here.
Who cares? That was my first thought. Its one pinche perro, after all, in a city with one of the highest violent crime rates in the world. This feeling was accentuated by seeing news this morning that 17 people were killed overnight in Juárez - cartel clashes, being the stated cause. (17 people is roughly 1/5 the number of people killed in Norway that has provoked an international media orgy; and 6 people less than have been murdered in the Toronto area - population 4 million and change, double that of Juárez - in the first 7 months of 2011.)
In a city that has come to be defined by its violence, can, or should, the death of a dog fit into the caring continuum?
Whether you care or not about this particular dog, a cop who's annoyed enough by barking and secure enough in his belief that no one can care that a trigger gets pulled to solve the yapping problem in his immediate vicinity, is a worrisome beast. He shoots, the yapping stops, and life can just go on. Problem solved. Now on to regulating human life in the city.
How much more "yapping" does a human have to do before the "same" cop shoots? Who has to be watching for said type of cop to care? And, how many of the 17 killed last night were actually cartel members - or any night - versus how many just dared to bark back at something bigger than them?
(HT Erin Siegal)
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