The two stories for today are from the Dallas Morning News: Drug Treatment Center Targeted in Mexico, 18 dead. By Olivia Torres and Alicia A. Caldwell (The Associated Press) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9AG3VTG0.html; and a Video/Photo story called Choosing Thomas. http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/photography/2009/thomas .
In Dallas this morning, the news goes something like this: Sports, of course, The Dallas Cowboys kickoff their season with a luncheon; Schools all around North Texas fear that Obama’s speech to students is “liberal indoctrination;” and Dallas-area home listings are falling. But, the two stories that struck me hardest were the story of a bloodbath at a drug treatment center in Juarez, Mexico; and the story of Baby Thomas in Dallas.
Apparently, when you go into rehab in Mexico, you not only have to deal with the hard road of recovery, but you might also face death. In Juarez, drug Cartels are using rehab centers as recruiting and training centers. I quote: “Garcia Luna said in Michoacan, Cedeno's rehab centers held retreats to train members, and if addicts did not cooperate, they were executed. He said the La Familia gang preferred recovered addicts because they were less likely to touch the drug loads.” Luna is Mexico’s Public Safety Secretary -- a tough job, needless to say, at the turbulent border between Juarez and El Paso (which is clearly in sight from Mexico’s most dangerous city). Juarez claims more than 1,300 lives a year. In this particular case, at the Aliviane site, what was happening, according to another article in the Dallas Morning News was that one Cartel was attempting to exterminate another. The Sinaloa have been hitting up the Linea (the Juarez cartel), trying to exterminate every last one of them – “killing people at will, hitting them like sitting ducks” (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-juarez_04int.ART.State.Edition2.4bcfae5.html)
I think about so much as I read these stories about Juarez. I think about how when people meet Israeli’s or Iraqis they always ask them how they do it – wake up every morning in the midst of such violence; how they live a day-to-day existence in it, how are they not afraid to walk outside their door. They are, just as people in Juarez are afraid. “It’s scary,” said one resident, “I’m ready to move.” You don’t have to go as far as the Middle East to see the kind of violence that freezes and infiltrates the minutes and hours and long days of innocent bystanders– here it is, massacre, just miles away from our American borders. How much are we responsible for, as Americans, and, more generally, how much does this say about our humanity? That last question may seem trite to some, but it’s not, not when you really delve into the heart of it.
If the first article was about death; lives cut short. So is the second story I’ve chosen for today, about Baby Thomas. Except it’s also about life and love.
“Baby Thomas” is the son of TK and Deidrea Laux, a Carrollton, Texas couple. Thomas who was diagnosed with Trisomy 13 while still in the womb. The Laux family knew that due to his genetic disorder, this baby would die within minutes or hours or at the very most a few days after birth (if he even survived the birth). But the couple decided to have the baby anyway.
On the one had, I think immediately about how awful it is that Baby Thomas is now going to be the poster child for Anti-abortion activists. But, on the other hand, I can’t get my head around this story as a testament to the need for love (both giving it and receiving it, we have within us).
Half of my thinks this is a strange masochism on behalf of the parents. And, didn’t the child suffer more by having to live out a disease that was meant to kill him within days (he died five days after birth)? However, another part of me is so deeply moved by the video – by what seems to be a true act of love. And therein lies a counterpart to the Juarez story, the complex layerings that make us up – the layering that allows us to laud Ted Kennedy was a wonderful senator while knowing that Chappaquiddick and the death of a young woman lie in his past and on his (and our) conscience.
Amazing how the news can not only provide the daily happenings of what’s important to a particular urban center, but also really make me sit her and delve deep into the stuff we’re made up of, as people.
It makes me think of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I should say more about that, but I won’t. I’ve said enough.
In Dallas this morning, the news goes something like this: Sports, of course, The Dallas Cowboys kickoff their season with a luncheon; Schools all around North Texas fear that Obama’s speech to students is “liberal indoctrination;” and Dallas-area home listings are falling. But, the two stories that struck me hardest were the story of a bloodbath at a drug treatment center in Juarez, Mexico; and the story of Baby Thomas in Dallas.
Apparently, when you go into rehab in Mexico, you not only have to deal with the hard road of recovery, but you might also face death. In Juarez, drug Cartels are using rehab centers as recruiting and training centers. I quote: “Garcia Luna said in Michoacan, Cedeno's rehab centers held retreats to train members, and if addicts did not cooperate, they were executed. He said the La Familia gang preferred recovered addicts because they were less likely to touch the drug loads.” Luna is Mexico’s Public Safety Secretary -- a tough job, needless to say, at the turbulent border between Juarez and El Paso (which is clearly in sight from Mexico’s most dangerous city). Juarez claims more than 1,300 lives a year. In this particular case, at the Aliviane site, what was happening, according to another article in the Dallas Morning News was that one Cartel was attempting to exterminate another. The Sinaloa have been hitting up the Linea (the Juarez cartel), trying to exterminate every last one of them – “killing people at will, hitting them like sitting ducks” (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-juarez_04int.ART.State.Edition2.4bcfae5.html)
I think about so much as I read these stories about Juarez. I think about how when people meet Israeli’s or Iraqis they always ask them how they do it – wake up every morning in the midst of such violence; how they live a day-to-day existence in it, how are they not afraid to walk outside their door. They are, just as people in Juarez are afraid. “It’s scary,” said one resident, “I’m ready to move.” You don’t have to go as far as the Middle East to see the kind of violence that freezes and infiltrates the minutes and hours and long days of innocent bystanders– here it is, massacre, just miles away from our American borders. How much are we responsible for, as Americans, and, more generally, how much does this say about our humanity? That last question may seem trite to some, but it’s not, not when you really delve into the heart of it.
If the first article was about death; lives cut short. So is the second story I’ve chosen for today, about Baby Thomas. Except it’s also about life and love.
“Baby Thomas” is the son of TK and Deidrea Laux, a Carrollton, Texas couple. Thomas who was diagnosed with Trisomy 13 while still in the womb. The Laux family knew that due to his genetic disorder, this baby would die within minutes or hours or at the very most a few days after birth (if he even survived the birth). But the couple decided to have the baby anyway.
On the one had, I think immediately about how awful it is that Baby Thomas is now going to be the poster child for Anti-abortion activists. But, on the other hand, I can’t get my head around this story as a testament to the need for love (both giving it and receiving it, we have within us).
Half of my thinks this is a strange masochism on behalf of the parents. And, didn’t the child suffer more by having to live out a disease that was meant to kill him within days (he died five days after birth)? However, another part of me is so deeply moved by the video – by what seems to be a true act of love. And therein lies a counterpart to the Juarez story, the complex layerings that make us up – the layering that allows us to laud Ted Kennedy was a wonderful senator while knowing that Chappaquiddick and the death of a young woman lie in his past and on his (and our) conscience.
Amazing how the news can not only provide the daily happenings of what’s important to a particular urban center, but also really make me sit her and delve deep into the stuff we’re made up of, as people.
It makes me think of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I should say more about that, but I won’t. I’ve said enough.
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