The Death Penalty…for Some

It may be a day when it’s better to choose your reality, rather than having it chosen for you. Which means that I could tell you this:

La cruel masacre de toda una familia y un quinto integrante de 13 años herido, ha despertado el debate en las redes sociales de la “Pena de Muerte” ya son miles los que atreves de diferentes medios sociales piden que los federales tomen jurisdicción y que se aplique la pena máxima que tantas veces ha sido tema de debate en el país.

Even if you know Spanish, you may not know the story behind “la cruel massacre,” of virtually an entire family, except for a thirteen-year old son, who was thrown off a bridge and assumed dead. Bad move, since it was he who stumbled to a house, related what had happened, and had the resident call 911.

It’s a story that disturbs, since it disrupts the narrative. Because here, in Puerto Rico, we can make some assumptions about the 700 to 1,000 murders that take place every year. They will happen late at night, when the drugs and the alcohol have taken their toll. They will happen in the street, or in the pubs, or in the parking lots of the pubs. And if they happen at home? It will be the jealous husband, or the abusive man, who kills. And the motive? Drugs or revenge. Whatever happens, it will not happen to a family looking like this:

This hits home, which is precisely the point. These people, gathered at some family celebration, are precisely like us: we know them, or could have known them, and could have been celebrating with them in that marquesina—the carport that often isn’t a carport, but rather a semi-outdoor, private, protected area that isn’t quite inside the house and equally isn’t outside the house. Think transitional area.

So we would have been there—that Saturday or that Sunday, celebraing the  birthday or the anniversary or the graduation…whatever it was. And it would have been a Saturday or Sunday because these people have jobs—just like us!—which means that they, like us, will never be the victims of “una cruel massacre,” since they will be in bed, sleeping, awaiting the alarm that will get them out of bed and propel them on their way to their jobs. There, we will greet them, if that had been our connection to them, and life will go on as normal.

It didn’t for this family. The father, presumably the second of the faces-blotted-out, had rented a dwelling to a man, who had neglected to pay. The father, Miguel Ortiz Díaz, had instituted proceedings to evict the tenants. On Monday night, two men—one of whom was the tenant—went to Ortiz’s house, ostensibly to pay. Instead, the two men killed Ortiz, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Then they abducted the two sons, killed one, and left the 13-year old injured.

And now? Well, the quote above states that the killing has “awakened the debate about the death penalty, since thousands of people in the social networks have requested that the Feds take over the case.”

Why?

Because although the death penalty is illegal under commonwealth law, it’s not under federal law. And that has traditionally been a big source of debate among those who favor independence: how is it that the Feds can come in and impose their wishes over us?

Because the answer to any question about the death penalty? Well, I’ve heard it for over two decades and it still makes me wince: “only God can decide to take a life….”

Look, even if I bought into the “God” thing, I can’t help thinking that we quite easily manage to take lives. There are all those Iraqis and Afghanis that we mowed down, as well as the “terrorists” we droned, and the prisoners in Guantanamo, on their hunger strike, and then what about all the children of immigrants to whom we deny healthcare, to say nothing of our homeless, or….

…get the picture?

So I am, in general, completely unpersuaded by the God thing. I do think, however, that the death penalty has to be approached very, very carefully: how many people on death row have been exonerated with DNA testing? And if there’s any question about the perpetrator of a crime? Forget the death penalty.

So it’s interesting, the fact that this massacre has provoked a groundswell of support for the death penalty—if in fact it has. It’s also disturbing—since I think that one of the reasons is precisely because the victims were precisely like us: job-holding, mortgage-paying, church-going people. Not, in short, people in the underworld.

But wait—isn’t a life a life? Something only God can take? If my son is hanging out in a bar at midnight, and gets in between the gun and the intended victim—well, isn’t his life and death as worthy of justice? Does it matter if someone is killed in a nice home in a good suburb of San Juan—with access control and landscaping, not rotting cars, in front of the house?

The murder has rocked the island. But today? I have gone to the beach, and then  to the café, where I observed a Buddhist monk in the sala poética giving a workshop on “transformando el coraje y el conficto con la meditación.” Coraje—anger. And there are ten people, meditating.

“Wow,” I told Jorge, “came for coffee, and got enlightenment instead.”

“She’s nice,” said Elizabeth, the manager of the shop, and referring to the Buddhist monk, or nun, or whatever she is, “but her voice is so soft and slow, if I listen to her, I’ll fall asleep.” Elizabeth has two elementary school kids: her two speeds are exhaustion and sleep.

Consider as well that I am sharing space with two German children, who are happily playing, and consulting their parents. The girl—only a year or two retired from her job as the Gerber baby—is a sort of made-to-order Nordic. Hitler himself would have patted her head, just to absorb some of that blondness. And the children are behaving well, since Herr papa and Frau grandmamma—sorry, too lazy to look it up—are quite firmly in charge.

Which is what I meant—it’s a day for choosing realities. Which means that I can be inside a bloodied living room, which in one account I read was described as “grotesca.” Or, I can hang in the café, observe two children who are in and soon out of my life, and then go about my day.

Any guess what I’m choosing?