TUCSON - "The horror has been programmed. They have made this my land Mecca obscurantism, prejudice, bigotry. This is a wonderful woman was hit, an MEP honest serving our nation." His eyes are red from a sleepless night, has a husky voice, the sheriff of Tucson, Clarence Dupnik. Horrified by the massacre in his hometown, where Gabrielle Giffords miraculously survives but risks permanent injury, and six families mourning their dead, the sheriff has no time for mourning.Tucson is the capital of the newly discovered American hatred, the laboratory of a violence that can spread without barriers, and the police chief wants to scream that this bloodshed is inevitable. "Many have to be an examination of conscience - Dupnik says - there are people in TV and radio of the Right that turned a hatred of political opponents in a business.
Deranged individuals like Jared Laughner, the author of the massacre, reacting to the vitriol that comes out from certain sources: calls to overthrow the state, the slogans that incite the anger of the crowds. The mud that mounts in the country is mortal, and Arizona is the epicenter of this shame.
" The FBI gives him reason, since yesterday the militias of the "white supremacy" are one of the tracks: right-wing armed groups that swim in the sea of a culture of intolerance. Here is the site of the tragedy: the appearance, a piece of quiet small town America. The ubiquitous supermarket Safeway, one of the ubiquitous signs in all the States, here is a suburban shopping mall surrounded by fast-food restaurants, multiplex cinemas, laundromats.
But the last burst of normal finished at 9:58 on Saturday morning when the Giffords on Twitter here invited the voters of his colleagues: "Come and talk to me, tell me your problems." "It 's been a while - said one of the volunteers of the Democratic Party, which organized the rally, the 19 year old Alex Villec - gloomy-looking guy approached asking to speak to her.
I told him to get in line. 30 seconds later he returned , pushing the tables, it is rash to Gabrielle, it was pandemonium. " "We were just talking about Medicare, health reform," says Matthew Laos that has miraculously escaped the hail of gunfire. Today the shopping center bears the marks of a battle.
Safeway still dangling near the banner "The Congress of you: Meet Gabrielle Giffords." But it is isolated from webs of yellow tape, "no-trespass", through police engaged in scientific expertise. Prohibited outside the perimeter, a silent crowd backs off and leaves many small altars: candles, photos of victims, American flags, some signs of peace on the asphalt path.
Letters of condolence and affection. And the complaint. The most terrible is a piece of paper that read: "Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin!" He signed Moulitsos Markos, to remember that the right-wing populist leader put Gabrielle Giffords among the "targets of the shooting." It was the era of health reform, Palin led the opposition against the "socialist health" of Obama, all the shots were allowed.
"A shooting figuratively, politically," says Palin, however, has abruptly canceled yesterday that the map from its target site. There is another Tucson who stays at home during these hours, holed up in fear and poisons that have hardened earth. Here, where was the progressive governor Janet Napolitano, now the right controls two-thirds of the voters.
What a few years ago it was the Sun Belt, the belt of the sun, the new center of attraction of the green industry and hi-tech, after the recession is a land of promise disappointment, resentment and grudges. Emerging from a coma - "unresponsive" announce the doctors - the Giffords in her bed at the Hospital of the University of Arizona is recalling these hours in an escalation of warnings claims.
In an interview on MSNBC said it the "shooting" of Palin: "He has never seen anything like it. When you use certain images, we can expect the consequences." And the consequences were already. An attack at his office in Tucson, smashed the windows boarded up to. More seriously, in August 2009 in full battle over health care reform, the Tucson police had arrested a demonstrator with a pistol in his belt.
He had arrived a few meters from Giffords. Even then, in front of a supermarket. In the end this Saturday has reached a bullet, shot in the head, then went out for a miracle without killing it. "My Gabby has recognized me," murmured the sobbing husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who arrived Saturday on a NASA jet.
I was heartened by a call from Barack Obama: "Your wife is a rock, so strong for non-members, pray together and be saved." The doctors confirm a cautious optimism: the bullet has not crossed the two hemispheres of the brain, survive, even if you do not know under what conditions. Obama has sent here the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, as the investigation must be coordinated at the highest levels.
And 'a massacre of State, may herald an escalation of violence, terrorist-style "home," the president is in danger. Police are hunting for a second suspect, whose image was taken by surveillance cameras shopping center: male, white, between 40 and 50 years. "Laughner - confirms the sheriff - he did not act alone, he came with someone else, who accompanied him is involved in the attack." Back to the specter of the massacre in Oklahoma City (1995): one performer convicted Timothy McVeigh, but behind him the powerful militia of "white supremacy".
"No one here knows the English grammar in the district" among the many rantings of 22 year old Jared Laughner, often in trouble at college (including drugs) and dismissed from the army, that phrase immortalized on MySpace evokes controversy against Hispanic immigrants. A workhorse of the xenophobic right is the exam required of English as a barrier for the residence permit.
Tucson has become its own, with the rise of the Republican right, the laboratory of anti-immigrant policies. Cruel fate, to a border town that has changed color ethnic least three times in its history. In the desert, 100 kilometers from the Mexican border, with 550,000 inhabitants, of which 40% of Latinos, for the latter remains Tucson El Pueblo Viejo: Do not forget that he was captured by the Mormon Battalion in the war between the U.S.
and Mexico, then annexed to the USA in 1853. But Hispanics in turn had stolen from paleo-Indian tribes settled 12,000 years ago. A city of usurpers, where the last ride came to an alien hunting. Obama called yesterday to the families of the most illustrious victim: the federal judge John Roll, "died by accident, because he went to the grocery store from Safeway and had stopped to greet the deputy.
But the bullets could be aimed at him. "Hundreds of death threats he received - said to his assistant - in 2009 because he dared to accept an application made by some Mexican immigrants against a rancher. In retaliation, the court Roll someone swore he would cut off his family." In Washington, the new Speaker of the House John Boehner announced the postponement of the vote to repeal the Obama health reform, just what may have caused the "death sentence" of Giffords, but it is only a truce for mourning.
Here in Arizona, Republican Senator John McCain and Governor Jan Brewer recite in unison: "Great grief and solidarity for the victims and their families, a day of shame for our state." But it was the Brewer to launch the Arizona State on the national scene as the more extreme anti-immigrant, with his law (later rejected as unconstitutional), which gave special powers to the police against foreigners.
McCain just to get re-elected in 2010 has aligned itself with the Tea Party: demonizing the health care reform, riding the anti-immigrant campaign. Nowadays even a Republican from Tucson, Jim Kolbe, admits: "The debate about immigrants has poisoned the air in this city." Also on the Giffords had challenged the right, as opposed to the "special powers".
Kolbe is an exception, there is no self-criticism among the influential Republican from Arizona. The Brewer and McCain have chosen the line: "The attacker is a lunatic, who politicized this tragedy is a dismal game." This is echoed by Fox News: "A fool without a party, also read the texts of the left." The theorists of the isolated neutral point the finger at the delusions of his MySpace page, and a final farewell to friends who had not addressed: "Do not get angry with me." The chairman of the Democratic Party establishment, Jeff Rogers, is concerned that not enough to stop the barbarism six victims: "This right had already put on the agenda of the liberty of introducing weapons even in schools.
I do not know if we can stop this trend. " America never learns anything from national mourning? Robert de Vido Tucson Sentinel newspaper is discouraged: "Obama on TV told us what Americans do in a tragedy like this is to join and support. But I would add that we do not even after a massacre, is to challenge the taboo of arms.
" Yet, says the sheriff, "Laughner had already threatened to kill." The universal health care, the residence permit: no. But the weapons, so those are available to everyone.
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