|
This story is a product of a personal journey toward non-violence, an unfinished journey which is still in progress.
It seems to have started in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, when unexpectedly, bloody bullfights were being promoted on television for April 12 and
13 of 1997, featured as a new tourist attraction, just as I returned from abroad, and this came to my attention on March 31.
Not many people considered it as a threat to their way of life. Bull-fights are not traditional here in spite of a rather colonial presence of Spain
since the island was discovered.
Except for the festival-like features, music and pictorial representations by famous artists, corrida de torosis virtually unknown in this
country. The detailed understanding of the torture to which the bulls are subject is truly lacking. Hence local people were incredulous, indifferent, or simply unprepared to view these potential spectacles as a new
form of violence and a violation of Law 1268 which forbids public acts of cruelty to domestic animals, including bovines.
Personally, I considered it a threat to my tranquillity.
I never lived in a country where it is customary to have bullfights. My Polish background and eco-spiritual inclinations make me cringe at the thought
that in the country where I chose to retire such barbarian activity might become the "support" of the tourist industry.
The Dominican Republic, since I first visited it in 1962 (except for a political episode in 1965) is one of the most peaceful and secure places, with
exceptional beauty of marine shores and mountain ranges, and an unusual hypersaline Lake Enriquillo located 40 metres below sea level.
It is a country with rain forest, sharing the same island with another nation in the West, which is best described in comparison as a desert. (The
Dominican republican – a country between rain forest and desert. Contributions to the ecology of a Caribbean island. Eberhard Bolay, editor. Margraf Verlag, Germany, 1997. 456 Pages)
Tourism, including eco-tourism, is very successful here due to good airline connections, spacious ports for cruise ships and many excellent hotels- and
resort facilities where good-natured people cater to millions of foreigners from every part of the world. The climate is favourable, with temperatures between 22 and 34 degrees Celsius, and rains do not, as a rule,
cause changes in plans for visits to tourist attractions. A great amount of investment and effort go into providing excellent service to the visitors.
My peace of mind was severely disturbed with the prospect of having to live with a custom that the Saint, Pope Pius V, condemned during his
pontificate, although his successor did not follow his example. When the prohibition was lifted, the New World, recently discovered at the time, soon became the scenario of bloody bullfights.
I must acknowledge, with thanks, the immediate response by fax from the two major humane societies already engaged in a global effort to eliminate corrida de toros:
Humane Society International (HSI) and the World Society for Protection of Animals (WSPA). They supplied me with the necessary documentation which permitted to prepare in Spanish the background materials for a new
decentralised program of education and communication about bullfights and other forms of violence.
"Torture is not culture" was our answer to bullfight fans. All their arguments favouring this form of "sport and recreation" (as it
was when featured on internet ) are best answered by Eduardo del Rio (pseudonym Rius) in his clever, well documented illustrated book titled "Toros si, Toreros no", now in the third edition (Editorial
Grijalbo SA, Mexico, 1991).
Already prior to the scheduled April ‘events’ many people of good will and organised groups with humanitarian and religious motivation joined the
network of the decentralised program. They tried to prevent the bullfights by appearing on television programs, and publishing in local newspapers. As a last resort some tried picketing the place intended for the
bullfights. One organised group submitted a petition for a permit to demonstrate as early as April 4, but never received the permit from the authorities, hence did not appear in public on the day of the events.
Numerous copies of articles about the nature of bullfights were distributed through the program network. It was to no avail. On April 12 and 13, 1997,
in a most inappropriate place (fortunately no longer available for such future events), eight magnificent bulls imported from Mexico were painfully sacrificed for a small elite audience, that included some 100
tourists from Venezuela, where the bullfight season has just ended.
The apparent defeat of the anti-corridaforces in Santo Domingo did not diminish the efforts to prevent further spectacles of this kind, which,
some tourism-related personalities hailed as future attraction for November and December 1997 Christmas season. In view of the potential profits from all the infrastructure generated for this purpose, the danger
appeared real to all concerned.
Letters to the President of the country and to the authorities involved were sent by individuals and organised groups. Tourists addressed the Consuls
of the Dominican Republic in their countries declaring that should the bullfights be repeated, they would prefer other Caribbean destinations where such acts of cruelty were not offered as entertainment.
At the end of September 1997 Alvaro Posada-Salazar of HSI office in Bogota, Colombia, and Gerardo Fuertas of WSPA office in Cost Rica came to the
Dominican Republic, representing the global effort of 20 million members against the corridas de toros. They made a serious attempt to meet the people interested in promoting bullfights and the authorities
that could be helpful to prevent them.
They brought a 57 sec Video Spot jointly produced by HSI-WSPA, which they showed while lecturing and on a night television show. This spot, with great
visual and emotional impact, has been added to some films offered for rental in a video club, and is also being shown on occasions. Their visit received good coverage in the local press.
A great number of attractive car stickers and HSI-WSPA anti-bullfight posters were distributed, although some people related by business to Spanish
nationals here were somewhat timid to display them.
To our great relief the bullfights did not materialise in November and December, probably also due to the original high price of admission to this kind
of ‘spectacle’, from which many walked out obviously sick to their stomachs.
Those associated with the decentralised program of education and communication about violence felt greatly encouraged since the visit of the HSI-WSPA
team. However we stayed alert since we noticed on one television channel a very ‘attractive’ promotion of a ‘Sevillan corrida’ as something supposedly practised in the Dominican Republic. It was suggested that his
style of bullfight, where the animal is not wounded nor killed, is desirable form of ‘sport’, with all the pageantry of the ‘bloody bullfight’.
Humane Society International and World Society for Protection of Animals propose this bloodless type of corrida as a substitute in those countries where an enormous infrastructure already exists in connection with this ‘big tourist attraction’. However, in the Dominican Republic there is no sensible reason (other than greed) to initiate this practice, although one may envisage attempts to do this.
In the provincial city of El Seibo there is a traditional corrida de toros on the patronal feast of the Holy Cross, but this is not to be confused with a corrida meaning bullfight. It is some sort of cattle stampede, like in Pamplona, where local young cows and bulls are let out of the corral and run the streets with intrepid young people running ahead of them. There is certainly no reason to build a bullring (Plaza de Toros), as this provincial town desired at one time, in order to start something new, unnecessary and immoral, with public funds.
As almost a year went by I started realising that I suffered battle fatigue from the efforts to forestall the bullfights in the country I love. This
seemed to affect my creativity, working capacity and my physical well-being. I diagnosed it as ‘violence pollution’, a condition against which I did not seem to possess any ‘antibodies’, as if I had never been
involved in violence in the past.
As I started to analyse my situation I came to realise that over the past twenty years, as a resident in the historic part of Santo Domingo, I have
been educating and intervening on a daily basis, person-to-person, with persuasive dialogue and variable motivation, in order to defend this unique urban environment from unnecessary pollution by thoughtless use of
gasoline and diesel fuel motors.
Although most of the encounters are peaceful, the indignation at the callous refusal of some drivers to shut off the motor while waiting for tourists
in the Colonial City streets represents constant confrontation with violence against Nature.
There is no doubt that the emissions from vehicles, and from generators needed during frequent electric failures, affect the quality of life and damage
the unique XVI century heritage. Ten years of increased vehicular traffic, between the 70s and the 80s, have been shown by Maria Ugarte to produce irreversible damage to carved stone.
European experience in highly polluted cities can foretell us the future changes should the conditions in the Colonia City remain unchanged. For many
years the local rain is acid, with a ph of 4.0, as in Mexico City, with some 22 million inhabitants, heavy industries and unfavourable topography.
Since January 1998 the rain is slightly less acid, with ph 4.5 due to some control of tourist buses by the representatives of the Ministry of Tourism
in the Colonial City.
Contributing unnecessarily to air pollution is not generally viewed as violence against Nature, and unless deaths occur there seems to be no way to
arouse public opinion. Leaving the motor running while parking violates Traffic Law 241, article 84, but neighbours who suffer respiratory problems due to air pollution feel helpless when faced with tourist bus
drivers who chose to ignore it.
People perceive this as violence against them but fear to intervene. In most cases their seeming indifference to this problem is the conviction that
nothing can be accomplished by trying a dialogue and exposing oneself to potential aggression. My 20 years of experience, constantly running into new infractors, seems to confirm their belief.
No doubt, many other forms of environmental pollution are more dangerous and spectacular, yet even the slight ones represent violence against Nature.
They are all products of prior pollution of human souls that renders them indifferent, careless, or overtly evil. Soul pollution is at the root of environmental pollution and it leads to violence of some sort.
David M. Sherman, also known as His Holiness Bhakti Ananda Goswami, is a Catholic hermit, a renunciate and a spiritual master in the ancient
Brahman-Madhva-Gaudiya lineage of Vaishnavism, devoted to exhalting Jesus Christ as Glory of Israel and Light of All Nations, contributed Chapter 18 titled "Choose Life – Ascetic Theology, History and
Ecology" pages 241-254 in: Embracing Earth. Catholic Approach to Ecology. La Chance, Albert J. and John E. Carroll, editors. 1994. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N. Y. 10545, USA. 280 pages.
Sherman commented as follows: "Societies that revel in such internally self-polluting activities (violence, intoxication, exploitation, sexual
activity or gambling) typically care little about polluting the outer world around them. Can those who carelessly poison their own bodies be expected to care about poisoning somebody else?"
Gradually I became more sensitive to any sort of violence around me: violence to women, children, the old, the infirm, the unborn. I caught expressions
of anti-violence messages scattered in the media. I felt encouraged by the presence of many who were on the same side as I. We all felt the same about violence as representing a disorder in terms of the universal
order of things.
I always admire real activists, the ‘saints’ who undertake all sorts of struggle for peace, justice, human rights, environmental pollution, endangered
species, etc. Theirs is a struggle for Life, a gift we humans share with so many other living creatures. I often hear them ridiculed or considered fanatics.
Yet those are the people who carry on their work no matter how much physical and psychic suffering they must view and endure as memories. Their
case-studies and routine field findings, in cases of violence to people and animals, must overload them with nightmares.
Most of us have no courage to inspect homes for the aged and the disabled, animal holding facilities or slaughter houses, each with its very special
form of violence. To record it all, and to report as required, is beyond the capacity of many people of good will.
Many of us turn away from violence in which we are not directly victims or aggressors. It is in a way the wrong interpretation of tolerance: ‘it is
none of my business’, ‘I must not interfere’, and similar excuses. Yet tolerance is a virtue when it deals with different but essentially positive actions. Tolerance, on the other hand, may be a wrongdoing, a sin,
when used as an excuse to ‘leave evil alone’.
In my case indignation at violence and guilt feelings for not being able to prevent it were the reasons for the soul pollution I experienced.
At such moments when I needed orientation, I came upon the small book titled "Beyond Violence – in the Spirit of the Non-Violent Christ" by
Gerard A. Vanderhaar, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Peace Studies at the Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. It was published in 1998 by Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, Connecticut 06355,
USA. It compacts in a mere 161 pages the most eloquent discourse on non-violence in the best of Gandhian and Christian traditions.
I highly recommend it to all who must face the culture of violence by becoming a non-violent person. Personally I am not free as yet of the feeling of
indignation which would permit me to be non-violent … but I am allowing the book to help me on my journey.
Each day people everywhere are faced with or involved in some sort of major or minor violence, even when they try to deny it. Hysterical warnings or
cavalier dismissals, escapism or confrontation are some of the reactions of choice. It is easier to ignore violence when it does not touch one directly: a massacre, where it is not killing my
people, a forest fire when it is not burning mytrees.
Turning away from violence does not help it disappear, neither for those who suffer it, nor for ourselves who have no courage to face it. It only
breeds guilt feelings which corrode the very essence of our being, unless it spawns contrition and retribution, born out of compassion and hope.
The 1994 Pastoral Message of the Catholic Bishops of the United States of America was titled "Confronting a Culture of Violence".
The bishops did not ask people to "live with a culture of violence" or "be resigned to it", to "endure it", or merely
advise "trying to change it". The bishops said that we must confront it, facing it in a challenging mode.
Passivity in the face of aggression validates the effectiveness of aggression. It shows that it works.
Vanderhaar points out that "the first way we confront the culture of violence is in our own personal lives, by attempting to live our daily
interactions in a consciously nonviolent way". Violence must be first overcome in our lives on a daily basis. Our model must be the Non-Violent Christ who has not given us a new law of non-violence but only the
law of Love. People resigned to the culture of violence may fail to recognise that, essentially, non-violence is an extension of the commandment to love one another.
All violence hurts, primarily the victim, but also to some deeper degree – the perpetrators. An act of violence has a corrosive effect on the
personality of the perpetrator and breeds further violence. Unfortunately, says Vanderhaar, "our society does not teach anybody, young or old, to curb their violence. Rather it teaches that violence, including
abortion, is an acceptable means to remove threatening obstacles, or to achieve one’s goals."
There is no morally good violence and, if we agree to the status quo, we must compromise with a status of violence.
To love one another, extending all the compassion to every creature, is the greatest commandment, and non-violence is an extension of this commandment.
Non-violence is the only road to peace, an environment where conflicts are resolved without violence and where people are free, not exploited, living so that they may grow to their full potential.
Bishop Carroll Dozier is quoted by Vanderhaar as stating that peace is a gift as well as a task, adding that it is God’s promise and our
responsibility. The non-violent world is not a dream. It is and must remain our hope.
Soul pollution lies at the root of all violence and in our days it is dispersed by the mass media, especially television, and by unscrupulous people
whose idea of effective marketing of any product is to use sex, alcohol and tobacco, with the natural beauty of the landscape as background in order to diminish buyer resistance. Pornography has crept into
everything, all advertising and even education.
This massive pollution of human souls de-sensitises people as far as violence is concerned. The omnipresence of violence on the television screen and
in daily life, seen from early childhood as a matter of routine, assaults the ideals of a peaceful world, the dream of a Compassionate Commonwealth that people of goodwill everywhere are hoping and praying for.
Violence associated with sex in ‘everyday pornography’ dehumanises man-woman relations, making home-violence and rape natural phenomena. Children of
war have many scars, but children of home and societal violence bear wounds that may never stop bleeding.
Developing nations, where up to half of the population is represented by children and adolescents, are particularly vulnerable to violence pollution,
since it comes accompanied by many desirable manifestations of progress, permitting access to goods that were formerly limited to opulent societies. Among such ‘good’ many are spiritually, culturally, and
environmentally polluting, often in ways that are imperceptible to the affected, especially the young.
More and more new forms of violence appear or are brought into countries which are still relatively stable, peaceful and safe to visit.
Even fraudulent advertising and adulteration of products including medicaments and food violate the physical internal milieu of those who consume them.
In the face of the reality of daily violence, visible and invisible, seen and unseen, we must place around all Life a shield of prayer and, jointly, strive unrelentingly towards the Compassionate Commonwealth.
I sincerely hope to meet Gerhard Vanderhaar, and I hope you will want to meet him in his book "Beyond Violence". His dream of a Compassionate
Commonwealth, founded upon the principles of Non-Violent Christ, is worth pursuing.
It has to be sought after from the interior of our hearts as we free ourselves of all the negative feelings of indignation, contempt for those who
commit violence, at the same time as we nurture the feelings of compassion not only for the victims, but also for those who perpetrate violence. It does not seem logical at first. It is a long way to peace.
Albert Schweitzer is frequently quoted by people who wish to imitate him: "Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man
will not himself find peace".
In an eco-drama dedicated to the children of India, host country to the International Conference on Science and Technology Education and Future Human
Needs, held in Bangalore, August 6-14, 1985 titled "The flight of the Flamingoes" by Sophie Jakowska (unpublished, now also adapted in Spanish by the author) these feelings of compassion are expressed by
Mother Earth in the final scene, as bush fire overtakes the nesting site. It follows:
Oh, brothers, if only your flesh could feel
As does a blade of grass that burns,
Tiny field mice scouring by,
Daisies and butterflies that wilt,
As snakes and frogs succumb to smoke…
Some forms of life, forever gone,
No more to grow, nor grace the earth…
The soil parched black, and turned to ash.
Trees martyred and rivers drying out
As flames leave sadness in their wake
Never to be again as it once was.
Provoked fires, deforestations, environmental destruction, disappearance of species, beauty gone forever, careless human acts and countless faults,
these are crimes against nature, real crimes of violence.
Since June 1997 Earth Action Network (15, New Row, Covent Garden, London, WCSN 4DA, U.K.) is carrying on a world campaign in support of the
International Tribunal of Crime. It would be established to deal permanently (and, hopefully, independently of political pressure) with genocide, war crimes, and generalised violations of human rights.
Ecological crimes, such as local or regional ecocide, should also be considered since they essentially represent violation of human rights, depriving
present and future generations of acceptable survival. Yet little attention is given to environmental destruction as if creatures other than humans did not ‘suffer’ when they cannot realise their goal of existing
for the glory of God, ensuring a suitable future for God’s adopted sons and daughters.
Radhames Jimenez Pena, 1977, in "Derecho ambiental y delito ecologico en Republica Dominicana" (Editora Alpha & Omega, Santo Doming, Dom.
Rep.) defines as ecological crime the type of violation of an existing juridical norm that can alter, modify or destroy the environment propitious for the reproduction and survival of living organisms including
plants, animals, etc. This type of criminal action produces not only environmental degradation but also the degradation of the social environment, according to a criminologist, Nector Gabral O., cited in the above
text.
Although legal rights have been proclaimed for creatures other than human, damage to environment is usually not seen as a violation of rights other
than property rights if and when they apply.
But environmental damage is with no doubt a violation of human rights, if we can consider a ‘healthy habitat’ as the only assurance of acceptable
survival of the future generations. This forms part of the school of thought of Prof. Van Rensselaer Potter, who coined the word ‘bio-ethics’ in a scientific article in 1970 and expanded this principle in his books
"Bio-ethics - Bridge to the Future", 1971 (Prentiee Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, USA. 203 pages) and "Global Bioethics – Building on the Leopold Legacy", 1988, Michigan State University Press.
195 pages. Potterian Bioethics is an integrated discipline that combines scientific knowledge and human values, not merely medical ethic, as it is sometimes incorrectly considered.
Considering the bioethical creed for individuals, Potterian bioethics is in principle a non-violent discipline consistent with the concepts expressed
by John Paul II in his encylical "Evangelium Vittae" (1995).
In conclusion, to those who minimise the efforts to combat what they view as ‘minor’ forms of violence, I say that all violence, visible and invisible,
seen and unseen, represents a disorder within the natural order of things.
No form of violence is sufficiently insignificant to be left alone until some major forms of violence are under control. Insistence on finding
‘greatest causes’ is usually a way to forestall action.
In the meantime fear and desensitisation produce an appetite for more violence and aggression, with the most imaginative use of media that claim
cathartic, purgative or morally instructive benefits for violence on television. The same circles consider pornography a cornerstone of democracy.
The verbal and visual pollution produces some, but not sufficient, consumer resistance. In the United States of America the very indignation required
to stir people’s private action, also stirs people to look to the state for remedial action.
Ralph Nader, the relentless people’s advocate, is quoted by one of his biographers (Richard Curtis, "Ralph Nader’s Crusade", Hacrae Smith,
1972) as saying that air pollution is a form of chemical and biological warfare. The effluent from motor vehicles, manufacturing plants and incinerators amounts to compulsory consumption of violence by most
Americans. There is no full escape from such violent ingestion, for breathing is a necessity. The damage, perpetuated increasingly in direct violation of local, state, and federal law, shatters people’s health and
safety, but still escapes inclusion in the crime statistics.
In "Ecological Vignettes – Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicament" the most highly regarded American ecologist, Prof. Eugene
Odum (1998, Harwood Academic) quips, beneath an appropriate cartoon: "You know as well as I do that a man is measured by the amount of pollution he creates", a view, I would add, accepted by many
‘developers’ in developing countries.
This would place my twenty year of effort to curb air pollution in the historic city of Santo Domingo in the painful but respectable category of
fighting against violence. No doubt, a man or a nation, will be measured and also judged by the amount of pollution created as ‘a way of life’.
Quoting Ralph Nader again, from the above cited biographer: "Let it not be said by a future, forlorn generation that we wasted and lost a great
potential because our despair was so deep we didn’t even try, or because each of us thought someone else was worrying about our problems".
top
|
