by Daniel Cubias
A nine-year-old girl in Arizona is brutally shot down by a psychopath who may also be a right-wing nut.
No, this is not the story of Christina Green, the little girl born on 9/11 who was killed in the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. As heartbreaking and appalling as her death was, it has not lacked for media attention.
This is the story of Brisenia Flores, whose murder has simply not touched America in the same way that Green’s death has. In fact, her killing has received surprisingly little attention.
Brisenia was murdered along with her father, Raul Flores, when gunmen burst into their home in May 2009. This week, the trial of their alleged killers began.
Simple greed was not the motivation for this horrific crime. The brains behind the operation, Shawna Forde, is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, an offshoot of the Minutemen border-watch group. Forde’s master plan was “to rob and murder drug dealers, all to raise money for the fledgling, anti-immigrant border patrolling group.” Prosecutors say she needed money to buy land “near the border that she intended for her group to use as a base for raids … on undocumented Mexicans crossing the border.”
The triggerman in the murders, Jason Eugene Bush, has been associated with the Aryan Nations, a fun-loving group of psychotic racists. According to prosecutors, Forde and Bush met up with petty thug Albert Robert Gaxiola, who pinpointed Flores as an easy mark.
The trio busted into Raul Flores’ home and murdered him, then shot Brisenia’s mother, Gina Gonzalez, who played dead. In her testimony, Gonzalez said that Brisenia begged the invaders not to shoot her. Gonzalez testified that “she heard Bush slowly reload his gun and that he then ignored Brisenia’s pleas and fired” into her face at point-blank range.
What does this grotesque act teach us about the state of the immigration debate? Well, for starters, in the über-patriotic mind of people like Forde and Bush, gunning down children is just the necessary by-product of keeping America safe from all those dirty immigrants.
Of course, the official Minutemen organization has quickly disavowed their relationship with Forde, who was also active in the Tea Party. But really, what are these supposedly respectable organizations going to say? It’s not a winning soundbite to proclaim, “She’s one of our shining stars, but yeah, she murders the occasional Latino.”
Their belated disavowal means nothing. It is a face-saving gesture issued with the feigned shock that one of their members would actually do what so many of them have dreamed of.
In any case, it is also a lie. The founder of the Minutemen, Jim Gilchrist, was tight with Forde and “was working to help promote her ‘work’ on the border intensely during the two weeks between the murders and Forde’s arrest.”
At Forde’s trial, “her attorneys questioned whether an accused murderer allegedly driven by right-wing passions could get a fair trial here.” Well, it is Arizona, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were them.
Now, nativists may point out that Flores, an alleged drug dealer, was not exactly dad-of-the-year material. But harping on the unsavory aspects of victims is an arm-waving distraction that seeks to justify vicious crimes. It didn’t work when people rationalized Rodney King’s beating in 1991. One hopes it doesn’t work when a little girl gets shot in the face.
Ultimately, Forde is such an easy person to hate that it’s tempting to dismiss her as an aberration. She’s the mythical extremist that practically forces us to say, “But not all right-wingers are like that.” Of course, they’re not all like that. Still is that a disclaimer or an apology?
Clearly, if enough people spew their venom at Hispanics, loudly and at great length, it’s predictable that some of them will take metaphors literally. Some of them will take up arms against the supposed invading hordes.
And when they do, people like Brisenia Flores will die.
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To learn more about Daniel Cubias,
visit http://www.hispanicfanatic.com/
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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