A Few Scattered Thoughts on Violence Coming Home

As many of you know, when a new, and therefore, young professor, I researched and wrote on violent attacks on Latter-day Saint persons and property in South America.

Almost thirty-two years later, an LDS ward in Michigan suffered a deadly attack worse than anything from the guerrilla violence of those days. Nonetheless, there are, perhaps, some things to learn in a comparison.

One very troublesome comparison: the United States is moving ever closer to the tactics honed by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile of silencing opposition and disappearing people (for now immigrants or those who are similar to them, but it threatens to do so with citizens and opponents as well.) 

A key difference: the US president and wannabe dictator has practiced a tactic of encouraging his followers to violence against enemies, such as the congress on January 6th, and then practicing legalistic and journalistic denials, as well as finger pointing at a mirage, Antifa and democrats, liberals, “sicko leftists” in general. 

This includes the counterfactual idea that violence stems from the left and not from the right. The fact that much violence is from lone wolves on the right who seem unorganized and receive no specific orders allows their politics to be denied and disavowed. 

The US tends to see politics as a partisan and group issue. Individuals, per se, cannot be originators of politics unless they are influenced by or derive their ideas from some established group with a political ideology that they exemplify. 

Names for ideologies are created from fever dreams among agitators and creators such as wokeism, ideology of gender, etc. Rightwing ideologues, such as  Christopher Rufo of the Manhatttan Project, spend time thinking them up and actively marketing those labels among the right, often with only dubious empirical referents. His baby is the now powerful label “Critical Race Theory”. He borrowed the label from academics, gave it a new though perhaps related set of meanings, and marketed it.  

The more current bugaboo is DEI that exists to define bureaucratic practices and values which when refocused and redefined becomes a “horror” to be attacked and undone. 

Back to the comparison. In the late eighties and early nineties, the heyday of guerrilla violence against Mormonism, Latter-day Saints and much of the press could not grasp that their proselyting and  building chapels was seen as a political act and could be made a political target. Instead, the onus was put on “bad people” or “irrational actions’ as a kind of denial. 

While there were interests of power in this, there also was simply an inability to realize that our way of thinking and defining things is not universal; that what we label as good can also be labeled as bad. 

In the case of the LDS young man who killed a political figure with the gun of his own ideas, there is a denial he could be “one of us”.  We tend to insist that some nefarious political ideology or spending too much time online and “transgenderism,” a newish bugaboo, must have caused a transformation in him.  

What we prefer not to see, are the tensions within our own community whether we are MAGA or Mormons that contribute to and even may provide the sociological base for the violence. 

The murderous attack on a Ward in Michigan this last weekend with the dramatic, almost cinematic, entry to the building and murder of worshippers was much more Hollywoodesque than anything that took place in Chile or Bolivia against Mormons.

Whatever the legal motives, those have yet to be determined and announced, the act takes place in a political context: the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk in Mormon Utah by a probably inactive LDS young man. It is no surprise, sadly, that the accused killer in MIchigan is of MAGA and deploys its symbols, while at the same time displaying vigorous anti-Mormon feelings. 

Please note, his ideas are not simply from right-wing, Evangelical radio and posts. He evidently lived in Jeremy Ranch, near Park City for some period of time and may well have absorbed Utah’s home-grown anti-Mormonism. 

That would be background to this set of oppositional ideas of various institutional addresses becoming charged with the drama at UVU and a single bullet from an old deer rifle taking down a prominent Republican figure who, to be sure, was controversial within elements of the Right. That charging would also give Kirk’s violent defense through revenge weight and power. 

There is another charging to be looked at, and that is the local issues in the killer’s area of Michigan that make the LDS Church controversial. It is useful to see how we are perceived.

In any case, the officials of law enforcement will investigate and bring charges. In both the case of the Orem shooter and the Michigan one. We will have to assess and learn though I, as an old and now retired professor, am very sad about the political situation in my country that is escalating violence.  

Excursion into Myth and Language

Well, I promised Debora Ferreira I would relate the story of the bat and, I shall. 

I could do so very briefly. Though simple in itself, it un-walls the cave on so many other issues of intriguing history and folklore in this part of Spain. 

Simply, the bat, called in Valenciano, the rat penat or flying mouse, is on its crest prominently.  It stands over other significant symbols of Valencian identity.  Why?

Well, here we go. 

The city of Valencia, a prominent port of the Mediterranean located in marshes on the mouth of the … river., once was a Moorish city. Mosquitos were a terrible problem as one might imagine, perhaps even worse than the pesky Christians that would attack from time to time. 

It is said that the moors relied on bats to control mosquitos, though I do not know about Christians. 

Nonetheless, one time, when the King of Aragon, Jaume I invaded and was outside the city waiting to stage his attack, a bat flew into his camp. It made a big noise by striking the armaments and then flapping its wings on a drum. It sounded the alarm that the Moors were about to stealthfully attack Jaume’s forces. 

As a result of the bat’s sounding the war drums, the Christians were ready and able to fend of the soldiers of Valencia.  As a result, the Christians took over the city and region.

Ever since, they say, the rat penat has been considered a defender of the city; the bat saved it from ongoing Moorish occupation and the Christians from almost certain defeat. 

Curiously, the bat is somewhat similar to the dragon though a mammal rather than a reptile that occupies and important place in Aragon’s history. There they relate that St. George, yes  that St. George, managed to appear in Aragon and defeat the dragon who had been terrorizing the region, demanding a daily human sacrifice to assuage his attacks. The king had promised his daughter to whoever could take out the dragon.

What is it with these kings always wanting to give away their daughters? The King in Alicante was said to do the same thing, though for water rather than to defeat a dragon. 

So anyway. St. George killed the dragon as he did all over Europe. The dude really got around.  He left his image and his red bars on the coat of arms of Aragon.

Though part of Valencia as a Spanish region and though the second city of Valencia in terms of population, Alicante does not ostentate the bat in its heraldry. Instead it has the three red bars of Aragon in recognition of St George.

Jaume did conquer Alicante too, it is said, but his son-in law, King Alfonso the Wise of Castille redid the task.

In these dynastic struggles with the Arabs, and the effort by historians to say whose…”dragon”… is bigger or mightie—as in the flying mouse.

In short, or in tall, if you prefer, these conquests are origin stories for the cultural and linguistic diversity of Valencia and Alicante.  They are also contested but we shall not go there.

Both Valencia and Alicanjte have the language Valenciano, a close relative of Barcelona’s Catalan—Jaume sponsored literature in Catalan and was said to have spoken the tongue as well as, Aragonese, a different language now on the verge of extinction. (kings and noblemen are strangely multilingual).

While Catalan stems from the same family as French—this story helps explain why King Jaume did not go to war against the French—Aragonese is fromn the same family as Castillian.

Now called Churro (like the Iberian-descendent sheep of New Mexico), the Spanish of the western mountains of Valencia is heavily influenced by it if not being in fact its daughter with a more modern Castillian influence. 

The lowlands of Valencia are said to speak a language related to Catalan and the highlands a language related to that of Aragon, due to the fact that Jaume was the head of both provinces. He is said to hav brought colonists from both to “resettle” the lands taken from the Moors. 

However, In Alicante, the issue is more complex.  The north is like Valencia with Valenciano in the East and Castillian—now like Alfonso’s Manchego in the west. 

To the south, the City of Elce (Elx) is officially Valenciano speaking as are highland areas, while the broad southen Vinalopó valley is Spanish speaking. There the Spanish is more like Murcian.

Alicante was near the boundary established between the vassal kingdom of Alphonso, Murcia, and Catalonia. 

Thus in the city you hear Spanishes similar to Murcian in pronunciation if not in all the Murcian words,  and some similar to Manchego. You can also hear Valenciano, as well as their own Spanish of their bilingual life. 

I have now finished my wonderful dim sum from a cool local Chinese place near the sea, and will go back into my bat-world of poetry and strange ideas, like that of dappled sunlight and shadow from the Japanese Komorebi. Later…

Alicante's Underground

Evenings, Alicante comes to life.  Shadows swell, the sun has weakened and will soon drop. A breeze kicks up to toss the locks of women and men, all the while it also kisses cheeks universally, with no worry about gender. 

The sidewalks fill with people sauntering or sitting at sidewalk cafes. The tables that ring the broad Luceros Roundabout—a main spot of connection and entrance to the underdeveloped underworld, Alicante’s tram—fill to overflowing. More so than the circle’s fountain.   

The city really does have an underground and not just from tram tracks. During the Spanish Civil War, when German and Italian planes would appear from seemingly nowhere, over the sea or over land, and drop bombs, rotten eggs of destruction, the city dug and constructed bomb shelters.  They were big enough and numerous enough to hold much of the population that then lived here.

Of course the victorious fascists, the Nationalist and their dictator Francisco Franco did not wish to remember when they rained destruction through their allies on the Mediterranean Coast that was strongly committed to the Republic and to internationalist causes of reform and even revolution.

That combination of governing a Republic relying on a combination of parties including Leninists, Trotsyists, Trotskyites, and many varieties of anarchists who wanted radical and even revolutionary change was an often tense and shifting achilles heel. 

Nonetheless, the bomb shelters remained under Alicante mouldering.  Since then, with the development of downtown as a shopping and entertainment, place—an extended mall—along with a massive increase in cars and trucks, the underground was expanded to create vast parking lots. 

With the recent development of tourism, migration, and a new pride Alicante began cleaning out the bomb shelters and rehabilitating them.  Many are now places where tourists can visit such that the buried past of the city and of the fascists can become known even if only infrequently can it rise and spread on the city’s surface.

Knowing Alicante with its complex and nuanced histories under our feet and to our sides, has been the task of a small group of writers and of institutions such as the University of Alicante and the Ayuntamiento (the City Government). 

Aiding them in this work that threatens people who depend on the established Nationalist versions of history, have been people who read and discuss. For them, book stores have been key places to meet and discuss this history and much else, as well as to peruse books, including the novels and poems of Alicantinos and an entire world of writers. 

The city’s surface seems placid, with street-side cafes and picture snapping hoards of tourists. (We have just been told that given occupancy rates of hotels, tourist season now extends into October). Yet it contains a vast underground that is mostly empty other than for occasional tour groups and loads of automobiles. 

In some ways, this is a metaphor for a city whose past seems like and extended Freudian space beneath it. Despite the efforts of historians and its intellectuals, that history remains widely unknown. 

In nearby Valencia, bats that come out from there are considered saviors of the city. That powerful image extends into Alicante and may help explain why Alicante encourages setting up bat nests throughout the city. In any case, as creatures that live at night and often come out of the underground, bats seem an apt symbol for denizens of Alicante’s often hidden past underground. 

At night, when the sidewalks fill with people and cafes rumble from vivid conversations, bats fly on the hunt for insects and thereby suggest the missing stories of this city with an underdeveloped underground.

Adventures in Second Person Fog

 

With sharp edged, “excuse-me’s” we sliced through the crowds of tourists blocking aisles in the meat section of Alicante’s city market. In a back corner, fortunately only people from town grabbed numbers and waited in front of the two sides of a stand. 

We were attended surprisingly quickly. The man removed chicken legs and chopped them into two: thighs and legs.  “We just want thighs,  my friend said.” 

His reply? “You have to buy both!”

My friend hefted the package and paid, saying “muchas gracias” as she turned to leave. 

He quickly responded “a usted” (to you). 

Oh language. Even simple exchanges like this can call an ethnographers attention, especially when connected with other issues that speak to social change, or that are unexpected. 

I would have thought, being Spain, he would have said ”a vosotros”, since there were two of us, and Spaniards seem to seldom use usted, and usually not ustedes, even in formal circumstances where I would expect it. 

Since the stand is Argentine, I would have expected an “a vos”, but not an “a usted”.

I am also hearing Spaniards around here use vosotros to replace the singular usted, or tú” as vos already did, to a large extent in Argentina. 

Despite what they teach in Spanish classes, second person pronouns are a scary fog filled with fast moving semi-trucks and annoying sports cars all zooming around you while you have to quickly decide which lane (pronoun) to use.  Should you choose the wrong one, it feels like conversation can quickly snarl or even collapse.  

What they teach in classes is generally true. Ud.—the abbreviation for usted—is the more formal pronoun used tor older people and more formal people as a sign of respect, while tú is used with people your own age and status and to those younger or lower in status than you. 

These are “pronouns of power and solidarity”, as Brown and Gilman named them in a seminal paper from 1960 that still seems to hold for discussions of Romance language pronouns. 

While that classic discussion lays out a useful grid in the background, it does not necessarily identify which pronouns you should use in every Spanish speaking country or in every situation.  

To speak is to risk using the wrong pronoun or to make a social and political stance vis a vis pronouns, even if you are a native. 

I recently saw a Reel where a Mexican and a Costa Rican, I believe, laughed at a Spaniard when he produced the word vosotros for the second person plural pronoun.

That is how it sounds to Latin ears attuned to hearing vosotros in the rarified world of the Church or among snobs who are putting on pretentious airs in their home countries. Yet in Spain it is in common usage and, even more, it seems to have shaken off the constraints of that web of power and status to a great extent. Vosotros now is the standard second person plural pronoun at the same time it has stalked and snared the singular Ud. or Tú in much daily conversation. 

This came home to me last weekend when I, in a social gathering, conversed with a couple of Spaniards in their fifties, I think.  The group also consisted of some Colombians.  

I mentioned how people in Cali, Colombia seem to be taking the opposite tack. They appear to be losing tú and even their regional vos for second person singular. They replace it with a universal usted. 

I commented I was hearing the use of vosotros here in Spain for that pesky second person pronoun.  

They said they grew up using usted, and liked it, but that people here in Alicante especially of a younger generation get offended when you use it or tu with them; they demand vosotros. They spoke of a language shift in their experience to which they have conformed. 

You can see why my ears perked up with surprise when the butcher said usted. It made me wonder if he was Latin American, but as I replayed his conversation over meat in my mind, the accent was not the Argentine of his mates in the stand.  I do not know where he is from, but when I go back I will ask. 

In the meantime, his usted, was casually lobbed into parting in response to our volley without a pronoun.

While I could extend this small essay with an extensive set of thoughts on the Argentine vos, for the second person singular, I shall avoid it. 

Nonetheless, I will say that it is used in many other parts of Latin America besides Argentina. I fell in love with it in Bolivia as more intimate and warm that the dry and formal sounding tú which was less that the very distant usted in terms of pronouns of solidarity. Mexico along with its own set of conjugations. 

One final comment: It seems to me that the second person set of pronouns in Spanish has been under heavy historical and contemporary pressure to change. It has and probably will shift.

I suspect this has to do with the complex set of relationships in which it is used within that vortex of power and social differences and needs to express similarity and solidarity. 

Spanish teachers and texts tend to present this set of pronouns as set. As someone who has been using this language daily for more than fifty years, in a range of Latin American countries and now Spain, I do not see it as stable nor set in concrete. Instead it is changing in different ways and at different rates all over the Spanish-speaking world I think. 

Unfortunately I did not hear the Argentines in that meat stand speak vos—maybe they do not use it as much when in Spain.

In any case the chicken we bought to make a pollo negro turned out to be unusually delicious. 

Treacherousness of Good-bye

 

At the moment, I am in a larger coffee house, one owned by an American—I am told. It is more attuned to an international clientele. I can see that in the subtlety of practices. Here, when people come in and out they do not say hello or goodbye. 

Is that because it is large or because it is American / International.  I do not know, but the combination leads to this lack of greeting and leave taking similar to Starbucks. There you simply do not expect people to enter and say hello or to say bye when they leave.

Trying to understand this exercises my professional mind—though I am retired. I have heard lectures and read articles about such things in a field called the ethnography of speaking, related to socio linguistics and anthropological linguistics more generally. For me, the focus is on the speech people actually use in different times and places and how they relate to social demography and identities. 

As I may have said here, since I have arrived in Alicante I have heard two different ways of taking leave: first adiós and, second, hasta luego. 

I would find myself getting irritated when people would say adiós to me.  My inner response is “fine, then, I will never come back.” because to my ears, Adiós carries implications of finality. It should be used for big leave takings where a good time or forever will elapse before you return to be together. 

My irritation led me to ask many people about their impressions. Broadly, South Americans agreed with my interpretation. And, to be sure, I realize that was where this idea was inculcated into me.  In fact, in saying goodbye there are also degrees of formality in some places.

To put it simply, hasta luego is more formal than ciao which is also widely used. In the US ciao carries implications of claimed coolness for some social groups, and Italian-ness, while in South America it is the ordinary goodby for most circumstances unless one wants to insist on status, your’s or the other person’s.

Of course, there is a rich repertoire of ways of saying goodbye, just like in US English. In my Spanish, there is nos vemos which may well be an anglicism based on see you, though that is not how I learned it. I learned it in Spanish as simply Spanish. The anglicism for me would be to say ahi te watcho, or nos watchamos. Sometimes, among friends, I will pull these latter—based on an English verb conjugated in Spanish “to watch” which replaces the English to see: hence I’ll watch you instead of I’ll see you. 

You start seeing here in my linguistic history some of the complexity of this little space of communication. 

Thinking about nos vemos, has made me think about Bolivia where ciao (or chau as it is often spelled locally) is the dominant way of saying goodbye, presuming some kind of familiarity or equality among speakers. You can also duplicate it to create the common formula chau chau, kind of like the English bye bye, used on many occasions from ending phone calls to saying goodby to people face to face. It implies a bit of warmth and solidarity. 

However, in the Aymara language, one of the two min indigenous languages of Bolivia which were numerically dominant when I first started going there in the seventies, the main and most common way of saying good bye I experienced was jikisiñkama, or jakisiñkama, the verb here is about meeting together or encountering each other. 

In the Quechua of Bolivia I learned kutimunkama, also until we return. In Cusco{s Quechus, on the other hand, while that is understood, I was quickly corrected with their form, tupananchiskama, until we encounter each other again.

In Spanish in Bolivia and Peru, I have heard, especially young people use the English bye when taking leave. 

Choices of ways to take leave taking bring in lots of variables of which I have mentioned 1) relative permanence of the separation, 2) formality or informality, 3) status of the speaker and the hearer—this also included perceived coolness, generation, and social status, 4) language and code switching, although subsumable in the variable of status, I will leave that for social difference such as class or ethnicity, we can also see status group membership such as rockers, generational groups, marihuanos (weed smokers), and so on, which also involve identities and social forms that cross national boundaries. 

I want to go back to the beginning of this ramble: the relative permanence of the goodbye. 

I already mentioned the contrast between ciao and adiós and how, based on that, I often feel when people say adiós they are telling me to go away and never come back. This has made me think about how I learned to say good bye in my home towns on the border and among Mexicans and Mexican American in Utah.  Adiós was simply the neutral way of saying goodbye, without the emphasis on permanence or transitoriness.

Of course there were other ways, such as ahí te wacho, from the English see ya I imagine, and so on. If that normal English informal way of saying Bye entered border Spanish, of course the road had two ways. Adiós entered English, without the accent and with a short a and an elongated o. Similarly hasta luego became English in some circumstances. In all of them, you could measure relative formality or informality, but none of them had that meaning of just go away or the implication of not seeing each other again, the finality of the Andean adiós.