Modern Crucifixions

Recently, I watched a movie The Mauritanian (Prime video) that just exploded in my heart. It confirmed how cruel man is to man in war and disagreement and crime especially if he or she is Arab or Muslim or socialist or black skinned or Latin. It clicks on a type of hatred and disrespect that the rest of the world escapes. After watching that movie, I tossed and turned all night as my heart was wrenched with disgrace at man’s treatment of man. And how abusive the criminal justice system can be.  Basically if any part of your body is handcuffed or confined you become a slave for whatever the moment - being arrested, even though you are innocent,  being forced to do something not natural or we don’t know nor know how nor want to do. There is no respect or thank you or resolve. 

First in my heart, I remember every day that Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross 2000 years ago for something He didn’t do but He had to do for all mankind. In the eyes of the powerful Israelites, the sole point of the cruel death was getting rid of Him as He had too much power, which they feared. Very few citizens in Jerusalem and its surroundings were horrified about how Jesus suffered. There were only 120 men and women at Pentecost when the promised Holy Spirit descended with flaming tongues and crazy noises to be ingested into the hearts and souls of followers of Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God. That’s not such a huge crowd in today’s terms. Think about modern protests like Black Lives Matter, and I Can’t Breathe and when the public feels someone arrested was abused and not treated humanitarianly, that a person’s rights were exploited and not given due course. Sometimes a person is arrested just because they knew - did not necessarily hang out with - an enemy or criminal. 

I guess originally, such treatment existed for slaves who have been servants since the early days of Egyptian Pharaohs  - some more dignified than others. What is a slave? Everyone cannot be a King, a Royal, a God, a Goddess - someone has to be a worker to pay the bills in families and to make and build the things that we all need for survival. Who is there to tend to the fields, the crops, the cleaning job in a castle, the nursing of children, dressing the royals?  In the making of America, the white Europeans who had escaped for religious reasons, they said to the new shores that became America, stole the land from the powerful, spiritual Native American Indians, indulged as well in nightmare treatment of Africans and blacks skinned people who they transported inhumanly on ships, stacking them on top of each other like boxes in storage.   It was always inhuman abuse and brutality, lynchings (cannot tolerate that at all), use of women to produce babies who would grow up to be slaves and pick cotton or tobacco and so much more surrounded by poverty and disrespect and escapes in drugs and drink to survive the abuse.  And yet the white masters and mistresses depended on these precious people to raise their children, to teach them how to be socialites, students, and church goers, since the parents were too busy handling other things. 

Remember the horrors the Jews suffered under Hitler and the Nazis. The slaughter of so many brilliant, religious people only because they had Jewish blood was incognizant. Did you know both sides fled to Argentina and Uruguay and other South American nations, that the Nazis re-dressed and hid out in fine homes or estancias, living as fakes and failing to pay for what they did to slaughter so many of God’s people? Some Nazis got wealthy and were only discovered late in life when they were too old to pay by punishment for murdering more than 1.1 million Jews at Auschwitz. 

Later,  in Uruguay and Argentina in the 1974-1985, was the Dirty War, a military dictatorship to get rid of people with a liberal mind and with a bent toward socialism and communism. They called them political dissidents in Uruguay -Tupamaros - and the military dictatorship took over, violating human rights, using egregious torture and the tragic disappearance of human beings had no equal. Thousands of innocents were slaughtered, kidnapped and never found again to this day (mothers in both countries still protest to find out where their children are buried). It was an effort to get rid of “communism” (led by an USA military torture expert ). Ironically in 2002, 15 years after that misery, and torture beyond the capacity of any human, the 3rd political party called  Frente Amplio,(Broad Front)  a pure socialist party, was voted into political power of Uruguay.  It is sort of ironical that 9-11 exploded the prior year. 

 The masterpiece  leader was Jorge Mujica, who survived excruciating torture far beyond one’s imagination. (The story how Mujica and two other rebels suffered under the military dictatorship became a Netflix movie called 12 Year Night and there is also a precious documentary about him and his wife in retirement! ). Beginning in 2002, Mujica and his fellow presidents reigned 15 years (In Uruguay one is president for 5 years, cannot succeed oneself, but can run again later.) So the rise of the Frente Amplio was  a kind of victory since socialism worked.  

I doubt that any country has had such a leader: President Mujica refused to live in the castle-like President’s home,  chose to live on his small chacra (a few acres) in a small house, with only one guard, and insisted on driving his own old Volkswagen Beetle to work without a brigade of motorcycles and fancy limos because he believed he was a common man just like those he represented. He also gave 2/3rds of his salary to build homes for the poor and set up schools in old ship containers so children were able to go to school near their homes. Would that more presidents in power anywhere in this world do these things. There would be less taxes spent on palaces and streams of vehicles winding through streets. His party ruled until early before the coronavirus arrived.

In 2001 United States suffered a shocking attack, when 19 so called Islamic extremist of Al Qaeda attacked targets on our very soil in the eastern side of our nation. It was devastating to our pride and generosity and freedom and open-door policies. I was in New York City that very day with my son and we walked the streets along with the distraught others with fear in our hearts. Of course, there were hundreds of “suspects”, and being a Muslim in those days - even still today - was dangerous and frightening. Those military appointed, rounded up masses of possible suspects from Iraq, Iran, Syria, those same nations which we had bombed and destroyed and installed our own troops and which we all feared for many years. Americans began to pick on innocents who happened to be Muslims, who we must remember are children of God, through Abraham.  The US military set up massive prisons on the edge of a Cuban spot of land called Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. And what happened there - the abuse and horrors of torture - has been mostly hidden, but certainly what went on there is another example of severe abuse, similar to what happened in South America.

 The film The Mauritanian approaches the reality of what our military did with no restrictions. It shows the extreme abuse of any Arab, ridiculously all being suspect and accused of having  caused 9-11 beyond human sense. Mind you American soldiers slaughtered many an Arab in Iraq, Iran, Syria, over many years but we are the “good guys” because we bombed the leaders in their homes with families- and we still seek to wipe out powerful military leaders in Iran, Iraq, Syria, wherever a woman wraps up in abayas or naqab and men wear those sun protecting thobes and shemaghs. The military don’t judge good or bad. They do what they are ordered to do. And special types know how to bring the hated ones to the point of death without losing them.  

But I keep leaping back in my heart to those accused but never proven nor even tried to be proven as agents that caused 9-11. Just having spoken to or known a member of Al Qaeda, the militant Sunni Islamist organization run by Osama ben Laden, could get one killed, and worse, torture in prison. In their home countries, innocent kids were probably enticed by the image of defending their country and families, but they ended up in Guantanamo - can you imagine 790 prisoners - the majority had nothing to do with 9-11 but were herded into orange uniforms and flip-flops and locked up in metal cells because they were young and Arabic and probably disrespectful to American police and soldiers who mostly didn’t understand their Arab language.

As I watched this true story, I could feel the piercing pain of inhuman abuse and lack of legality to a man called The Mauritanian (detained and abused for 13 years in Guantanamo for no reason, no charges, never before a court judge,  but that he was a young Muslim who had met, possibly invited to join with Al Qaeda, though there is no proof that he accepted). Yet, he was put in the cells of Guantanamo and tortured for just being from the wrong country. It just cracked my heart! How cruel can men be and still call themselves human? What went on in prisons in much of South America is another horror. They won’t spend money on prisons because criminals are animals. And much of that has been, at least in the past, politically fired. I’m sure there are similar kinds of prisons all over the world. Days with no food or water, freezing in the nude, flogged while sleeping on a metal floor beside one’s poop, tortured beyond endurance of pain, drowning one in waterboards and certainly no visitors.  Such are the inhuman horrors. And though I worked in prisons of lesser violence for a long time, (even though volunteers were not accepted in Uruguay), I wonder why my heart hurts so much and I cannot do anything to help get things right.

Here in the United States, African American and Latin youth have few options other than a life of crime. In my city alone there are about 200 gangs with probably more than 10,000 members because it is what youth know so they feel safer in gangs, even though now the gangs have gangs that have no respect for anyone or anything and those once controlled by leaders, have no more powerful gang leaders! And remember, what or government has done to Native American Indians, resorting to alcoholism as they lost everything including their sacred lands and worship places when ships from Europe floated in loaded with religious and otherwise Europeans looking for a land of the free. The Native Americans were extraordinary caretakers of nature - and still try but have to fight the US government for any kind of freedom. They turned to alcohol like so many distraught people do, because it was cheap and wiped out hope and memory and reality. Such a waste of amazing spiritual people.

Men in power, government or business,  are so inhuman and revengeful and don’t give a damn about the underdog, the poor, the abused, the prisoners (particularly the political ones). And Jesus died on the Cross, He hung with his hands and feet nailed into the wooden cross. Don’t we know that is extreme pain but did he yell out help me? He had not even committed a crime. He was innocent but too risky or invasive to allow peace in the souls of the powers that were in Jerusalem. 

Surely, abuse still goes on through slavery and brutality and “I’ll get you, just watch. I have the power to do anything I want”,  American power mongers declare. Race and religion are the basis of most wars, fights, torture, violence, abuse, murder and political slaughter. What can an individual do? I love so much and it doesn’t seem to help and I worry about violent youth who have learned a lifestyle (I wrote knife-style by accident) that has little hope under the white man’s rules of law. 

We all die one way or the other. We need to quit dividing ourselves into Americans Muslims Catholics Baptists Africans Brazilians whites blacks browns pinks yellows whatever skin we are birthed into and learn about The God of us all but also on this earth there are other forms of God:  Muslim, Buddhist, Judaism, Sikhise, Celtic, Kemetism, paganism. I don’t know the answer. But I pray all the time to arrive at a union of faith that will bring us together to love and do good. I believe that is why we are here. To put the puzzle together with love and patience and goodness. God help us. 
 

 ~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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