In Southern California, There Are Many Words For Genocide
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
The good thing about being ten days into the month of May is that we’re those many days away from April. Not that I have a particular dislike for the fourth month of the year (it’s said, after all, that its showers bring May flowers and all that). But April is also a month of horrific coincidences. Adolfo Guzman-Lopez brings it to our attention:
…the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the Cambodian genocide all had their beginnings in one way or another in the month of April.
A proposal by a City of Long Beach, California, Councilman would declare the month of April as “Genocide Awareness Month.” Guzman-Lopez tells us, in his Movie Miento blog in KCET:
There are a lot of Jews, Armenians, and Cambodian who either lived through these genocides or whose ancestors died in the various killing fields. How do the youth of these communities learn about the genocide? I produced three radio stories trying to answer the question.
During the reporting I was able to sit among these youth as they heard the stories for the fist time, for the upteenth time, as they sobbed, as they wondered why their parents and grandparents didn’t talk about the killings, as they seethed in anger against the perpetrators, and as they heard the shame of survivors describing the perpetrator as another person of the same nationality.
I like when I learn from the things I read. This was such a read.
You can read Guzman-Lopez’ entire piece HERE.
Poet and KPCC Reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez writes his column Movie Miento every week on KCET’s SoCal Focus blog. It is a poetic exploration of Los Angeles history, Latino culture and the overall sense of place, darting across LA’s physical and psychic borders.
[Photo by configmanager]