Friday, December 22, 2006

 

A Story for Silja in Finland

Yesterday, over at A Tangled Web, there was a post that caught my eye. It juxtaposed an artist's rendering of the Freedom Tower to be built in New York City with a picture of a statue in Hartford, Connecticut. I offered a comment that discussed a third memorialization in the small town of Columbus, New Mexico.

My short comment was too brief to do justice to the subject I was raising, so I retrieved the following letter that I wrote to my friend Silja, who lives in Helsinki, Finland. Silja had asked me to explain why we Americans are the way we are.
Chalk it up to frontier mentality. Or Manifest Destiny. Or Westward Ho!

While we’re all Europeans, more or less, we never suffered from the frustrations of too small countries and too many boundaries. There was always the western wilderness to escape to. Historians call it the safety valve. Anyone who found life uncomfortable in the east could always go west, back in the 19th century, and build a new life. This was particularly helpful if you believed in a hated new religion (like Mormonism) or if you were simply guilty of theft or murder.

Go west, young man (and occasional woman). Clear the wilderness; subdue the savages. If you get into trouble, we’ll send the cavalry to save you. Remember, this land is your land, from sea to shining sea. Actually, we bought most of the west from Napoleon, who didn’t really own it, and the rest we took from Mexico, which was too puny to defend it.

Speaking of Mexico, in the early 20th century they had a revolution down there. Governments started turning over on a regular basis starting in 1910. I’m sure it made America very concerned to have such an unstable situation right on our southern border. Some people involved in the Mexican struggle were also bandits. One of them was Pancho Villa.

In 1916, Pancho and his men crossed the border and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico and the Army post there. People were killed, property was either stolen or destroyed. U.S. General Pershing was sent with 10,000 men on a punitive expedition into Mexico. They chased Pancho Villa for months, but they never caught him. The next year, Pershing got to go on another expedition, this time to France to fight in the First World War.

The only reason I’m telling you this story is that today, in Columbus, New Mexico, there is a state park where the Army post used to be. It’s called the Pancho Villa State Park. I’m just going to take a wild guess that you won’t be seeing an Osama bin Laden State Park where the World Trade Center towers used to stand.

Alan

Saturday, 6 October 2001

P.S. The Villa raid was “the first armed invasion of the continental United States since the War of 1812, and also the last one” until 11 September 2001.
On March 11, 2006, to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Pancho Villa's attack on Columbus, a new Exhibit Hall was officially opened at Pancho Villa State Park.


They even had a parade including a smiling Pancho Villa re-enactor.


Can you picture a similar commemoration at Ground Zero in the year 2091?





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?