Bungled Prosecutions and Investigations?

From Taos Friction: 28 March, 2015

(Edited with Commentary Today)

Dead and Murdered Women

At Las Pistoleras, the women this March have focused on the culture of killing and disappeared females in Juarez. The numbers continue to grow each year, what with a culture of machismo, maquiladora capitalism, narcopolitics, etc. The films and photographs, witness testimony and statistics break your heart. Metaphysical evil has become embodied evil in the bodies of dead Juarez women.

Taos might consider the drug-related murders of Amber Hava and Lisa Montano down there in the area of the Taos Spa similar to the Juarez murders. Two young women were killed by gunshots. We hear one of the alleged perps has been allowed to retire to Chama while the chief witness and boyfriend (?) of Ms. Hava has been gamboling in Las Vegas, Nevada.

(Today’s Question for the cops and DA: Are you going to investigate the “third” 911 call or ignore the witness? Why was the chief witness and potential suspect allowed to go home and change bloody clothes? How did the DA lose track of where the alleged murder suspect was living? What is the connection between the two deaths?)

And, sure, street talk knows damn good and well about the culture that killed Amber and Lisa, a culture allowed to poison the local community, especially the El Prado environs for years, despite calls to the cops from the neighbors. Oh, yes, we know the TCSO and DA have been aware of other “suspicious deaths” involving El Prado dope fiends.

(Their neighbors complained for years about the traffic but the cops and DA did nothing…)

What the hell, they are only women (or children). The real question herein posed is this: will the Taos County Sheriff and District Attorney step up and truly investigate the cover up dismissed by cops and prior prosecutors for years? Eh? Should we expect to see a little Juarez up here in Taos? Will we memorialize Amber and Lisa?

(But Gallegos, Chavez and their ilk are careerists and fighting real crime is no way to get re-elected in El Norte. Besides it takes too much time and work.)

Just because a person does drugs, due to whatever weakness, does not mean he or she deserves to die by the gun or knife or vehicle, their deaths covered up due to the culture of machismo.

I’m all for recognizing Cesar Chavez and the cause of social/economic justice or recognizing Reies Tejerina and righting the wrongs of historic land-grant claims. And sure, the historians and anthropologists and psychologists can talk about the “trauma” of the ancestors, who suffered invasions from the post-Chaco culture, the Comanches from the Plains, the Navajos from the land of the Dine, and the Spanish and Americanos from Europe and the East. Historically they were all killing each other.

But what about the crimes committed by los vecinos and the covered up by los politicos right now in the 21st Century in the Year of Our Lord, 2015? What about the mothers dressed in black who cry mournfully because murderers go free and the souls of the victims wander unsettled into the millennium? What about justice today for the living? What about corruption in the highest tribunals?

What about Amber and Lisa? Do their lives matter?