Terrorism is ever terrorism – no matter when and where

What 9/11 badly tought to the world is that terrorism is terrorism everywhere no matter wwhat motivation ignites it. By definition, it’s catching the power looking for the people to feel afraid living in freedom and fighting to conserve it as a way to the progress, the tranquility, and the peace.

In the same way, for many countries around the world where this issue has been not usual, the event made them to call terrorist to the one who is terrorist, although like the Mexican (but Miami-based) journalist Jorge Ramos, with Univisión Network, notices, it also made us to call  terrorist to the one who just thinks different than us.

My memories about that Tuesday morning are currently some blurring, but I remember I was just starting the work day in Malingas, a rural village in Piura Department, Peru, where I worked producing an educational radio show. I got the headline on my cellphone like many others across my country.

For the ones who had that news alert by SMS, then running to the TV screens and seeing live-broadcast how the large flames came out ffrom the gap that two planes caused at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City brought us two sensations – consternation and anxiety.

9/11/01: The towers are hit - YouTube

Why did this story connect closely to the most Peruvian audience? The simple answer is because we already passed it through. Between 1980 and 1997, terrorists groups as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement or MRTA as its initials in Spanish) kidnapped, killed, set up bombs, destroyed public and private property.

They said they fought for our freedom, for releasing us from what they say imperialism (the American influence, actually), but ever using violence, ever blaming who thinks different, ever threatening who set them in controversy. The agenda was clearly taking the power anyway.

An, in this point, it’s necessary to remark that a terrorist is not mandatorily that man or woman who wears a military outfit. He or she can quietly wear like some of us, or even wearing a top designer suit. He or she can come from the left, the middle, or the right – terrorism doesn’t know of ideologies. He or she wants to control us in the most insane way you ever can imagine.

It’s relatively easy to forge loyalties when you force violently someone to do what you say. Acting by fear is not acting in freedom, indeed. So, if simple impositions are not enough, the agressions are going to scale. And if nothing works, the best for them will be to vanish you.

After the 9/11, something rare happened to the world. Instead to use the milestone like a pairtaking to build a ffairest world in liberty and respect, we are confronting much than we can imagine. The polarization in all senses is the measure of our days. And that is a gain for the real terrorists.

They try to highlight the feelings of one of the parts by pitching the idea they are down, powerless, so the resentment is created, and a train of actions fueled by the hate and a manipulated need to reinvindication is the next. And if it allows to catch the power, the better, but to live in justice? No. The experiences across the planet don’t prove that.

All the regimes that could take up following that method ultimately made the leaders a kind of little court with so many priviledges, the same they criticized the previous administrations, while the rest of people live submitted, poor, without options to be what they want to be.

9/11: South Tower collapses, Pentagon hit – YouTube

Otherwise, if something has become clear after 9/11 is that terrorism is a global issue, not the one focused in por or developing countries –even the U.S. had domestic terrorism issues since 1990s until the recent presidential race—so the combat against demands unity. There are some trials and collaborative networks for intelligence and enforcement, but not all the points of view are aligned because the origin of every terrorist crusade has their own local particularities.  Then, a world recipe working as a formula is not ever the best way to solve it.

It’s possible we don’t see the lessons of 9/11 experience with clarity yet. But today that we are commemorating 20 years of other event in the recent history that shook the word, it’s a good time to think about. How much our political, social, economic comfort zone come to be too important that we can’t see around and understand that we can live as we want to live but considering the rest has the same right, that we can help and learn each other. We can be community not quitting our individuality – they are complementary dimensions. We are still on time to make the step for being a better world without violence. We can. Let’s do it.

Episode 12: Katie Couric - YouTube

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