Two Boys, 90 Youths, And Memory

     In the paper the other day, I read an article about 90 youths camping outside of Mexico City that were raped and beaten for several hours by twelve armed men. A few days before that on the front page was an article about two teenage boys that stabbed another boy to death and then burnt his body on a footpath. I watch Gus Van Sant's 'Elephant' and I wonder about what is remembered more of events, what I experience hearing about Columbine when it happened or remembering those things through Van Sant's characters and perspective. I don't quite know what to make of the two boys or the boy they killed, never having seen them or known them. I don't know what to say about the youths in Mexico or the gang that brutalized them, the whole thing fading and dissolving into this greater idea of Mexico. My proximity is in part what determines my experience of these violences. Van Sant brings me closer to Columbine through a completely fictitious account of high school shootings, but being a student, when I was a student, made it more real. Driving on Colvin brings the boys into the sidewalks, into my car, into a graspable time and dimension, their eyes on me and on the boy they set aflame, which now I can almost smell. I'm only able to know the Mexican children through violent acts I've been close to.