The Goodness in the World

 

I WANTED TO WRITE TODAY OF MARCELLA GRACE EILER’S LIFE and not of her death. I wanted to talk about how she was young—only 20 years old—and already interested in serving as protection for indigenous rights; of how she was from Eugene, Oregon, where I live. I wanted to write about her being a social activist, of what she was doing in Oaxaca, and what kinds of things she was interested in, about her being a dance teacher.

But I can’t write any more than that about her life. For pages, Google is chattering about how a machete was used to murder her, how it was done in Mexico, how it was a man who claims he had consensual sex with her and left her body in a shack…and that’s enough. If I read through another U.S. article about drugs or crime or murder in Mexico I think I will lose my ability to think. And there are no others on google. There are no images of her face that I can find. None of her smiling, or dancing, or living. Just of her alleged killer.

[update: below, to the right, I have since found and included an image, which I found in this post through a link left by a reader below. Thank you both.]

But I wanted to remember her, you see. At first I recoiled from writing about it at all. Because I don’t like to feed that bullhorn that is used—like keeping a Wanted Black Man foto in the newspaper at all times—to indoctrinate US citizens with anti-Mexico sentiment or reinforce it. (And it’s not like things like this don’t happen…it’s the focus, of course.)

But then I thought this woman should be remembered. She was a young person already dedicating herself to protecting others and caring about indigenous rights…an area with few fighting for it. 

“She was really trying to spend her energy as an observer for an indigenous rights organization,” [her father] John Eiler said in a telephone interview.

—Source

 

It only makes me suspicious when I read that she was another person only a few degrees from insight into Brad Will’s murder. 

She also had lived for about a month with the family of a witness in the killing of Bradley Roland Will, a volunteer for Indymedia.org, Cruz said. Will was fatally shot in October 2006 in Oaxaca City while filming protests by activists demanding the ouster of the state’s governor. [...]

Cruz said Eiler had complained that police in civilian clothes often sat in a parked car outside the witness’s family’s house and that they followed her. 

—Source

 

Perhaps in some way, the corruption of the Government of Mexico is unwinding yet another infected tendril. Who can say. I don’t put anything past them, but that’s for another day. It’s a sad, ugly tragedy no matter how you think of it. 

So today I’m not thinking of those parts. I’m not reading through pages of ugly, grisly articles or scanning mug shots of deranged human beings or soaking up all the dank, dark energy that the news media loves to nibble at and feed back.

I’m thinking of the sun hot on my arms as I type now. I’m thinking that the goodness in the world is due to people like Marcella Grace Eiler. I’m thinking it sure is good to be alive to feel this sun, and even this sorrow. It is good to be alive.

Marcella Grace Eiler, vaya con Dios and you are remembered.

________

UPDATE: Marcella’s Flickr Album and a Narco News Post that gives more detail to her life and talks about the bind that women activists are in, always living where sexual violence and political violence intersect.