Posted on 04/26/2005 6:56:26 PM PDT by MisterRepublican
HARTFORD -- In a ragged parking lot, dozens of candles jostle for space on plastic milk crates with empty 40-ounce beer bottles. Covering the collection is a blue tarp scrawled with the message, ''R.I.P. Colorado."
It is a shrine, say its makers, a band of teenagers and 20-somethings who have spent hours there paying tribute to their friend Geronimo ''Colorado" Urbaez, a 23-year-old killed after an argument at a downtown club last month.
''We just hang and pay respect," said Anthony Rodriguez, 17, as he and seven friends gathered at the memorial on a recent afternoon.
But police say far more is going on. At the site, they say, youths gather not to mourn, but to drink, smoke marijuana, recruit for the drug trade, shoot guns in the air, and panhandle under the guise of raising money for the victims' families.
As such, police say the shrine for Urbaez, and others like it, are macabre glorifications of the very violence that ended Urbaez's life. The department has ordered that they be dismantled for public safety.
Yet to some, the memorials are no different from those that dot roadsides to mark traffic fatalities in a show of public mourning. Moreover, some say, ordering their removal ignores Latino tradition in a city where 40 percent of residents claim Hispanic heritage, and shrines to the dead are a cultural rite.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
' At the site, they say, youths gather not to mourn, but to drink, smoke marijuana, recruit for the drug trade, shoot guns in the air, and panhandle under the guise of raising money for the victims' families. '
Just kids bein' kids...
[/sarcasm
With a first name like "Geronimo" why use a nickname like Colorado? It just sounds lame in comparison.
"As such, police say the shrine for Urbaez, and others like it, are macabre glorifications of the very violence that ended Urbaez's life. The department has ordered that they be dismantled for public safety. Yet to some, the memorials are no different from those that dot roadsides to mark traffic fatalities in a show of public mourning."
This is third world crap. Get rid of the roadside junk heaps and mourn the dead at home, in the graveyard or at the church.
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
Every morning I pass a "shrine" for a guy who was going in excess of 100 MPH on his motorcycle and crashed into a car.
His friends put up a cross, football helmet, flowers, poems, a ketchup bottle (I kid you not), a garter, and motorcycle club memorabilia. The club is called the Goombahs.
Every year on the anniversary of his demise, his birthday (just guessing), Christmas and Easter, they have a get-together. The original flimsy cross has been replaced with a sturdy one made from 4X4's and painted Red, White and Green. They lay fresh flowers and tie balloons to the cross.
Wish I had friends as dedicated. Also glad my stupidity never caught up with me.
Usually these deals spring up on government right-of-ways and yet they pay no monies into the treasury for advertising the death of whomever the junkheap d'jour is about. Just like advertising, though, they can be dangerous. As you noted, people look at all the trash that accumulates around these deals instead of concentrating on their job behind the wheel. Just like cell phones or clowns eating, reading or doing their make-up while driving, these things distract. I have even heard people describe mammoth shrines that obstruct vision at critical crossings - almost seems like the survivors want others to join their loved one on their journey across the Styx. I dislike this stuff and have seen it appear and increase across the country in the last 20 years or so. I peg it to the decline of traditional religious beliefs and the rise of new-age mumbo-jumbo and the syncretistic beliefs of third world immigrants. Travel overseas in developing countries and you'll see it everywhere. Not sure, but I think it is related to the idea of the dead spirits occupying space and needing a good send off or some such clap-trap. I say the highway department should clean them up just like dead cats or litter and trash.
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