Murder

By Mickey Friedman
March 11, 2018

One moment and Ñacuñán was dead. He was in my life then gone. There is death and then there is murder. Murder is especially brutal – obviously for the victim but for those who cared.

One minute he was a greatly appreciated 37-year-old Spanish teacher at Simon’s Rock, then the convenient object of the mad misery of a mentally-ill student named Wayne Lo. A senseless killing.

If you’re lucky you’ve come across a Ñacuñán, have had a friend or colleague like Ñacuñán. He was extraordinarily kind. I had hours of footage from Nicaragua, taken during the election of 1990. My Spanish is pathetic, and while Ñacuñán often reminded me that the slang of Argentina is different from Nicaragua, he spent hours trying to find the best possible translation for every word.

A writer himself, he cherished language and embraced our journey. I enjoyed every minute I spent with Ñacuñán, the long conversations about the many different ways you could interpret a single phrase. There were significant challenges: an extended conversation/argument amongst more than a dozen people at a marketplace, opinions flying, passionate yet polite.

The stakes for Nicaragua were extraordinarily high: the Sandinistas. who had improbably overthrown the U.S. supported dictator Somoza, faced a relentless U.S. boycott and U.S. financed Contra army. They failed to meet the expectations of the people. Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas was opposed by Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-supported wealthy widow of a publisher assassinated by the Somoza regime. The strong feelings of those at the market mirrored the divisions that beset Nicaragua.

Ñacuñán knew all about tyranny and revolutionary zeal and rhetoric. He had seen Argentina’s “Dirty War” up close. Yet he was also a poet at heart. He was a novelist and could write in French, Spanish and English. He was the perfect collaborator to make the film work for those of us who don’t speak Spanish. And “10 Days/10 Years: The Nicaraguan Elections of 1990” wouldn’t have happened without him.

Ñacuñán loved the process and wanted to know how and why I had made my editing decisions. He told me about a film he dreamed of making and quickly convinced me I’d love to make it with him. There were these remarkable shepherds who traveled almost non-stop moving their sheep from Argentina to Chile across the mountains of Patagonia, gone for months and months. Unconcerned about borders at a time when the two nations quarreled incessantly about who owned what. We often talked about how to make his movie.

I was filled with rage when I lost Ñacuñán. It could just as easily have been my friend Ahmet who taught Economics and advised Wayne Lo. It could have been my friend Barbara who taught art. It was Galen Gibson, a fellow student who was also murdered. We look to blame in the face of such senseless, arbitrary, stupid loss. Today, as yet another group of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida suffer such unimaginable loss, it’s not surprising people have focused their anger on an unnamed FBI agent who failed to pass on a tip about Nikolas Cruz. Or an armed guard who failed to confront the attacker.

Gregory Gibson, Galen’s remarkable father wrote “Gone Boy” an extraordinary book about his loss, his son, his son’s killer. Whenever young people are senselessly slaughtered Mr. Gibson is called upon to comment. He has tried his best to inform and educate and promote sensible gun policy.

He did an interview with Wayne Lo. And what was so chilling to me was the depth of Wayne Lo’s dissociation and the mind-boggling ease with which he obtained his semiautomatic assault rifle and how easy it was for him to commit murder:

WL: I was disturbed. I would see things that made me think that I was on some kind of a mission from God. But I know I wasn’t, now that I look back at–
GG: Sure, but at the time that was what you felt.
WL: At the time, that was.
GG: Yeah.
WL: At the time, I felt it. So, I felt I had to do something. I was able to just take a taxi and go to the gun store. I said I want this SKS rifle. And it’s incredible how easy it was.
GG: And the same, I assume, with the ammunition.
WL: I had my mom’s credit card. The people on the phone where I ordered from, they said, “Thank you very much for your purchase. We’ll get it out as soon as we could to you.” This was the first time ever purchasing a weapon, ever using a weapon, ever firing a weapon…
GG: Wow.
WL: For just a few minutes, I destroyed so many lives.

The President rants about evil and sickos and arming teachers.

But Wayne Lo makes getting a weapon of war seem so matter of fact.
I miss Ñacuñán.
#neveragain

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“Murder” was first published on March 1, 2018 in The Berkshire Record.