Crisis on 3rd World Countries: El Salvador needs Batman
…But not for the reasons you might think.
El Salvador is engulfed in a never ending war. Be it a Civil War for rights and equality, or a war against the criminal groups known as maras, the war never seems to end.
Today, maras are bleeding El Salvador dry and in doing so, preventing its development. To the dismay of the nation, politicians are not doing enough to stop this. Alas, the country is stagnant as result.
If you ask almost anyone, they’d tell you the solution is simple: kill ’em all.
Kill all the criminals, that is.
“The criminals made their choice. The criminals got their chance”, is the common idea here. An idea that sounds familiar to me because it’s the exact same idea that Christopher Nolan tackles in the final scenes of The Dark Knight (2008).
I might’ve taken the liberty to wrote those quotes verbatim, the spirit is the same and it comes from a desire of justice.
The essence of that film to me is profound not only because of its social commentary, but because it’s a commentary that pops up more often than not when you’re reading –and discussing– Batman comics. Specially when the debate pulls towards the role of him as a vigilante.
Why doesn’t he use guns? And Why doesn’t Batman kill?
The answer to those questions it’s pretty clear to me and the answer also address why El Salvador needs it’s own cape crusader. El Salvador needs it’s own vigilante to help it get rid of all the maras and win, once and for all, this war that’s tearing the country apart.
A vigilante with a purpose
Both the movie The Dark Knight and graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986), deal with the same subject: a society in chaos, a society ridden with violence, injustice and crime and a man willing to get his (rich) hands dirty in order to make a change.
Most readers almost always miss the point –as do citizens of real violent cities– who suggest getting rid of all the bad apples, by quite literraly killing them.
Hatred and violence will often bread more hatred an violence.
One of the cool things of reading comics with vigilantes like Batman is that they are ready to get things done no matter the cost. Batman always has a way out and is not afraid to go to extremes in order to stop the bad guys. The title “Dark Knight” fits the character well because he is a good guy who sometimes operates like a bad guy. For the greater cause, of course.
What’s not to love? You don’t need to live in a poor and violent country to relate to injustice or the archetype of criminality.
But when you’ve lived all your life in a third world country that’s been at war to some extent all the time you’ve lived in it, one comes to realize something: you can’t fight fire with fire; or at least you shouldn’t. A bigger gun just forces more –and harsher– retaliation.
Here is where the final scene of The Dark Knight portrays the inspirational aspect of Batman.
The main goal of Bruce Wayne is not to get rid Gotham from crime and violence all by himself, but rather inspire the city to work just like him to get it rid of crime and violence by really changing the way that society works from its core.
Some hard truths
When the Joker puts at odds the two ferries at the end of the movie by giving the one loaded with criminals and the other loaded with Gotham finest citizens the detonator to each other boats, he expects that both parties choose to blow themselves up –or that at least one of them do– in order to prove a point.
That point being: we’re all evil, selfish, animals.
At the end, a criminal throws the remote for the bomb –and everyone’s expectations along with it– and says something along the lines “we did had our chance and made our choice”. While the other party just can’t bring themselves to kill a ferry full of people.
Decency wins.
The faith Bruce Wayne put on the city when he started donning the bat-cowl had finally paid off.
People can be good given the chance… and, more importantly, given the right examples.
I reckon one of the main reasons El Salvador doesn’t change for good it’s because far to few people are really working to build a better and safer country.
Citizens expect that their politicians change and fix the country for them while they themselves continue to act selfishly and display corrupt attitudes. Then, no wonder politicians get to positions of power with the exact same behavior while the richest citizens don’t wanna take part of neither.
What the country needs is a symbol that motivates them to be better citizens and motivate them to get off their chairs and get their hands dirty doing some actual work.
If this were a movie, Batman could fill that position. Bu since we don’t live in a movie, regular citizens that are willing to take care and look after their own city will have to do.
Quite like Superman, Batman also stands for hope.
Hope that we can build a better future.
And we don’t need superheroes to that. Although it helps that they serve as archetypes for what we could aspire to be.
If you paid attention, this post is in English. I’m trying something new but you can still read my content in Spanish in the regular spots.
