Torch of justice for Vizconde extinguished
Do you remember Lauro Vizconde? He died last Saturday at the age of 77, a completely broken man. For 25 long and agonizing years, he sought vainly for justice for the 1991 massacre in their own home of his entire family -- his wife Estrellita, 49, who had been stabbed 13 times; daughter Carmela, 18, raped and then stabbed 17 times; and Jennifer, 6, stabbed 19 times.
Before his death, Lauro, who was in the United States when his family was butchered, tried to make sense of what remained of his life by seeking justice for others through t he Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption that he founded. But while he met with some success in many of the cases that VACC took the cudgels up for, he never found one for his family.
The irony of it all is that it is as if Vizconde never lost his family, given the way this country has treated him. In many instances he was made fun of, the butt of cruel jokes, driven as he was to his wit's end by the bitterness and frustration of failure. Nothing is more painful than for a man to lose his wife and two daughters and, instead of finding justice, gets betrayed by justice instead.
He nearly had them, of course, the rich young men who, according to decisions rendered in two lower courts, had killed his family. But the winds of political change were sweeping the country. New faces were in power. There were debts to be repaid. Suddenly, toward the end of 2010, the rich young men were out, forever free. Christmas never seemed sweeter than for those in whose favor the law just always seems to work.
Poor Vizconde, with no killers in jail, it is as if his family never got mercilessly exterminated. So terrible had been the turn of events that, improper though it may have been, some jokes still managed to be made, if only to highlight the irony. According to one such joke - with no scent of a killer, the Vizconde family may just as well have turned the knife on themselves.
The blood from the Vizconde massacre will be one of the political legacies of the outgoing power. It will be a highlight of both ineptness in government and a boundless capacity for political patronage. There is no straight path where crooked political drunks are able to dictate just exactly what blind justice is supposed to be allowed to see.
The Vizconde massacre is one of the darkest chapters in this nation's political and judicial history. And the death of the man at t he center of i t all, who bore t hat unfathomable anguish of failing in even such a normal quest as to seek justice for his family, is the saddest cut of all. If it is any consolation to Lauro Vizconde, at least he will now be reunited with his lost family.