Frontier Justice

In isolated
pockets of human society around the globe and throughout history, at
times and places when law and order breaks down, when honest hardworking
people feel victimized and disgusted to see criminals and lowlifes in
positions high and low, walking away untouched and unperturbed from their
crimes and travesties, they take the law into their own hands.

While we are not in general in favor of vigilantism, there is a certain
visceral satisfaction in what was once known, in a wilder epoch of American
history, as "Frontier Justice". Last week we reported on a case from northern
Ecuador in which an infuriated mob pursued and caught a bus robber who
had just murdered a young lady schoolteacher in cold blood, and burned
him to death in the middle of the highway. Now comes this story from southern
Peru, a cold and lunar landscape near the lake Titicaca, the highest navigable
body of water in the world, and a land of neglected Indians struggling
to survive as their ancestors have for thousands of years. The accompanying photo is an actual shot of Mayor Robles moments before he was beaten to death by the maddened mob.

Is there a message here for our own corrupt official who feel themselves
above the law and beyond the reach of "official" justice? Let us hope so…

Mayor Cirilo Fernando Robles is injured by a mob in Ilave, Peru, on Monday,
April 26, 2004. Angry highland Indians beat their town’s mayor to death
after he refused to resign in the face of protests. Then the mob attacked
the police station, trapping dozens of officers. Interior Minister Fernando
Rospigliosi ordered the cornered police to hold off the attackers late
Monday in Ilave, a town 565 miles southeast of Lima near Lake Titicaca.
(AP Photo/La Republica)

from La
Republica of Lima, Peru, via Yahoo