A History of Violence

I've joked before about the lawlessness of this part of Crete. Rethymno recently became world famous for a week, thanks to the hash-growing outlaws of Zoniana, and in general the region is considered to be the most criminal in Greece. A good deal of this "criminality" is the product of the prevailing attitude of self-righteous entitlement that many Cretans share with the rest of the Greek world (and humanity in general), combined with the native proclivity for doing whatever the hell one wants, particularly if someone else says otherwise; most of the time this doesn't directly harm anyone else in a serious way, which is why I place the word in quotation marks.

Usually this manifests itself in the form of, for example, driving huge 4x4 pickup trucks in a dangerously irresponsible way, unilaterally ignoring all traffic signals and overtaking whoever is front of you no matter how fast they're going and regardless of what's coming from the opposite direction. Of course, this type of behavior does more than occasionally result in accidents and not a few fatalities; this is chillingly attested to by the numerous makeshift memorial chapels which one sees every few hundred meters on roads here. And then there's the complete disdain for anything and everything official and centralized, like utility and phone bills, which apparently about half the inhabitants of the aforementioned village of Zoniana habitually neglect to pay (and the powers that be are too scared to cut off their services). Not to mention many locals' incredible disrespect for the spectacular natural beauty and resources with which Nature chose to bless this island. Trash is everywhere, tossed out of the windows of the aforementioned trucks, dumped in gorges, rivers, and the sea, littering the streets and courtyards of the most picturesque villages and washing up on the "pristine" beaches on which a large part of the Cretan economy depends.

It's not just in the cannabis-producing mountain villages of Rethymno's interior that lawlessness abounds. There's a disturbing amount of violence here that seems to be particular to the province, judging from what people (both locals and transplants from other parts of Crete) say, and what's reported through the media. A few weeks ago a shepherd in a village south of us assaulted his neighbor, breaking both of his arms, because the victim had developed and sold a plot of land that the pastor and his flock had previously used as a shortcut on their route from field to field. And just the other day, in the historic district of Rethymno, a fellow student of mine at the University was stabbed to death in the middle of the street by a local man (who three days before had finished serving a ten-year prison term for another murder) because the former threw a half-eaten sandwich on the ground and it happened to land on the latter's shoe.

Now, I certainly don't mean to imply that murders of this kind are an everyday occurrence around here, or that the narrow alleys of the medieval city are crawling with criminal sociopaths, ready to slack their blood-lust at the first perceived slight. But they do happen, and with some regularity. Right around the time we moved here last summer a lyra player was ambushed and stabbed in an alleyway by some goons after a performance, apparently because he didn't play the song they requested. And shortly before that, a passerby complained about someone's dangerous driving in front of a school, for which he was shot in the head. And so on.

No, as often as they do occur, these sort of things don't happen every day. What does go on every day, though, is the less spectacular but more insidious trafficking in drugs, weapons, and prostitution that thrives in and around the nightclubs of Rethymno. The exploitation of immigrants and refugees, particularly women and children, has become something of a crisis here, and not just in Crete; yesterday Amnesty International roundly condemned Greece for its stance on many human rights issues, particularly these. This situation is aided and abetted by the remarkably apathetic efforts of the local police force, which is so inefficient that demonstrations protesting their inactivity have also become a common phenomenon. (When people can make off with entire, intact ATM machines, you know there's a problem with law enforcement.)

Why? Why is this particular part of this particular island so rampantly criminal? Everyone has their theory, and since I haven't done a PhD on the subject, my own isn't the most objective. But it seems to me that a lot of it - the disdain for authority and ready violence - may be due to a few historical factors and their modern-day legacy. Crete has been occupied on and off (mostly on) by belligerent and exploitative foreign powers since the Arabs invaded in the early 9th century, and the freedom-loving local populace was for centuries on end either planning, conducting, or licking it wounds after an armed revolt. Every household had swords and later guns aplenty, everyone knew how to use them, and every man could expect to participate in a mass rebellion at least once in his life, particularly during the Turkish occupation. The rural population was highly insular, suffered from extreme poverty, depended on a tight network of family ties for survival, and deadly violence was an everyday reality. Naturally, the personal qualities that were cultivated during this period - distrust of the powers that be, swift and decisive action in response to threats, extreme bravery in the face of danger, and constant readiness to meet violence with violence - were passed down from generation to generation. And it continues to be, for obvious reasons: it was less than sixty years ago that the Nazis invaded and the locals put up a bloody, fierce, and ultimately successful resistance.

The problem is that we don't live in those times anymore, and whether you teach your kids outright to bear arms and use them when provoked or simply provide the conditions for violent impulses to flourish rather than be reined in and channeled elsewhere, Western society has decided that settling differences and taking what you want by means of harming people is no longer a viable option (at least not until the stakes are judged big enough to use the army). And much of Rethymno hasn't gotten the message, apparently.

Okay, maybe it's not quite as simple as that. But I do see the little kids in this village running around with toy guns, "shooting" each other and arguing over who gets to be the outlaws and who has to play the unpopular part of the hated police; I hear many of their parents and grandparents speaking in admiring tones about the latest daring, authority-defying acts on the part of local criminals; I see their older siblings wasting and destroying their lives with drugs and related activities.

And, every once in a while, I get invited to their funerals.