|
Basque Center
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Newsletter
Issues 1-15
Issues 16-30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
Issue 38
Issue 39
Issue 40
Highlights
Distortion
USAC
Dictionary
Donation
Sister Cities
Monument
Letter
Fame
Papers
Pen Pals
Aulestia
Trees
Classes
Scholarships
Hotel
Books
Position
Issue 41
Issue 42
Issue 43
Issue 44
Issue 45
Issues 46-60
Issues 61-
|
|
Basque Studies Program Newsletter · Issue 40, 1989
Distortion and Reality:
Violence in the Basque Country
by Carmelo Urza
With
all of the media coverage of politically motivated violence in the Basque
Country, it is possible that the casual observer has lost proper
perspective regarding the issue of safety there. The
purpose of this article is to examine the level of violent crime in one
Basque city and compare it to that of major Spanish and American cities.
Hopefully, through this exercise, we will gain new insights
concerning the scope of violence in the Basque provinces and in our own
country.
Visitors
to the Basque Country are often perplexed by the sharply contrasting
images of the area presented to them.
Basque government tourist publications portray bucolic farms and
villages, magnificent beaches, and green mountains. Villagers are depicted
as deeply rooted in tradition and city
dwellers as sophisticated Europeans. To the foreign visitor, life there
appears tranquil and normal.
Indeed, Americans who have lived in the Basque Country for any
period of time grow fond of the warmth and hospitality of its citizens.
And
yet when the Basque Country is portrayed in newspapers, magazines,
scholarly publications, or televised news, they reflect a constant stream
of violent images. Usually,
the media focus on the politically motivated violence of the Euzkadi Ta
Askatasuna (ETA) organization. In
the face of such coverage, the casual observer reasonably draws the
conclusion that a visit to the Basque Country represents an extraordinary
risk to personal safety. In a
further extrapolation the Basque Country may even be equated with Beirut
and Ulster and the Basques thought of as "a bunch of
terrorists."
How
then does one reconcile these sharply contradictory images of a bucolic
Arcadia and those of a war-torn zone?
Which of these realities is illusory, and which true? In all likelihood, both are exaggerated.
It is obvious that the Basque Country is not exempt from the
problems of modern societies: drugs, alcoholism, domestic strife, and
common crime. It is also
undeniable that politically motivated violence occurs, though perhaps with
less frequency and on a smaller scale than generally believed.
Indeed, the very nature of media coverage emphasizes the negative
and the sensational incidents associated with "terrorism."
According to political scientist Leonard Weinberg, television
networks distort terrorism.
In an interview in
the University of Nevada newspaper Sagebrush, he says: "Network shows
have exaggerated the amount of terrorism in the Middle East in relation to
Latin America. [In fact,] the
volume of terrorism in the Middle East has been the same as in Latin
America."
Furthermore,
in recent years many Americans have changed travel plans in order to avoid
the risk of falling victim to highly publicized international terrorism.
However, John Allen Paulos points out in Innumeracy: Mathematical
Illiteracy and Its Consequences that the seventeen Americans killed by
terrorists in 1985 were among the 28 million who traveled abroad that
year, reflecting a one chance in 1.6 million of becoming a victim.
"Compare that," he writes, "with these annual rates
in the United States: one chance in 68,000 of choking to death; one chance
in 75,000 of dying in a bicycle crash; one chance in 20,000 of drowning;
and one chance in 5,300 of dying in a car crash."
It
is possible that the same factors of media distortion are in play relative
to the Basque situation. While
any analytical tool is imperfect, an emotionally pregnant subject like
political violence is best examined through cold, statistical eyes.
In order to provide the proper perspective, the violent crime
figures of other cities in Spain and the United States have also been
provided here.
The
City of San Sebastián has been selected to represent the Basque Country
for several reasons. First,
recent crime statistics are not available for the Basque Country as a
whole. If they were, one
would have to decide whether to include Navarra and the Department of the
Atlantic Pyrenees or only that area represented by the autonomous Basque
government. Secondly, the mixture of urban and rural areas would make it
difficult to compare with similar areas in the U.S. and Spain.
The
selection of San Sebastián to represent the whole probably inflates the
crime statistics since it is an area of high tourist or transient
involvement and an area of ETA activity. Obviously, violence in San
Sebastián is not limited to the political situation. Indeed,
the Spanish government does not even distinguish between criminal and
politically motivated violence, and consequently, neither do the
statistics below:
|
TABLE I: Reported Crimes (1987) |
| City: |
Madrid |
Barcelona |
Sevilla |
San Sebastian |
| Population: |
4,777,432 |
4,627,000 |
1,532,462 |
177,622 |
| Murders: |
2 |
8 |
3 |
1 |
| Sex offenses (incl. rape) |
664 |
312 |
106 |
21 |
| Criminal injury |
3,484 |
1,598 |
557 |
67 |
| Robbery with assault, intimidation |
19,189 |
10,153 |
2,641 |
279 |
Since the population of these cities varies considerably, Table II reflects the
number of people affected by each incident. Thus, one person per 2,388
inhabitants was murdered in Madrid in 1987.
|
TABLE II: Ratio of Inhabitants per Incident
(1987) |
| City: |
Madrid |
Barcelona |
Sevilla |
San Sebastian |
Average Ratio |
| Murders: |
2,388,716 |
578,400 |
510,821 |
177,622 |
913,890 |
| Sex offenses (incl. rape) |
7,195 |
14,831 |
14,457 |
8,458 |
11,235 |
| Criminal injury |
1,371 |
2,896 |
2,751 |
2,651 |
2,417 |
| Robbery with assault, intimidation |
249 |
465 |
580 |
637 |
481 |
Comparing the ratio of inhabitants per incident in San Sebastián with that of the
other three cities, we see that it has the lowest rate of robbery with
assault, the highest in the category of murder and falls somewhere in the
middle in the other two categories.
|
TABLE III: Offenses Known to Police (1986) |
| City: |
Boise, ID |
Reno, NV |
San Francisco |
Wash.,DC |
Chicago |
| Population: |
108,390 |
110,430 |
749,000 |
629,100 |
3,009,530 |
Murder/
manslaughter |
0 |
8 |
114 |
194 |
744 |
| Forcible rape (1985) |
56 |
79 |
492 |
328 |
1,792 |
| Aggravated assault |
306 |
410 |
3,815 |
4,181 |
33,529 |
Table IV reflects the ratio of inhabitants
per incident as a means of taking
into consideration a vastly different population base.
|
TABLE IV: Ratio of Inhabitants per Incident
(1986) |
| City: |
Boise, ID |
Reno, NV |
San Francisco |
Wash., DC |
Chicago |
Avg. per capita |
| Murder |
0 |
13,804 |
6,570 |
3,243 |
4,045 |
6,915* |
| Forcible rape |
1,936 |
1,398 |
1,522 |
1,918 |
1,679 |
1,690 |
| Agg. assault |
354 |
269 |
196 |
150 |
90 |
211 |
* excluding Boise
In all three crime categories, Boise had the lowest ratio of incidents per
number of inhabitants. Washington,
D.C. had the highest murder rate, Reno the highest incidence of rape, and
Chicago the most aggravated assaults.
A
comparison of the ratio between inhabitants affected per incident in the
U.S. (Table IV) and in Spain (Table II), reveals some alarming figures.
For example, the incidence of murder is 737 times greater in the
American capital than in the capital of Spain.
The incidence of rape is almost eleven times greater in Reno than
in Barcelona. This figure is likely much higher, since this category for
the cities of Spain includes all reported sexual offenses and is not
limited to forcible rapes as in the case of the U.S. cities.
It is difficult to correlate the Spanish categories of
"criminal injury" and "robbery with assault" with the
U.S. category of "aggravated assault." A global comparison of
these categories does reveal, however, a
much higher average incidence of assault in the U.S. cities. Indeed, with
the exception of a lack of murders in Boise in 1986,
the rate of crime in the U.S. cities is significantly higher than in any
of the Spanish cities.
Finally, by isolating the crime figures of San Sebastián and comparing them with
those of the American cities, we see that the murder rate is thirteen
times greater in Reno than in San Sebastián, twenty-seven times greater
in San Francisco, forty-four times greater in Chicago, and fifty-five
times greater in Washington, D.C.
The
gap in the sexual offenses versus rape category is smaller but still
significant with a factor of 4.3 greater incidence in Boise, 6.0 in Reno,
5.5 in San Francisco, 4.4 in Washington, D.C., and 5.0 in Chicago.
It is also evident that the aggravated assault/criminal
injury/robbery with assault type of crime is significantly lower in San
Sebastián than in any of the targeted American cities.
It may be argued that politically and criminally motivated violence is random
to a large degree. And yet,
while not without exceptions, politically motivated violence in the Basque
Country tends to be selective. ETA
primarily targets official representatives of the Spanish government,
particularly the Spanish police and military. Consequently, the incidence
of violent action against those groups
would be higher than the norm. Inversely,
it would be lower than the norm for those not belonging to those groups.
In conclusion, there is no question that politically and criminally motivated
violence does take place in San Sebastián and in the statistics above,
the degree and scope of that violence is not nearly as high as the media
would have us believe. Indeed,
it is evident that San Sebastián is significantly safer than most
American cities. Clearly, the
Basque Country's reputation for violence has been created as a direct
result of the nature, rather than the extent, of its violence.
Notes
Table
1:
A) Statistics on crime provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, Central
Headquarters of the Judicial Police, Technical Bureau, Criminal Statistics
Section.
B) 1987 population statistics for Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville were
provided by the Spanish embassy in Washington, D.C.
C) 1987 population statistics for San Sebastián were provided by the San
Sebastián city hall.
Table III:
A) Timothy J. Flanagan and Katherine M. Jamieson, eds., Sourcebook of
Criminal Justice Statistics-1987. U.S.
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Washington D.C.: USGPO, 1988.
B) Population figures provided by: U.S. Bureau of Census, Country and City Data
Book, 1988.
U.S. Government Printing Office.
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), p. 7.
|
