Daniel Rocha:
The (Re)construction of Memory

  Every malefactor, by attacking the social rights, becomes, by his crimes, a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws he ceases to be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a case the preservation of the state is inconsistent with his own, and one or the other must perish; in putting the guilty to death we slay not so much the citizen as the enemy. The right to punish has been shifted from the vengeance of the sovereign to the defence of society

Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish (1977), 90.


      Daniel Rocha was fatally shot in June of 2005 by Officer Julie Schroeder during a traffic stop. He was eighteen years old. Very few photos and stories of human interest concerning Rocha as an individual before his execution surfaced, if any. The local media, namely the Austin Chronicle, the Austin American Statesman, and KVUE all were much more focused on the shrines, vigils, and memorials held, and constructed, around the exact location where Rocha's first life ceased (at the intersection of Quicksilver Boulevard and South Pleasant Valley) and second life began. Rocha's death continued to be reenacted by protesters and was even restaged by Officer Schroeder and the Austin Police Department to 'investigate' what actually happened that night during the fatal traffic stop. Jacque Lyn Foltyn writes that

...we are ambivalent about the status of the corpse, displaying and hiding it, revering and defiling it, viewing it as useful and useless and a source of amusement and somberness. Attracted and repulsed by it, we have imbued the dead body with the tension of paradox (Foltyn, 1996). At once sacred and profane (Aries, 1974), we see it as a powerful threat to the living and a powerless entity, needing our protection (Sappol, 2002) (Foltyn 100).
C How does the (re)presentation of Rocha help to prove the infallibility of the judge, jury, and executioner role Officer Schroeder assumed produce competing discourses conflicting with the simultaneous resurrection of a gunned down Rocha, where is he is used as a symbol of protest to highlight the Austin Police Department's mutation of justice? How does the (re)presentation of the perpetual construction and deconstruction of Rocha's shrine speak from a place, not from where he was killed, but 'last alive?' How do these images present an active mourning, a communicative process with the dead where grief is materialized and then recontextualised to the public (Bednar 11)? Is this morbid fascination, disrespectful, or a necessary display of the acts of the "...executioner...and the death he deals...[where] each of those destroyed bodies, [act as] a stone for the State; [and does] it hardly matter that innocents, too, are struck down" (Foucault 74)?

     The first image (above and to the left) of Rocha's shrine located at his second life inception, and death site, is rife with numerous religious candles, and on one candle the thorned crown worn by Jesus is clearly visible. Just feet from this pedestrian fence Rocha was shot, the fence the candles are leaning on is scrawled with graffiti, remembrances and well wishing for Rocha on and after his journey. Is this a cultural phenomenon, assuming Rocha is of Catholic and Latin American origins? Kenneth G. Davis explores Hispanic Catholic funeral customs and writes;

...every altar is highly personalized, each will also contain symbols of the four elements of indigenous belief in the connection between this life and the next, namely, earth (symbolized through fruit or flowers), wind (seen through a mobile constructed often of papel picado or the incense copal), fire (the obligatory candles), and water (often blessed). Symbols of these four elements are universal, while photographs, plaques, medals, trophies, toys, and many other personal touches will also be present. In this way the altarcito is always both communal and personal (23).

In this image we see some type of dried up flowers leaning against the fence and on the ground, and in the image next to it we can see what looks to be red and yellow carnations. It must also be noted that this shrine is outside, it is of the earth, constantly exposed to the elements in an ever (de/re)generating state. While it is difficult to discern if there is a mobile or copal incense at either of the different stages of the shrine, their definitely are balloons present possibly standing in for the wind element. Numerous candles are present at both shrines, and some are even broken in the first image. Many shirts, graffiti, images of Jesus and an image of the Virgin Mary, a drawn depiction of Rocha, hand drawn protest signs, a stuffed animal, and even a loveseat to apparently sit with or for Rocha envelope the site in its different permutations. Through Rocha's untimely passing even more attention was heaved onto an Austin Police Department struggling to gain the trust of the weary and marginalized Hispanic and African-American communities. While Davis' preacherly tone suggests "Altercitos [small alters] express joyful exuberance," it is questionable if the signs emblazoned with "Abusing People Daily" and "We demand police accountability" are primarily 'joyful.' Rocha's alter is much more intricate than joy or pain, it was a living protest/remembrance, he became another individual entirely separate from his terrestrial self. He was stripped of free will, but given an amount of agency most will never achieve while they are alive.

      An unfortunate incident such as this places Rocha in a place where the public constructs their individualized subjectivities. Rocha is no longer what he was before he was gunned down; he is now a symbol of justice/injustice, wayward/innocent youth, murdered/disciplined youth. I do not mean to suggest that a binary exists in the competing discourses, but I aim to show the possible extremities between which the construction of power/knowledge ranges in the public discourse. What all discourses have in common is their production of memory. How the media chooses to display its visual texts, and in effect remember Rocha. How mourners chose to display their remembrances of Rocha that become recontextualised through the media's remembrances. Erika Doss, quoting Kerwin Klein, writes " "It is no accident", says Klein, "that our sudden fascination with memory goes hand in hand with postmodern reckonings of history as the marching black boot and of historical consciousness as an oppressive action. Memory can come to the fore in an age of historiographic crisis precisely because it figures as a therapeutic alternative to historical discourse" (p. 145)" (69). The historical discourse surrounding Rocha's death is eerily constructed post-mortem, which makes it a (re)construction of the past being carried out in the present, but subjected to future interpretations. The construction/reconstruction of his shrine(s) are the 'therapeutic alternative' in constructing their own historiography, because the factual one might as well have never existed. More precisely, each historiography surrounding Rocha's death has become individualized.

     The reenactment video is the most difficult visual representation of this incident to stomach. Namely, because the farce of not having the dash-cam on and pointed towards the primary proximity where police and suspect contact most likely would occur was overlooked initially, when it was most crucial, and now the disciplining authority has the choice of recreating the incident from their respective memories. The video has since been pulled from the Web, but the screen grab is still available. All the while in the two stills from the video we see Schroeder wearing a bullet-proof-vest with a gun aimed at Rocha's back, in the first depiction he is standing, and in the second he is assuming almost a push-up position stationed on one knee. Are these memories created or recreated? Does the human brain have the faculty to recreate the exact, or even approximate, scenario that took place when their split second decision making skills have been called into question from the outset? The discourse created from this video and the handling of Officer Schroeder's use of excessive force are used to create an entire new discourse from the initial one created through the public outrage at her actions. Barthes writes that "a photograph cannot be transformed (spoken) philosophically, it is wholly ballasted by the contingency of which it is the weightless, transparent envelope" (Camera Lucida 5). In effect, what was (sub)consciously attempted by this (re)creation of Rocha's last moments is the immutable memory, a 'transparent envelope' of truth ballasted by the technology of the Austin Police Department. This reenactment could be placed in, not an act of remembrance, but rather, as Bilinda Straight explains, an act of "memory making contingent on a double forgetting: collective memories enact a forgetting of the strange, the marginal, the in-between, and even - the singular and autobiographical" (85).



      The image to the left is from a protest staged by PODER (People Organized for the Defense of Earth and her Resources). It was posted to a myspace account. The image, potentially, highlights the lack of justice, they felt, Rocha was receiving in the legal system and the lack of discipline Officer Schroeder was at this point receiving. Here, the death of Rocha is restaged, possibly in a sensational attempt to generate media attention, and possibly in an act of solidarity through protest enacting a theatre of resurrection in effect killing Rocha again. The signs in the background written in crude bubble letters and basic print read "we need JUSTICE NOW," "Serve and Protect Whom?," "WE WANT JUSTICE 4 DANIEL ROCHA." The discourse here has taken a course creating community solidarity, sparking activism. Is it activism or fear, fascination or identification that brings these teenagers to protest Rocha's killing? Like in the Trayvon Martin image the young man lying on the ground is also speaking to us. He is saying that 'this could also happen to you,' look how easy the two individuals chalk up his body as he mimics what was once alive by playing dead. The symbolical act of murder is the rebels, protestors, or counter-hegemonic community's way of explicating the absurdity of the Police Department’s complicity, and in effect the nihilism of Officer Schroeder's action. In this form of theatre, were blood is realized as tangible, and indeed stained in the crevices of the technology of the municipality communication through tragic reiteration, possibly, the community can now visualize what has happened on their own terms. Albert Camus writes; 

In ancient times the blood of murder at least produced a religious horror and in this way sanctified the value of life. The real condemnation of the period we live in is, on the contrary, that it leads us to think that it is not blood thirsty enough. Blood is no longer visible; it does not bespatter the faces of our Pharisees visibly enough. This is the extreme of nihilism; blind and savage murder becomes an oasis and the imbecile criminal seems positively refreshing in comparison to our highly intelligent executioners (243-244).
     
     An unfortunate incident such as this places Rocha in a place where the public constructs their individualized subjectivities. Rocha is no longer what he was before he was gunned down; he is now a symbol of justice/injustice, wayward/innocent youth, murdered/disciplined youth. I do not mean to suggest that a binary exists in the competing discourses, but I aim to show the possible extremities between which the construction of power/knowledge ranges in the public discourse(s). What all discourses have in common is their (re)production of memory. How the media chooses to display its visual texts, and in effect remember Rocha, actually constructs a whole new subject, an individual, possibly, completely different from Rocha that once lived. Straight writes that "social forms of memory that may be strategically and instrumentally forced upon a collective to further elite ends. These memories...depend upon speaking and writing histories that exclude, even willfully distort, certain details in the service of creating a shared sameness that reproduces the status quo or creates a new one" (84). Is this problematic and does it matter? No, and yes, because when we speak of society and justice we also speak of laws and mores, and if our social mores are able to be (re)created to reproduce a silence that clearly was never remembered from the first place what do we have to point to as an anchor that we all share?

     It is also important to visualize how mourners chose to display their remembrances of Rocha that become recontextualised through the media's remembrances. Erika Doss, quoting Kerwin Klein, writes " "It is no accident", says Klein, "that our sudden fascination with memory goes hand in hand with postmodern reckonings of history as the marching black boot and of historical consciousness as an oppressive action. Memory can come to the fore in an age of historiographic crisis precisely because it figures as a therapeutic alternative to historical discourse" (p. 145)" (69). The historical discourse surrounding Rocha's death is eerily constructed post-mortem, which makes it a (re)construction of a misremembered past being constructed in the present, but subjected to future interpretations which will ultimately supplant any factual record of the events of the night in question. The construction/reconstruction of his shrine(s) are the 'therapeutic alternative' in constructing their own historiography, because the factual one might as well have never existed. More precisely, each historiography surrounding Rocha's death has become individualized.

                                    Index           The Schizophrenia of Dying            Conclusions & Implications


Images Cited:

Dr. Robert Bednar's image of Rocha's shrine

"Abusing People Daily"

A.P.D.'s reenactment of Rocha's death

A protest using Rocha's death as theatre

Works Cited:

Camus, Albert. The Rebel. 1977. Translated by Anthony Bower. Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Davis, Kenneth G. "Dead Reckoning or Reckoning With the Dead: Hispanic Catholic Funeral Customs." Liturgy 21/1, pp. 21-27.

Doss, Erika. 2002. "Death, Art, and memory in the Public Sphere: The Visual and Material Culture of Grief in Contemporary America," Mortality 7/1, pp. 63-82.

Folton, Jacque Lynn. 2008. "The corpse in contemporary culture: Identifying, transacting, and recoding the dead body in the twenty-first century," Mortality 13/2, pp. 99-106.

Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline & Punish; The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

Straight, Bilinda. 2005. "In the Belly of History: Memory Forgetting and Hazards of Reproduction." Africa (Edinburgh University Press) 75/1, pp. 83-104.