Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a 32-year-old Venezuelan immigrant legally residing in the United States, has apparently been disappeared to El Salvador’s notorious Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) after mistakenly turning onto the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan.
The bridge, one of North America’s busiest international crossings, links Detroit with Windsor, Ontario. Due to the complexity of nearby highways, even local residents occasionally take the wrong ramp. For Prada, this innocent mistake led to arrest, imprisonment, and deportation—culminating in his disappearance into a foreign prison.
The word is “kidnapped.” Not vanished, not disappeared. Kidnapped.
Language matters. Stop reporting falsities via soft language.
Disappeared (desaparecido) is a historical term that likens the trump administration to latin american military dictatorships
Thanks, didn’t know that!
I could be extra sensitive to perceived soft language these days, so I appreciate the context.
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This is not the first time I read this sentiment, but kidnapping sounds softer to me than disappearing someone.
Kidnapping usually has a ulterior purpose and therefore the implication there’s conditions for return. Like money. Kidnapping is rarely itself the point.
That’s not the case here with government shipping people off to some foreign concentration camp, never to be seen again.
Kidnapping implies isolated incidents and criminals working outside the government. Disappearing points out that the government is responsible, it’s harsher language
Yes, criminals kidnap.
Governments black bag/disappear people.
Disappearing a person has far more darker undertones, too. kidnapping, at least theres a chance there might be a ransom.
Disappeared has specific connotations for those that grew up with dictators kidnapping opposition figures. I suspect the choice is intentional as it recalls a lot of South American despots.
I think this is disappear as a transitive verb, like it’s saying he was disappeared by the US government. It’s not soft language.
“trafficked” is the word we’re looking for here
“Disappeared” is the word typically used when authoritarian regimes arrest and incarcerate (or worse) people extrajudicially, without due process. “Trafficked” doesn’t have the authoritarian government connotation.
No, disappeared means no one outside the government knows where they are.
Yes traffic is the word because El Salvador is making money off each prisoner we send.
Yes, language matters and they used it correctly here. As an intransitive verb it means that someone is not detectable. As a transitive verb it means that someone else made them disappear, which usually refers to being abducted, usually by an official group like an arm of the government.
It has been used that way for decades to indicate when a governement kidnaps citizens to detain or kill them in secret.
Since you’re bringing up language points, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to take a left turn with me.
What are your thoughts about applying the phrase “extraordinary rendition” to their situation?
I feel that it’s appropriate, but I haven’t seen anyone using it.
amnesty international has accused the us government of extraordinary rendition for decades, basically since 2001. this is even worse
This is World Socialist Web Site. From what I’ve seen posted from them here, they are not interested in using accurate language. They are advocating for a political philosophy that many here agree with on the surface.
However, check out their obituary of Nanda Wickremesinghe if you want to try to wrap your head around the correct brand of socialism that they support. They seem more narrow than Emo Phillips in defining who is on their team and who is the anti-revolutionary betrayer. If you want to understand why the bloc the US relies on to vote against fascism can’t rally around one party or leader, look no further.
For a drinking game, take a sip every tme “comrade” appears in that article.
tl;dr they’re Trots. Trotsky central, in fact, I mean how nostalgic do you have to be to call yourself the “International Committee of the Fourth International” in currentyear while having like, what, 2k members world-wide.
…of course, every Trot org is Trotsky central they’re the absolute champions of splintering. Germany has at least three different Trot parties each accusing the others of being Stalinist, all are cults, and all are irrelevant. Best to just ignore them.
you need to disappear your attitude when talking to people on YOUR SIDE
This is human trafficking. This man was bought, sold and transported against his will, and without due process.
When we try trump and sentence him, guess where he’s going? An el Salvador prison.
Still think any of that is going to happen?
I do. He will lose power. It WILL happen. It takes awhile to organize millions of people, but they are being organized, the protests have had an effect, Legal battle lines are being drawn with higher universities, etc… the slow roll of mobilization is happening and is gaining momentum. millions demonstrated last weekend, though the media barely talks about it. There will be encampments and other big protests set up. It is in the planning. from what I hear just don’t want it top end like occupy wall street. it has to be more organized, more united.
The magic word is time. It sucks. its slow, and its the master. But the time is also coming when the protests and organized institutions all reach a critical mass that the illegal administration cannot shout through. That’s when he will go to trial.
In two weeks , the container ships coming into the United states drops from over 20, to 12. That’s a huge hit to the supply lines and economy of the U.S. A hit to the food supplies , and the cash flow. those are the two that matter. think about what his support will be then.
This is going to be my most downvoted comment, but please stop with the exaggeration designed to make people irrational. This administration is not “illegal”, it isn’t like a fucking dictator that you need to conquer. All you need to do is win the next election, which from what I’ve seen from the burgerreich will be very easy. This revolutionary mindset has thoroughly infected this social network.
You aren’t going to be “black bagged”, there is no gestapo killing people for corporations, you aren’t Katniss Everdeen fighting against the Capitol. You are a Lemmy user who thinks that the entire world is against you.
You’re literally commenting on a post about someone being blackbagged.
Youngster. You are in for a very, very rude awakening.
No one is making any of those claims. You don’t know the staggering amount. If things you don’t know. And that is sad.
I wish you a good day
Hell no.
Americans should bring out the guillotine.
In Soviet America, a wrong turn takes your life.
Wow, I’ve done that (in simpler times, and I’m white). For me it was just an expensive and time consuming mistake - I had to pay an extra toll in a currency I didn’t have. Of course they won’t convert the exact amount for the toll
Sent to a concentration camp to be tortured and possibly executed without due process for minor traffic infraction.
US immigration was unreasonably harsh and unforgiving before, but paired with the possibility to send people to a concentration camp without due process makes this fact a lot more scary. Yeah, they could get you in serious trouble for minor mistakes, but they couldn’t ruin or even take your life that easily before.
Which is why if i were a foreign tourist, i would avoid America completely.
I suspect we’ll still see some foreign tourists this summer, because they’ve already bought tickets and made reservations, and every place else is booked now, and it will be difficult to make last minute changes.
There will still be a drop in foreign visitors this summer, but next summer? Foreign tourists will be almost non-existent. All we will get are those wierdos who specifically seek out dangerous places to visit, as if we are war zone.
Who knows? Maybe by next summer we will be.
As an American living in America. I want to avoid America completely.
I’m getting pretty old now, and throughout my life, whenever ive met people who were immigrants, I’ve asked them about their immigration story. Why did they come here? Some were escaping a bad place, a bad government, war, etc. Others were chasing a dream. Some were just trying to make enough money to keep their family alive back home.
The main reason ive asked, is because i could never be that motivated to leave America I might visit other places, but not only could i not summon the kind of courage it would take to go live in a foreign place, i wouldnt want to. Ive loved America, and it’s history, even with all of its ugly chapters.
But now that’s changed profoundly. My family has been having serious talks about leaving. My wife has been seriously researching potential countries to move to.
Frankly, i doubt anyone would take us. There will soon be a flood of Americans begging to get into any other country who will take them, and countries will be cherry-picking the most useful, and tossing back the rest. I have a small business that i could easily transfer to anywhere in the world, but we aren’t rich, and we don’t have special skills that are in demand. We probably wouldn’t make the cut.
And if we could get to another country, we’d likely be treated by their citizens the way immigrants are treated here - discriminated against, taken advantage of, abused by the authorities, employers, landlords, etc.
Might as well just stay here, and ride it out. At my age, I’ve been wrapping my head around the idea that my story is going to have a twist ending, and is going to go down a path I never expected. I can be passive, and let the MAGA Nazis choose my path, or i can be proactive, and choose a path that defies them.
If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging.
There already has been a significant drop in tourists just in the last months. If things escalate, I bet your prediction becomes entirely true.
I’m Australian and there NO way I would be going anywhere near the states any time soon.
My prediction is trump is going to mobilise Maga as a militia and you guys are headed for a full blown civil war
Traveling to Canada or Mexico should be fine
This is America
