Patch and writing by Hannah

Flipping through Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love, I was struck by one arpillera in particular that showed women chained to a fence, and written behind and between the bars was “encadenamiento” (chaining).  What struck me even more was the caption below the picture of the arpillera, which stated that “[t]he women used to stage weekly demonstrations with chains around their bodies.  The police had to come and unlock them and in the moment of unlocking, the women gave the police flowers.”[1]  No animosity towards the men who were about to arrest them and perhaps worse; these women protested with love. 

One woman’s personal story about a chaining at the National Congress building in 1979 sheds more light on the women who engaged in this type of political activity.  She recounts that the women remained chained to the building for three hours before the military showed up to break the chains and arrest them.  “I will never forget the bravery of all those women who risked everything,” she says, “who knew that arrest meant torture and long, painful interrogation sessions.”[2]  She continues to relay the solidarity the 63 women kept with each other in defiance of the judicial (or non-judicial) system; when she was interrogated, she claimed that “when I was passing by the Congress and saw the women chained up, I took a chain out of my purse and I joined them.  All of us, without a single discrepancy, maintained absolute solidarity with the group so that they would never find out that we acted as a group, united by the strength of resistance.”  The women received support not only from each other, but from the community upon being released from jail. 

This patch is both about solidarity and about keeping hope and love alive in hostile situations.