Patch and writing by Hannah

“Outside it’s April, it’s nighttime.

Two fierce shadows in a fight.

Life: the power of childbirth,

Death: the sound of firearms.

Two unmeasurable shadows

are fighting inside your womb.

Life: the child is pushing out.

Death: the fear is taking over.

Do you think both these shadows could

                        win this hard battle?

‘Yes, they could,’ the echo answers,

echo of bullets just waiting

to ravage the mother’s womb

as soon as the new life is born.

Outside it’s April, it’s nighttime.

Two fierce shadows in a fight.”[1]

The persistence of life in the face of death…

This patch honors life, the inherent creativity that so many times has made itself apparent even in the most desperate of situations.  An entire generation of activists has been disappeared and murdered in Latin America, but the ideals have not been lost.  In the center of this patch is a baby, a new life, someone new to the world and very much ALIVE.  S/he is surrounded by mothers whose stories I am about to share.  The stories themselves may be sad, angering, and even disempowering.  But just as the baby in this patch is surrounded by desperate mothers, the mothers (and the entire patch) are surrounded by patches of hope and are nurtured by the strength of the individual and collective stories that abound. 

1)      Mireya Rivera Veliz’s husband, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, was arrested and disappeared on September 27, 1973.  She already had three children at the time and was pregnant with a fourth.  One day she heard that a boat full of political prisoners was coming into Valparaiso, so Mireya traveled to the port to gather news about her husband’s whereabouts.  While waiting for information, she began to have birth pains and contractions, and had to leave the port and rush to the hospital.  There was no stopping the birth, the natural process, the new life, even with so much artificial death producing stagnation all around her.  Years later, Mireya comments that her youngest son (the one born that day) continues even now to search with her for his father.[2]

2)      Miriam is a Salvadoran woman who joined the Mother’s Committee when her husband was disappeared in 1979.  One of her tasks in the Committee was to travel to different body dumps with other women who were also looking for their relatives.  She had no place to leave her daughters while she did this, so she had to take them with her.  Clearly, they were traumatized by the experience, but Miriam was one of the few women to find the body of her husband, the family now has a proper grave to visit, and most importantly, the children have survived… life has persisted.[3] 

3)      Graciela Alicia Romero was five months pregnant when she was disappeared in Argentina on December 16, 1976.  In the car ride on the way to “La Escuelita” or “The Little School,” before even arriving at this torture camp, she was subject to a specific torture reserved mostly for pregnant women: the electric prod on the abdomen.  She was held captive for months, and the doctors in The Little School ordered her to walk around a table for hours (blindfolded, as all the prisoners were).  Graciela was transferred and probably killed six days after the birth of her son, who was given to one of the interrogators.  Although this boy has been raised by his mother’s torturers, we can hope that he has developed a sense of justice and learns of his identity someday.  We can hope that the consistent and persistent continuation of life in the face of death will make the following statement one of inspiration rather than desperation:

“‘Be strong my child, take heart’…The future is yours.  Your future, my child…we gave up sunshine on our skin for your future…”[4]