Hear Our Cries

The first video 10.1 "Madres" was heart wrenching for me to watch. Las Madres de Playa de Mayo have stood in front of La Casa Rosada (the equivalent of the white house in Argentina) from 1977 to 2006 demanding to know where their children are and the status of their lives. My parents missed being taken themselves by a slim margin given their age during the dictatorship that held the nation in terror from 1976 to 1983. Both of them have told me of horrific stories. When my mother was in school, it was locked down because men carrying guns had entered and demanded everyone to stand silently in a straight line. She observed that these men moved like trained military of the state. My father was detained while on his way to a nightclub. He was frightened because he had forgotten his ID. Thankfully, something more important came up and they let them go before they checked asked my dad for his identification. In the period of the dictatorship, everyone was forced to bring their identification everywhere they went. This was a time of high surveillance and the country still wreaks of it. In my parents home-city, Córdoba, they have tried remodeling the buildings the military used to occupy. Turning their head quarters to a museum, turning the women's prison into a luxurious dinning and art center. However, when you walk those streets the terror still lingers. And it lingers across generations. I, who wasn't even born at the time, feel the terror when I see not police officers in their everyday attire, but when they assume their protest management outfits, with their helmets and guards, I become petrified. My grandparents were the lucky ones, many mothers were robbed of their children. 

How can the people of a nation trust their government after having been terrorized by those who vouch to keep them safe? How can mothers forget the pain that the nation they are taught to love took away their children? 

The dirty wars foresaken the lives of these children and the cries of their mothers.  The absence of their bodies, crucial to the process of mourning, has left them in despair, and in a traumatic state where progress is impossible. Mourning creates a spiral in which time does not seem to pass and their lives come to a halt. The mothers in 10.1 and the citizens of Mexico (10.8) cry for solidarity "to unite to create an agenda that unites the nation and believes in a state of real governability". (10.8). Because when the lives of those under a dictatorship that exercises ruthless violence based on color, race, ethnicity, religion, political opinion, it renders all citizens bare life. The nation becomes one where law is suspended and everyone is exposed to death. It is through solidarity that one's voice can be heard. 

A similar cry has been made in Ferguson,United States this weekend. Michael Brown's family and those who have stood in solidarity Michael and for other young black lives that have unjustly taken away by police men attacked the media once more with powerful images. The problem with using the media for justice is that technology has a way of letting things die too quickly. In the rapid times of the internet, it is hard to keep peoples attention. The following link is a pictorial narrative of the protest showing people laying down with chalk outlines around their bodies to remind the world that they have not forgotten and nor should we. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/protesters-stage-a-die-in-to-mark-100-days-since-michael-bro 

How can we compare the militarization on American soil in response to the protests in Fergusan, the media's spin on the shooting, and the response of the mourners of Brown's death to this weeks readings?