COMADRES

My name is Steph, and I haven´t posted on here yet, and I decided to talk about the Comadres.First off, it is important to know that to become a member of the Comadres, you had to have a family member who was killed, dissappeared, or was a political prisoner, or you had to have something personally happen to you.  I also think it would be important to give some history about the comadres.  They started in 1975 because there was a march of students and some were killed, some dissappeared or became politcal prisoners.  One of the founders, Alicia Garcia, worked at the hospital where this march was taking place, and saw students being killed. Only 127 students from the march were found alive.  Father Romero told the women to give him a list of all those who were missing or killed, and every Sunday, after his homilies, he read off all the names.  The comadres looked in clandestine cemeteries for those that were missing, and over 2500 bodies were found, but the government told them they could not search any longer.  The comadres broke the silence about what was going on. The comadres helped with making it a national law that it is illegal to use force disappearances.  Today they give workshops on human rights and what human rights are, and they also go to schools to talk about the history of El Salvador.

Patricia, a member of the comadres, came to give us her own personal story.  At age eleven she sought out Archbishop Romero to ask what she should do about what was going on, and she started working for the comadres at age 11.  In 1982, Patricia was captured for the first time. She told about the torture she went through, which I won´t go into detail about.  She was captured a 2nd time in 1991.  It was crazy to me how it was at the National Police Headquarters.  Someone had come and stopped one of her tortue sessions, which she most likely would have died from.  Whoever gave her possessions back told her that what had happened to her was just a bad dream and it never really happened.  Patricia was sent to the US and visited the Kennedy family.  The Comadres have also received many international awards, including one from the Robert Kennedy foundation.

It was so inspiring to me to hear her story.  She was so courageous to come and talk to us about what had happened to her.  I appreciate that she did, because it definitely made me more aware of what was going on, and what is still going on, and it made me want to be able to stand up and do something to help.

*Stephanie gave collected donated bagfuls of medical supplies for the Comadres to disperse to those in need.