A belated Happy Mother’s Day to all who observed yesterday. The VL team has lots of mami power and yesterday as I spent the day cleaning, working, and yes visiting my own Mami and Titi, I was thinking about Latina mami’hood, the trabajo of raising our children and the lessons in love, struggle, and justice that we learn and impart on our young ones.

In Chile, for example, three Mexican mothers recently testified about the deaths of their daughters. These deaths represent just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of deaths and disappearances of mujeres in Ciudad Juarez.

Between 1993 and 2008 there were 447 registered cases of femicides in and around Juárez that are marked by signs of rape and extreme torture. Apart from the 447 registered cases, there are an estimated 70 young women still missing.

The State of México is accused for failing to confront the femicide phenomenon and in so doing, violating the right to life of its victims. Although only three mothers of the victims came to testify in Santiago, the court signaled that the three cases represent all of the femicides that have taken place in México to date.

The three mothers of the murdered women who testified were Irma Monreal, mother of Esmeralda Herrera, 14, Josefina González, mother of Claudia Ivette Conzález Banda, 20, and Benita Monárrez, mother of Laura Berenice Remos Monárrez, 17. On Tuesday, April 28, the mother’s gave their stories.

Their daughters were found dead in October 2001 along with the bodies of five other women and girls in a zone known as “Campo Algondonero” in Juarez.

The women had been tortured, raped and mutilated.
“I have faith and trust in the judges of this court,” said Monárrez. “I have faith that we will find justice.”

Instead of receiving flowers on Mother’s Day, these mothers are putting flowers on their daughter’s graves.

Speaking of flowers…….

If you bought flowers for your mami yesterday, did you ever think about where they came from? An op-ed piece in El Diario/La Prensa reminds us that many of the flowers purchased here in the U.S. come from Colombia and from the hands of Colombian mujeres like madre Amanda Camacho.

There, workers—the majority women—are paid an average of $8 a day to cut 350 to 400 flowers per hour. They have no health benefits yet are exposed to chemicals and pesticides. Workdays are as long as 12 to 15 hours with no overtime pay. And they are under threat for attempting to unionize.

What mothers like Amanda have in common with the madres of those killed in Juarez is what they have in common with amiga y mami Tigera Consciente who writes:

There are those that try to distance the act of motherhood from warriorhood, while I believe that one cannot exist without the other. The work of motherhood must engage in also shaping the world her children will come to know themselves in. A radical mother, a self-aware mother also becomes an advocate for truth-knowing among others as she must advocate with her own child. We live in a society of individuals who have had their highest selves hidden from them. It is a toxic environment. No radical mother, or no loving mother wants her children to be exposed to toxicity. The work to provide others with the opportunity to know themselves is parallel to the work of mothers who nurture their daughters and sons with the opportunities to see truth.

Motherhood isn’t automatically radical. There is choice that is made to center amor, amor for self as madre, amor for hijos, amor for the community and world.

Via / IIN