Estaba la Madre
NPR this morning ran a story on the debut of a new opera, Estaba la Madre (The Mother Was There), in Buenos Aires and Rome. The title references a medieval Latin poem, Stabat Mater, on the sorrows experienced by the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion. The opera portrays the sorrows of some of the 30,000 Argentinian mothers who lost their sons and daughters (most in their teens and early twenties) to a military dictatorship.
The NPR story comes on the heels of a week of back-and-forth letters to the editor of my local newspaper debating the issue of torture. One point that has been constantly overlooked in all the letters pro and con is the fact that once a government decides to torture the guilty, it ends up torturing the innocent because of human error, avarice and stupidity.
30,000 children. 30,000 lives cut short. 30,000 people who were beaten, electrocuted, raped, burned, shot, or dumped into the ocean while still alive. This is the road where torture leads us. I sat in my car and cried.
The NPR story comes on the heels of a week of back-and-forth letters to the editor of my local newspaper debating the issue of torture. One point that has been constantly overlooked in all the letters pro and con is the fact that once a government decides to torture the guilty, it ends up torturing the innocent because of human error, avarice and stupidity.
30,000 children. 30,000 lives cut short. 30,000 people who were beaten, electrocuted, raped, burned, shot, or dumped into the ocean while still alive. This is the road where torture leads us. I sat in my car and cried.