Sometimes, you have to be careful what you ask for.
In 2004, a historical event took place:
a teenager was kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires.
I, like many others, was afraid this could happen to my children.
I put a fence in my house, demonstrated against insecurity,
asked for longer and harder sentences, that nobody ever be released.
But days later, my son Juan, who had just turned 18,
was having a drink with a girl friend at a bar in Plaza Serrano
when he was taken for someone who had been stealing around.
Someone who had stolen four empanadas
with a Tramontina knife.
He tried to explain it was a mistake,
that he had nothing to do with that.
However, they did not believe him, got him into a patrol car
and took him away.
When I got the news I rushed to the police station,
but they didn’t let me see him.
They told me he was incommunicado and that I should look for a lawyer.
Juan’s father was a doctor and a very committed father,
but he had died a few years before and I was alone,
and completely lost.
Suddenly, I remembered a friend who is a criminal lawyer.
I went to see him and he told me that although he was 100 percent sure
that Juan was innocent, things weren’t that simple
and that we would meet the next day at the entrance of the Courts.
That morning I went to and fro the corridors waiting for everything to be clarified
and to see them crossed that door.
But no.
The lawyer came out alone and told me my son was going to be imprisoned.
I could not believe it.
I cried, got angry with him, told him he hadn’t known how to defend him
and that I wanted to talk to the judge,
to explain nobody in my family
had ever set foot in a police station,
my son had nothing to do with that,
it surely was a confusion.
The judge received me and said:
“Madam, I don’t want demonstrations against insecurity
at the doorstep of the courthouse.
I’m not going to let anyone free until I’m sure,
I don’t want to be in the newspapers.”
I sat all day in front of the Courts
watching a gate where grey trucks of the prison service go to and fro.
I knew that place, I went pass hundreds of times,
but I had never stopped to think
who were the people that were in there,
nor what those women were waiting for.
At around 11 pm, they got my son into one of those trucks.
They took him to Ezeiza, to a maximum security prison.
I asked the lawyer if he could kindly follow him with the car
because I could not leave him, I needed to know what that place was like.
There, I realized that I didn’t know anything about jail.
My mom and my sister, who loved me wanted to give me the best advice —
but everything they told me didn’t work for me at all.
I had to learn by myself, by listening to other women
who were going through the same thing.
To enter prison, you can’t dress in black, blue or gray;
shirts have to have sleeves;
clothes don’t have to be tight,
and nobody tells you why.
You have to stand in a line from very early in the morning,
to see him only for a little while, once a week after noon.
To enter you are requisitioned and your belongings as well.
You have to take them sheets, blankets and something to eat,
because they don’t provide that.
I had to learn which food was allowed and which was not.
And that these rules are not written anywhere
and depend on the goodwill of the chief on duty.
Because in jail everything is arbitrary and ruled by fear.
I had to quit my job.
I rented my house and went with my youngest children, Agustín and Belén,
to live with my mom to have an income,
because having a family member imprisoned can almost be a full time job.
I also learned that prison is an unspoken topic.
I lied to my children, I told them his brother was on a trip.
But they knew it wasn’t like that and something else was going on.
A friend advised telling them the truth,
because they imagined his brother was dead.
I explained them the best I could but forbade them to talk about this at school
because I was afraid other classmates would make fun of him,
or other parents wouldn’t let them play with their children.
Life sometimes has unexpected twists and turns.
Prisoners can’t receive phone calls.
So I had arranged with my son
that he was going to call me every day at the same time,
it was the only way I had to know he was alive.
But one Friday he didn’t call me.
I waited and, as he did not call me,
I went to the prison, but they didn’t want to tell me.
I asked a chief on duty and, mockingly, he told me
“Madam, this is a prison, your son is a prisoner, find out in court.”
It was after 1:30 pm and the courts were closed,
the lawyer was on a trip and, again, there I was completely lost.
Someone told me that a neighbor had his brother imprisoned in Ezeiza.
I went to see him and asked him to kindly make his brother contact me.
That’s how I met Alejo.
Alejo called me and I found myself crying desperately
with a guy who was in prison and I did not know,
asking him to find my son.
And for the first time I was relieved,
because I was talking to someone that could understand me
without having to explain so much.
Hours later my son called me.
He told me he was in a cell because he had argued with an inmate
that wanted to take off his shoes.
It was June, and he was in boxers
and had no food for two days.
He told me: “Mom, get me out or I’ll kill myself.”
And I believed him, because he’d never spoke to me like that.
When Alejo called me again I thanked him for having found my son
and begged for his help
because he wasn’t going to survive there
I don’t know how, but he got him a blanket and something to eat.
After that weekend Juan returned to his pavilion.
Alejo didn’t stop calling me every morning
and every night from that day.
He listened and stood by me. He taught me to live through prison.
Regarding Juan, we had to wait two years until trial
for the case to be clarified.
The lawyer had filed all possible appeals,
the person who was robbed had stated my son wasn’t guilty
and we had to wait for two years.
I couldn’t just stay still and wait.
Alejo told me beyond the lawyer efforts,
I should ask in court to bring that date forward.
I went every other day.
They told me they were collapsed,
Justice had its own pace,
there were hundreds of others like me and we should wait.
Finally, they moved the date forward.
It was proved that my son had not stolen the four empanadas and was absolved.
My son was imprisoned for six months despite being innocent.
For the Justice, everything was solved in record time.
For me and my family, it was an eternity.
A lot of things happened since Juan got out of prison,
I married Alejo, for instance.
(Applause)
I got married in jail knowing he had several years ahead
to serve his sentence.
We have a son, Joaquín, who is twelve years old.
I also couldn’t, didn´t want to return to my office work.
For I felt all I had seen, heard and lived
could not remain like that.
I also felt I’d been a bad mother
for not being able to protect Juan while he was in prison.
I had neglected Agustín and Belén, who also needed me,
and I didn’t know, now that Juan was set free,
how to help him move on.
I also knew I wasn’t the only one. There were hundreds of families like me.
And I looked in all public offices for a space to help me with this.
On those tours, they told me:
“The state is not going to give you what you need, set an NGO.”
I didn’t know what this meant, but with four women,
mates in the long waiting lines, that is what we did.
A committed lawyer, Claudia Cesaroni, helped us a lot
and in 2008 we set up the Civil Association of Detainees Relatives.
(Applause)
It’s a space where relatives and professionals
not only take care of people in jail,
but also of their children and families,
because the sentence always affects families, especially women.
Generally, we will always be suspicious
just for having a relative there.
Suddenly nobody believes us,
we have to carry huge bags of food,
do all the legal proceedings,
understand difficult words from our lawyer
carry on with the house, life, the other children.
Above all, we have the enormous burden of keeping them alive in there
and to support them once they’re free.
These people are imprisoned, they are not prisoners,
and at some point they are going out.
For sooner or later the conviction ends and they are released.
This is something few people worry about,
but we do, and we know jail doesn’t prepare them for that.
Because the state invests a lot of money to prevent them from escaping,
and little or nothing helping them finish primary school or caring for their health.
They aren’t prepared for a trade or job.
Don’t we all want them to work when freed?
But who of us will offer a job to a person
who hadn’t worked for 10 years,
doesn’t know what Internet is,
learned computing on a cardboard keyboard,
doesn’t know to use the cell phone because it’s forbidden,
apart from having a criminal record?
How will they live when they are free?
In 10 years they surely won’t know how to take the bus,
the value of money
and how to share other spaces
with people who weren’t in jail like them.
A friend explained it to me like this:
“You can’t learn to play ball in an elevator.”
You can’t learn to live free in a cell.
(Applause)
A law has just been passed limiting temporary releases.
It should be the other way round, they should be mandatory,
not as a reward or punishment, monitored and accompanied,
but as a step on the way out.
Sometimes it’s a way of saying “Enough, that’s it.”
But then the State should intervene, from the very day a person steps in jail
and prepare them for their leave.
Shouldn’t we demand this?
I hadn’t wondered about this in 40 years.
Life has unexpected twists and turns.
My son was wrongfully imprisoned.
This injustice led me to a limit
that opened my eyes to a world I didn’t know it existed
and that, like many of you, I didn’t want to see either.
I keep demanding safety.
But not with the same recipes that fail again and again.
(Applause)
In a few months, Alejo will be out.
Surely, as in many other cases,
it will be at 12 am on the last day of his conviction.
He’ll be left at the door of Ezeiza, in the middle of nowhere,
with a bag with two briefs and not knowing what to do.
The State knows him very well, because it kept him for years,
It knows him by name and surname.
But outside, it won’t even give him the identity document.
His identification will be a piece of paper saying “I’m an ex- convict”
so maybe, luckily, next morning, if brave enough,
a bus will take him somewhere.
This won’t happen to Alejo,
his family and projects will be there.
Many things happened in 14 years.
Juan never entered prison again.
And I want to invite you
to dare and take a look at what happens there
because something has to done differently.
Something has to change there,
and also what happens outside prison.
(Applause)
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