On this day two years ago, my family was at Mt. Rushmore as part of an extended camping trip to celebrate Ruby's 50th birthday. For much of the trip I didn't have cell reception, but I had reception at Mt. Rushmore. I was surprised when my phone rang and it was our friend Raul who lives in El Salvador, and has never before called me.
He was calling to tell us that Madre Alicia, co-founder and director of Co-Madres had died.
We had learned only a month or two earlier that Madre Alicia and Patricia both had uterine cancer and were undergoing extreme treatments. We had been planning Ruby's camping trip for months, but considered postponing it to make an emergency trip to El Salvador. We understood that they were both struggling and suffering a great deal from the cancer and the treatments. However, we convinced ourselves that surely they would both get through it and would hold on for at least another couple years if not more. We went on the trip anyway.
That's how I came to receive the news of Madre Alicia's death at Mt. Rushmore. When Raul told me I sank down onto the stairs I was descending in shock and sadness. What quickly followed was fury. When they had told us that Alicia and Patty were both sick with uterine cancer, they mentioned that it seemed to be fairly common among women who had undergone the types of sexual torture they had endured during the war and as a result of their work with Co-Madres. I don't know if this has been studied at all, but just based on the anecdotal evidence, it seems that perhaps uterine cancer is similar to cervical cancer in that it can be passed through a sexually transmitted infection. So when I learned that Madre Alicia had died from complications of this disease, I felt outrage that now, 20 years later, she had been assassinated due to her human rights work. I felt the deep injustice of the general amnesty granted to the perpetrators of abuse, threats, torture, rape, and killings. How could it be that Alicia, one of the shining stars of goodness in the world, could die when the men who did this to her suffered no [external] consequences for their actions?
I'm not sure how to conclude this post. I started writing it thinking it would be a reflection on the wonderful life of Madre Alicia, but that's not what came out. Perhaps in a week or two I will do that. For now, I'm reliving the anger and sorrow of two years ago, when a woman's life was taken before her time.
