SAVE THE DATE! Speaking Tour Visitor from Las Anonas, El Salvador!

[Jessica C.]

SAVE THE DATE!  March 15 - 24, 2013

Big Event:  March 24^th, 2:00 to 4:00 P.M.

At St. Joseph’s University

Disappeared Children in El Salvador and A Mother's Search

This March, the Romero Interfaith (Committee) will welcome Maura Contreras directly from Las Anonas, El Salvador on a speaking tour in Philadelphia and New York to share her life's experiences as a mother of 3 disappeared children during El Salvador’s civil war and a founding member of the Las Anonas de Santa Cruz Community (our Sister Community!) in the San Vicente Region of El Salvador.  During the week of events, we will be raising money for Asociación Pro-Búsqueda (an organization that assists families in searching for their disappeared children), the Las Anonas Community Kitchen Project, and the solidarity commitments of the Romero Interfaith Committee.

On March 24, Mrs. Contreras will speak in an event organized in conjunction with St. Joseph's University where the film, "Niños de la Memoria" - a locally produced documentary about the stories of the disappeared children, will be shown.   Makers of the documentary will be present for a brief discussion after the film.

If you would be interested in hosting an event with our special speaker, please be in contact with Jessica Culley at jessa...@gmail.com to coordinate.  Additionally, we are seeking sponsorships to assist in covering the costs of Mrs. Contreras's trip, as well as raising money for the three projects listed above.


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Background Information:

On August 25, 1982, the Fifth Infantry Brigade of the Salvadorean army carried out a military operation in La Llorona, San Jacinto and San Juan Buenavista, in the department of San Vicente, in a large scale operation where the civilian population was indiscriminately attacked.  The survivors tried to escape the soldiers, and in the subsequent confusion, the children became separated from their families.  Maria Maura Contreras and her partner, Fermin Recinos, lost three of their children in this incident.  Maura has spent the past thirty years searching for her children, eventually becoming reunited with two of the three.  The second reunion just took place in August.  She has been a leader in the Probusqueda Association (http://probusqueda.org.sv/), an organization founded by the late Father Jon Cortina that has the mission to be, "...an association in the human rights movement that carries out the search for children who disappeared as a result of the armed conflict in El Salvador, that promotes their rights, the awareness of the truth, access to justice, to complete reparations for disappeared people and their families."  Mrs. Contreras has given testimony in front of the InterAmerican Court on Human Rights, as well in in multiple proceedings in El Salvador representing impacted families.

Niños de la Memoria (http://www.ninosdelamemoria.com/) tells the story of the search for hundreds of children who disappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War. Many were survivors of massacres carried out by the U.S.-trained Salvadoran army. Taken away from the massacre sites by soldiers, some grew up in orphanages or were adopted abroad, losing their history and identity.  Niños de la Memoria weaves together three separate yet intertwined journeys in the search for family, identity and justice in El Salvador, and asks the larger question: How can a post-war society right the wrongs of the past?