The mothers in a war: pain, suffering and disrupted time

• In Event: Conflictos Armados, Violencia de Género y Construcción de la Paz

Abstract

This work analyses the political conditions of mothers whose children have been killed by the Military Police and the Armed Forces in favelas of Rio through the execution of the “war against drugs”. These mothers bring to bear the sad reality of state interference in the domestic life of their families. In interrupting the intimate affective bonds and temporal linkages between past, present and future, for these mothers the loss of a child implies a resignification of the meaning and temporality of their lives. Between the war waged by the state and the war waged by mothers for justice, we note a social dynamic whose relations of power position these mothers in a reordering of space and a redefinition of time, creating a spatio-temporal existence of pain, despair, and hope.

Author

• Vinícius Santiago