Right before going on the delegation to Guatemala I received from a member of a peace group in Madison an email about how she looked on the efforts to stop killer drones as an effort to save children, like her granddaughter. In Guatemala I heard about the many massacres of the Mayan people that including the killing of children. I thought about my first trip to Guatemala in 2005, Buried in Guatemala, and how I saw suffering and death being celebrated. I also thought of my own son Peter who died from his mental illness in 2010 and my friend Lorenzo Rosebaugh who was killed in 2009 in Guatemala, both between my two journeys to this country.
There was some connection between these various events and experiences. One day in Guatemala it came to me, the connection was represented in the phrase: “The child you save may be your own.” The death of children by “killer drones” has really moved me and made the tragedy of war real. On all my trips to Central and South America as well as India it has been the children of the country I most relate to. With children, especially young children, I feel at ease to be myself. My friend Lorenzo was one of the most humble and child like persons I ever knew. Although my relationship with my son, Peter, had been strained and tested by our experiences with mental illness, at the age of 39, a few months before he died, he asked me if I knew who was his best friend in the world. I said I did not know and he said it was me.
My trips to countries in solidarity with poor and marginalized started with my trip to Guatemala and perhaps ended with this recent journey. In between the two journeys’ my friend Lorenzo and my son Peter have died and the use of “killer drones” has dramatically increased. I need to explore these connections summarized in the statement: “The child you save may be your own.”
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