"In a blurry black-and-white Polaroid from 1971, Sonia Santiago Hernández reenacts an image of the Madonna and Child. Only 21 years old, she wears a miniskirt and sandals, and oversize sunglasses sit perched on her forehead. She stands in contrapposto outside the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras in San Juan, gazing serenely at her newborn son Gabriel. Since his birth, Gabriel had been her companion at every Vietnam War protest that she attended, shuffling between student comrades who took turns holding him."
"In the months before her pregnancy, Santiago had been on hunger strike for 26 days. On a colonized island where one-third of all Puerto Rican women had been forcefully sterilized from the 1930s to the '70s, holding the baby for a photo felt like an act of resistance. Gabriel was raised in a house plastered with peace-sign magnets, pins, posters, and stickers-his playpen devoid of toy guns or weapons."
Sonia Santiago Hernández staged a Madonna-and-Child Polaroid in 1971 while holding her newborn son Gabriel outside the University of Puerto Rico. At 21 she had just completed a 26-day hunger strike and routinely brought Gabriel to Vietnam War protests where comrades took turns holding him. On an island with widespread forced sterilizations of Puerto Rican women, holding her baby became an act of resistance. Gabriel grew up surrounded by peace symbols and no toy weapons, yet later enlisted and was among thousands of Puerto Rican youth deployed after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Grief over his service led Santiago to found Madres Contra La Guerra and to protest further U.S. interventions in the region.
Read at The Nation
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