Emotional and political ties for a resistance during and after prision. Collective writing of Nosotras, presas políticas and Nosotras en libertad

Abstract

In 2006, a choral and collective writing book by 112 authors was presented in Buenos Aires, Nosotras, presas políticas (We, political prisoners), which recounted in first person the experience of women activists during the repression of the ecclesiastic-civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983) in provincial prisons, “chupaderos” (a state or parastatal clandestine prison), clandestine centers and in the Devoto Prison of Argentina. The book is divided by periods of time and has an appendix of poems and drawings made during their detention, as well as letters sent to their family members. Nosotras, presas políticas rebuilt the affectivity and organizational community which allowed women prisoners to survive detention. During the 2020 pandemic (COVID-19) there is a need to narrate other experiences, those of social insertion and post-prison militancy. Thus Nosotras en libertad (We, in freedom) was produced, an e-book that recount their journeys after prison. It is written in first person by its female authors who are around 70 years old. The militants share their forms of insertion in syndicates, unions, radios, social organizations and places of militancy. We will try to reconstruct the main points of these subjective processes of writing and how restorative it was for its protagonist to be able to process their experiences and explain themselves again after going through prison and the dictatorship, in a period when preventive  isolation (known in Spanish as ASPO) makes it essential to go back to useful resistance.