Neck scarves and badges with broken syringes spread to towns and cities across Spain in the 1980s and 1990s. Women from different corners of the country have adopted the name adopted by neighbors gathered in the neighborhood of Entrevías, in Puente de Vallecas: Mothers against drugs. They were pioneers of a movement with a clear purpose: to save their children from heroin and AIDS. At the first convocation, in 1980, 30 women participated, although some time later there were 500 at some assemblies. Today, 45 years later, eight remain, but their activism persists. They, living testimony of a matriarchy against drugs, maintain the three floors they created in the last century for young people in abstinence or in prison, where they now welcome immigrants and vulnerable families.
“I take care of monitoring one of the families staying. In one house there are two couples waiting to regularize their situation, in one apartment a father and his daughter and in another a mother with three children. I try to help as much as possible”, says Carmen Díaz, 74 years old. He had no biological children affected by heroin, but in 1986 he joined a demonstration calling for probation for young people who had committed crimes because of their drug addiction problems. “We asked for social measures, not police measures. We didn’t understand why the kids ended up in prison and the traffickers were freed,” he says. This is how he arrived at Mothers Against Drugs and remained there forever.
“As long as we have the strength, the fight will continue,” insists María del Carmen Alonso, 73. On Sundays he goes to eat with a group of immigrants in what has always been the headquarters of Moms Against Drugs, the parish of San Carlos Borromeo, in Entrevías: “If they need to demonstrate for their rights, we prepare them a sandwich and go with them.” He says they recently took to the streets to demand that they be granted asylum. They accompany them in their trials and remember with dignity those who died in the Mediterranean Sea.
“In the 80s, our colleague Aquilina was called because her son had been caught with three Chinese girls and she came to the barracks all angry saying that she wasn’t racist. The civil guard laughed and explained what they were”, recalls María del Carmen Alonso to affirm that they have never been prejudiced towards anyone. She conducted a sewing workshop for drug addicts. The main objective was to provide them with jobs and housing with the aim of facilitating their reintegration. “The problem wasn’t his, it was the neighborhood’s,” he insists.
Always inclusive, they have adapted their activism to current events over time. They went from mothers who opposed drug trafficking to women who also hugged the children of the slums and who now denounce foreign betting houses and detention centers. “Our life was linked to the struggle,” says Paquita Sanjuán, 87. She turned to Mothers Against Drugs thanks to her work as a volunteer at the Association of Parents of Drug Addicts.
They don’t want any group to suffer the stigma that many have suffered. “So, if a boy turned out to be handsome and blond, he looked like his father, but if he was a drug addict, they said that his mother had raised him badly,” says Carmen Díaz. Together they overcame the sense of guilt, took power and took to the streets. “We told the husbands to make dinner, that we had to fight,” she recalls. Paquita Sanjuán confirms this: “We grew up to clean the kitchen and make the gold shine, but it was our children’s turn and we lost our shame. We took off our apron and went out with a pot to defend their rights.”
Emiliana García, 92, says they lived in prisons, police stations and cemeteries. “We held three funerals a day. A generation was lost,” he laments. One of his sons died at age 25, in 1986, from heroin. “He worked as a delivery boy in some offices and there, in the surrounding area, they hooked him up when he was 14 years old,” he recalls. He fell ill in the Toledo prison in Ocaña. All his efforts were aimed at ensuring that he could go to hospital for treatment. “I got him after a lot of struggle on October 12, but he died on the 16th of the same month. This stays with you throughout your life. You never forget it, no matter how much you want it,” he says.
The anthem
She composed a song that became the anthem of these women’s struggle. “Jailer, jailer, they’re not bandits, it was the damn drugs that brought them here,” he recites. Now she is still involved in any social cause. “My daughter says I’m an NGO,” he jokes. In the 80s and 90s they denounced mistreatment in prisons and drug sales outlets. They locked themselves in the Madrid Stock Exchange building and the Almudena cathedral, they camped in front of the Ministry of Health, they dyed the Cibeles fountain red and they brought the addresses of the neighborhood traffickers to the Congress of Deputies.
They also whistled through the seven floors of the Plaza de Castilla courts to denounce the behavior of a supervisory judge, who stripped naked in front of the General Directorate of Penitentiary Institutions with the intention of claiming the defenselessness suffered by inmates in prisons. In 1987 they rallied around 10,000 people against police collusion and corruption in the drug trade.
Asun González, 90 years old, approached the association after learning the story of these children and their families in her neighborhood shop. Since then, he decided not to let go of their hand. He listens enthusiastically to Paquita Sanjuán, who still has a mountain of letters exchanged with more than 100 prisoners: “I have visited all the prisons in Spain.” From the total absence of public resources we moved on to the creation of an assistance network, as Mercedes Arquero, 71, explains. In her case she turned to the women fighting against drugs from the La Kalle social assistance cooperative.
In 1985 the mothers and those who supported them obtained approval of the National Plan against drugs and help with drug addiction. They managed to apply article 60 of the old penal code to free terminally ill patients and assisted in the development of therapeutic communities and day centers. They fought to ensure that the children of people suffering from AIDS were admitted to nurseries and that citizens did not die handcuffed in hospitals.
Some have become “drug grandmothers”. They had to care for their descendants’ children who died of addiction. Carmen Díaz welcomed an eight-month-old baby and a 2-year-old whose mother she helped. “They are my children,” he says. At the same time as her, Sara Nieto, 77, came to fight in 1986. They tell how they experienced “the capital that denies people the right to mourn their dead”. She remembers a mother who wasn’t told her son was dead. He found out months later. It helped that she was able to bury him in his homeland. Today he continues to be on the side of the most vulnerable: “We manage to send the children of the Gypsy and Romanian villages to school, and every morning they have breakfast before going to class”.
The parish continues to be a meeting point for many, like Paquita Sanjuán, who next week will meet to eat a fabada with four boys she helped rehabilitate. Emiliana García will visit the prison: “I ask young people not to fall into this, society needs them to be awake.”
