They Can Imprison Your Body Not Your Spirit and Capacity Maria Crespo (Argentina to Love: The Making of a Peacebuilder

They Can Imprison Your Body Not Your Spirit and Capacity to Love: The Making of a Peacebuilder

Maria Crespo Editors note: Maria shares her personal story of how family and faith, inspired her to a lifetime of peacebuilding. She has been an inspiration to generations of peacebuilders, including me, in living a life that connects peace within to peace without.

I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am a Roman Catholic in a country where 79.6% of the population is Christian, 62.9% belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Religion has been my connection with inner peace. I have always enjoyed celebrations, retreats and growing up sharing my faith with others. Born a teacher, I focused my career on education and soon I found myself coordinating teams of teachers that supported parents in the religious education of their children. If I think of highlights of my personal spiritual growth text readings and prayers in circles with children, adolescents and parents come to mind. When I meet former students or parents, we recall the depth of these conversations or gatherings and how have these marked our lives. They were moments of inner peace I treasure. They helped me so much specially at times where the outside was not as peaceful.

The 70s and 80s in Argentina were times of political unrest and of course in a big family, reactions to this context were diverse. To make the story short, my father was involved in the government run by the military and my elder sisters and brothers engaged in the opposition to the regime. I can remember difficult conversations Bible in hand with the sister whom I shared bedroom with. I talked of love and peace, she said Jesus was radical and felt that her call was to change oppression structures even if it was by force. Dictatorship became stronger and my sister´s ideas and actions too so in 1976 she was imprisoned under a law that allowed the government have people in jail with no trial or specific reason. She was there for 7 years. My life was torn, and I started to live two lives at the same time. The world of pain and torture, of visits to jail that took a lot of my time and energy every Tuesday. A time when my empathy grew accompanying my parents and parents of other women unfairly imprisoned during these visits. Empathy that broke my heart when seeing children going through the same long queues and ill treatment to see their parents. The noise of the doors brutally closed behind me still petrify me in the remembrance, tears still fall when I remember that little boy asking his mother “Do you have legs?” because he had always seen his mother behind the window which only allowed him to see her face and arms. The rest of the week I tried to live life as my friends: I studied, went to social meetings with pairs, started teaching.

In perspective this was a terrible experience and the most teaching one. The spiritual grounding that I grew up with was crucial to navigate the difficult times and to bridge the two worlds I lived in. I came out of the experience more compassionate, understanding, open to diversity with a deep value of spiritual freedom (I used to tell my sister at the end of each visit: They can imprison your body not your spirit and capacity to love. Don’t lose those because they keep you free).

At the right time I was granted the possibility to use these learnings and achievements serving at United Religions Initiative and building my own family. Some say they were born peacebuilders; I was made one. A lot to be thankful for! ²

Maria Crespo is a longtime interfaith leader based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been a crucial leader in interfaith efforts throughout Central and South America. She is also a founding member of URI - The United Religions Initiative where she has led efforts to ensure grassroots leadership of the interfaith movement. Maria played an important role in bringing interfaith issues to the GH20 Forum. Maria is a key ally of Indigenous peoples in Central and South America and has played an important role in international efforts to promote interfaith understanding among world leaders. She currently serves as Director of Cooperation Circle Support for the URI - United Religions Initiative.