By Carole Schor
Five women a day. Every day –someone’s daughter, sister, mother, friend. Kidnapped and disappeared, never to be seen again. Every year, almost 2,000 women are stolen in Mexico. And what is being done? Not much, according to Jennifer Clement, author of the best-selling book, Prayers for the Stolen, now adapted into an award winning film by the same name (“Noche de Fuego,” Spanish version).
Prayers for the Stolen is the fictionalized account of the real-life crisis happening in the state of Guerrero, Mexico where danger exists for those unlucky to be born female. As in many Mexican villages, women are forced to fend for themselves, as the men have left home to find work and opportunities elsewhere. Drug lords and cartel heads reign here, where poppies are grown for opium. But “a bag of drugs can only be sold once, whereas a woman and her body can be sold again and again,” says Clement.
Jennifer Clement is a Mexican-American author who was elected the first and only female president of PEN International, an organization dedicated to freedom and human rights. Jennifer is the author of several books including Gun Love and the Widow Basquiat, and is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Prize and the Sara Curry Humanitarian Award.
Jennifer believes that literature can transform society by informing and creating empathy – Oliver Twist helped to change child labor laws; Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen’s work changed laws in regard to women’s rights. After the publication of Prayers for the Stolen in 2014, she was invited by the United States Congress to speak to their trafficking groups, to high schools to educate young people as to this crisis, to Native Americans on vulnerable reservations where trafficking is rampant and to numerous women’s groups to address the problem of stealing girls in Mexico.
Jennifer devoted many years to researching her novel Prayers, spending time among rural women in Guerrero listening to their heartbreaking stories of losing their young girls. She also spent much time at the women’s jail in Mexico (where the last part of Prayers takes place) where she saw long lines of people coming to visit the men in the prison next door, yet seeing no one coming to visit the women in prison. “Women have absolutely no value,” says Clement, “and this is not just in Mexico, but this is true all over the world.” She learned this painful lesson in the rural villages she visited, where “If your car was stolen, that was really important. But if your little girl was stolen, that was not important.”
Perhaps the most important work that Clement has accomplished is The PEN International Women’s Manifesto which she presented at the United Nations. “The core message of the Women’s Manifesto,” says Clement, “is that tradition, religion, and culture are not more important than human rights.” “PEN believes that violence against women, in all its many forms, both within the walls of a home or in the public sphere, creates dangerous forms of censorship.” The Manifesto can be seen in its entirety at https://pen-international.org/who-we-are/manifestos/the-pen-international-womens-manifesto.
Jennifer Clement will be speaking on March 20 in a joint presentation by Ser Mujer (www.sermujersma.com) and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of SMA on Zoom. For further instructions, please visit www.uufsma.org.
