Puerto Rico’s Mothers Against War Turn To Revolutionary Love
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.