Fatma Tuncer: "Las Patronas"

Fatma Tuncer: "Las Patronas"
Date: 24.10.2022 15:00

Milli Gazete columnist Fatma Tuncer writes on Las Patronas. Here is the full article.

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27 years ago, two sisters living in the Mexican town of Guadalupe shopped at the market and were waiting by the railroad to get home as soon as possible. A moment later, a heart-rending voice was heard, and a train appeared at the other end of the road, barely carrying the heavy load on its back.
 
When the train approached, an immigrant hanging from the wagon turned his face to the young girls and shouted "we are hungry". The two young women knew that the train was carrying starving immigrants, and without hesitation they threw their bags of food towards the immigrants. Their sensitivity left such a deep impression on people that the sisters were awarded the human rights award in Mexico in 2013. This attitude of the two sisters turned into a traditional routine and this routine still continues.
 
Immigrants who fled countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua due to poverty and internal conflicts, trying to reach the USA in the hope of finding a job, were symbolized by the train carrying them and helpful brothers. The border voyage of immigrants, who risked death and sought a new life for themselves, contained great dangers. On these ordeal roads, immigrants were kidnapped, robbed, and fallen into the hands of the organ mafia by Mexican drug cartels. But despite all this, that train continued to pass through those dangerous roads.
 
Las Patronas (helpful women's group), started by two sisters, has been helping the passengers fleeing their country by freight trains with the same method in order to reach bread since the day it was founded. The charity organization Las Patronas prepares hundreds of take-out meals every day in the soup kitchen they have established for immigrants and they wait by the side of the railway.
 
Volunteer workers approach the passing train at certain times of the day and throw their bags of food over the wagons to the immigrants who are waiting with their hands outstretched. Women take the food package they prepare at the same time every day, walk thousands of kilometers and deliver it to the immigrants.
 
A bond that no one has ever seen or noticed has been established between the immigrants who jumped on the freight train, looking for a new life, and the women who handed them food. When immigrants reach that point of the road, they know that their sisters will offer food to their cats, and they maintain the bonds of love they have established with these people they have never met.
 
Scientists argue that human beings are distinguished from other living species by the following characteristics: intelligence, will, thinking and speech... Human's propensity for goodness must be added to these characteristics, because the instinct to do good consciously is a characteristic unique to humans. Otherwise, how can you explain the fact that two passers-by women threw their bags of food at a man who reached out from the freight train and said "we are hungry"!
 
The capitalist system saw goodness and sharing as folly and dragged individuals into self-interest and competition. However, these behaviors, which are not compatible with human nature, triggered mental problems and people began to seek remedies to feel good. Today, psychiatrists recommend doing good to depressed patients and claim that it has an antidepressant effect.
 
By breaking all the molds of the system, people turn to goodness and convey their love to the wagons of the freight train. Man's inclination for goodness breaks all the traps, all the barricades and all the suggestions made and reaches mercy...

YEREL HABERLER

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