Mother of YPJ martyr from Latin America: "She was a lively force"

Interview with Patricia Gregorini, mother of Alina Sánchez, Lêgerîn Çiya, martyr of humanity, internationalist member of the Women's Protection Units (YPJ), fallen martyr on 17 March 2018 in Rojava.

Alina Sánchez (Lêgerîn Çiya) in recent years had given herself completely to the cause of the Kurdish people and especially of the Kurdish women, carrying out a community health project, within the context of the revolution that is developing every day in Rojava.

But nothing is accidental, and that innate and contagious sensibility, which marked people who knew Lêgerîn, radiated from her childhood: "Her emotional part matured after her mental part, she was all love, all contagious happiness since she was born", says proudly her mother Patricia Gregorini, interviewed in Argentina by ANF that wanted to know the other part of Lêgerîn Çiya, the "Ali" of picare smile, freckles and horsetails, who scampered along with her three brothers and left an image of overwhelming happiness along her path.

Alina was born in San Martín de Los Andes, in Neuquén, Argentina; she had three brothers, she lived among forests, lakes and snow during the first years of his life. At 9, her family settled in the mountains of Córdoba, first in La Falda, "then she went to the school of Villa Giardino during her first year" says Patricia, and adds: “Everybody knew me as Alina's mother back then, and now again everybody knows me as Alina's mother, that is her mark, her stamp, I am Alina's mother ".

Brave, innocent, a whirlwind of emotions, happy, smiling "as you see her in the photos," thus Patricia describes Alina.

"For me Alina was a fine head, and a big heart, and this was so strong in her that I had a spiritual teacher, and Alina and Juan, her brother, the youngest, accompanied me, and my teacher said: 'Alina is no fire, she is magma'. This passion for Kurdistan is not casual. She matured her mental self much earlier than her emotional self, her female self. She went with her head on her shoulder, and in this last trip she ended up completing her being a woman, channeling the vital energy that was in her, she matured a lot when she was in Cuba, she closed processes in her travels. Her adolescence, on the contrary, was denser, it was pure mental energy without a way out, she could not find her place, her search was part of channeling that energy, of finding her place in the world and she found it".

As her mother says, nothing is accidental. "Lêgerîn", her Kurdish name, means search, and marked her way to find the truth and the light of humanity.

"Alina had a great impact on people, she was very affectionate, I always tell my partner that nobody will ever give me love the way she gave me. Alina had a way of transmitting love, out there other people love her too, but her way of loving overflowed. You are going to see pictures of her in her teens and she is sitting on top of me, always very much “bodily”, very much of transmitting her feelings with the body".

Alina spent her secondary school years without finding a way to give a channel to everything that surrounded her, in mind and emotion. Then she went to study  Anthropology career at the National University of Córdoba. "There a professor saw her and offered her a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba. It would seem that it was not the same as anthropology, but it was Social Medicine, and I told her to go, to try, and return if it was not for her" Patricia says, adding that "In the end she hooked up, and then she said, 'Mom, I really wanted to study medicine, but I thought my head was not for it’. That is, she did not valued herself to the extent that everyone else did”.

"When love does not find its channel it becomes violence, and that's why Alina was so explosive, but not bad, simply very emotional, strongly emotional. As much as she studied something was always short, she needed more, and when she went to Cuba she found more, her search was completed, her place in the world”. In that sense Alina's mother always tried to respect and help in that search. "When I went to visit her in Cuba, she was the one who organized the events, the activities there, she had that full energy, not like here and where she was involved in things that did not interest her. Here she didn’t know where to put all that energy”. Patricia's stories reflect how Lêgerîn was going about finding her way.

Patricia knows that although her path finally found her passionate about the struggle of the Kurdish women, she was a fighter of the causes of the world: "One summer while studying in Cuba instead of returning to Argentina on vacation, she went to Mexico, from there, in some trucks of Subcomandante Marcos, she went on to join a caravan from Chiapas to Panama, to end up in a great march, because the people there were going through many problems”. Then Alina returned to Cuba to finish her medical degree, "but Alina wanted to leave”, recalls her mother, reaffirming that concern to go about the causes of the world.

Life, struggles, paths, encounters and disagreements led Lêgerîn to her most valued destiny: the mountains of Kurdistan, where thousands of women carried forward a revolution, a personal and social liberation. Patricia thought Alina was in India. One day "in the few days when we could communicate, Alina tells me 'ma..look at me!'", And her mother visualized her in her mind: "I looked at her in a desert place, sweeping a house where there was only women". Lêgerîn had arrived, she was in Rojava, with the Kurdish women.

"I remember her brother’s bad moods, but not Alina's. Alina was happy, she was very vital, she immediately got hooked on everything, always happy" and her happiness was freedom, that's why Patricia believes fervently that Alina expressed her desire to be happy, choosing her freedom path, leaving, forging her own path, no matter what others think.

That's why Alina one day said to her mother: "For me, love is not just among five people, love is in thousands of people". Patricia knows that many may not have understood, but for her, freedom was her horizon, and in this regard she reflects: “This struck Alina strongly, deeply, she chose the freedom to be who she wanted to be".

Alina Sánchez's mother honestly sums up her feelings, her thoughts, and one liberating truth: "Alina chose that destiny, I sometimes thought, why do you not go and help in Chaco? There are so many places where you can help too, but if you can open up to see what happens to the other, I, as a mother, I must respect even if it is not easy, and give her that space of freedom. I respected her decision from the beginning, and over time I understood her choice, she was happy. I have recorded her last conversations on WhatsApp, she was telling me 'I'm happy, this is what I want to do', she felt super committed to the Kurdish people and the people there”.