Free Yeny and the Children for Peace by Michelle Mulder

María Cristina in the displacement camp in time. She wished she had a way to tell her friends from home, so far away.

    Children wore white for peace and made peace banners to carry through the street.

    â€œI don’t hear you talking about Joaquin anymore,” Yeny’s father said that evening. They had gone out walking together, this time to buy rice. He had a rare day off, and Yeny was happy to be walking beside him in the warm evening air. In the distance, she heard someone selling lottery tickets over a megaphone, and somewhere closer a horse clopped along the pavement.
    â€œJoaquin hasn’t been bugging me much lately.” She thought about saying that he’d shown up at the Peace Carnival, but she didn’t want to sound like she was whining about not having gone to the party herself. Above all, her father hated whining. “I keep waiting for him to say something mean, but he hasn’t bugged me in over a week. Maybe he’s figured out that no one can mess with Yeny.” She held her fists in front of her face, like a boxer. “Pow! Pow pow!”
    Papá’s eyes crinkled up in a smile. “I hope he’s figured out a better way to handle things,” he said. “He probably hasn’t had an easy life, if he’s always so angry.”
    Yeny frowned. “What do you mean?”
    â€œAll that anger has to come from somewhere,” Papá said. “Maybe he doesn’t get enough to eat, or maybe someone in his family hits him. You never know.”
    Yeny was silent. She’d never actually thought about what made Joaquin the way he was. She’d only wanted him to stop picking on her.

    They turned at the big white and red church at the end of the street. Her father nodded to a group of teenagers leaning against the wall. Farther down, Yeny saw a man in a green uniform, carrying a big gun. For a split second, she panicked, and her father’s hand tensed in hers, but he kept walking as though he hadn’t noticed. So did she. They turned onto another street and walked as fast as they could. And after a few blocks, they relaxed a little and slowed down.
    Her father took a long breath and shook his head. “Guns everywhere,” he said. “How will we ever achieve peace if you can’t walk down the street without seeing someone with a gun?”
    Yeny kept quiet. This would have been the perfect moment to mention the election, children’s rights, and the stuff she and her friends were working toward, but she was afraid of saying something that made her father turn silent and scared again.
    Luckily, he brought the subject up for her. “I guess you’ve heard about the vote, Yeny,” he said, and her eyes opened wide in surprise. “Someone was talking about it on the radio yesterday, and it made me think of you and the Peace Carnival.” He didn’t look angry, only tired.
    â€œI think it’ll be great,” Yeny said, in a voice that was much smaller than her excitement about the whole event. From inside a house, the loud
boom-boom
beat of cumbia music wafted intothe street. Somewhere a car horn blared. Yeny looked up into her father’s face, trying to read his thoughts.
    He was slow to speak. “I think it’s a great opportunity for young people to learn about democracy,” he said. “But Yeny, it is still too dangerous for me to feel comfortable about letting you go. We have to be patient. We have to hope that, one day, democracy will work in this country—that one day we’ll be able to vote away the grupos armados altogether.”
    Yeny swallowed her reply. If she wanted to win her father over, she shouldn’t argue with him. Besides, they had reached the store and Papá was pulling open the squeaky metal door.
    Several people were crowded around the cashier, talking. It was the only spot in the little store with space for more than one person. The three aisles were crammed