‘I know what it’s like to LIVE IN FEAR’

After growing up under a dictatorship in Argentina, humanitarian lawyer Maria Trogolo is now solving the world’s problems from here in Aotearoa.

- JUDY BAILEY

M aria Trogolo grew up in a community where everyone was scared. Born in Argentina in the mid ’70s, her homeland was in the iron grip of a succession of ruthless military dictators.

Two of her mother’s cousins were among the “disappeared” and babies were regularly stolen from their mums to be given to childless government supporters. It’s a story reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale. But this is no fiction.

“I grew up in an environment of constant fear – fear that your children would not come home from school,” says Maria, the new programmes director at ChildFund New Zealand. “Fear informed who I was and what I wanted to be.”

It’s no surprise then that Maria, 46, would choose to become a humanitarian lawyer. She continues, “My first memory of going to school was making thank you cards to send to the soldiers in the Islas Malvinas War [also known as the Falklands War]. They were like children themselves – 18-year-olds fighting a war no one understood.”

Her parents, Jose Maria and Cristina, were political activists, but when Maria and her brother Carlos came along, they became more guarded in their activism to protect their children.

“They were traumatised by their own experience of law enforcement abuse,” she says. “They wanted us both to be lawyers, to understand our rights. If we didn’t understand our rights, we couldn’t protect ourselves or others. They gave us everything – a strong education, a thirst for learning and travelling, and open minds.”