The call came a few days before Christmas. One of those calls that don’t solve, but recognize. On the other end of the line was the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. He called Armanda Colusso to tell her that the State has not forgotten her son, Alberto Trentini. A sober gesture, in her style, but capable of having a profound impact on the life of a mother who has lived suspended in the anguish of waiting for thirteen months.
Shortly after that phone call, Armanda found herself facing her second Christmas without Alberto. “I can’t resign myself to the fact that there will be a second Christmas without my son,” he confided in a firm but marked voice, replying to journalists from Chora Media. A simple phrase, which says it all: the scandal of an absence that has reason to exist.
Armanda Colusso is the mother of Alberto Trentini, the 46-year-old Venetian aid worker, detained for over a year in a maximum security prison in Caracas without formal charges, without trial, without his lawyer ever having been able to meet him. But Armanda is not just “the mother of”. She is a woman who transformed a private pain into a public responsibility, a patient and obstinate civil testimony.
Because of this Christian family chose her among the “Women of the Year 2025”: because her figure reflects the strength of mothers, the silent dignity of those who never stop believing in life and justice.
«It was thirteen months of ordeal», he said, «we were used to his absences, because every new project required his presence away from home, but there was always daily contact. Now there is a sense of frustration and anguish within us, but a hope that we don’t want to extinguish.” It is a fragile but tenacious hope, nourished by the little news that comes from those who managed to escape alive from the hell of El Rodeo I prison.
Alberto was arrested on November 15, 2024 while going on a mission to Guasdualito, on the border with Colombia, on behalf of the NGO Humanity & Inclusion. Since then he has disappeared into arbitrary detention which violates every principle of law. The ex-prisoners spoke for him. Two by two meter cells, floors covered in feces, torture, hooded guards. In the midst of all this, Alberto only managed to call home three times. «We didn’t say much to each other because we were too excited», said Armanda, «she asked us how dad was and told us that the worst was over. We can only imagine what “worse” he could have suffered.”
Yet, even in this darkness, Armanda clings to a word that returns like a handle: strength. The former prisoners said that Alberto is alive, that he is “very strong”. A strength that also comes from being a son. From the love that awaits him.
Armanda’s pain, however, is intertwined with the disappointment of the silence that has long surrounded this affair. He speaks without acrimony, but with clarity, of the “Italian government’s negotiations that started late”, of a diplomacy that has not yet produced results. This is why he decided to write directly to the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, thanks to the channel opened by UN ambassador Alberto López. «I explained that Alberto had gone to Venezuela to bring help to his people», he said, «and that Alberto is our only son, the reason for our life».
In these words there is everything Armanda Colusso: a mother who does not beg, but testifies; who does not accuse, but asks for responsibility; who never ceases to remind all of us that Alberto Trentini is not a diplomatic case, but a person. A son. An Italian who has chosen to be on the side of the last.
President Mattarella, calling you before Christmas, recognized this pain as a pain of the Republic. But Armanda is waiting for that recognition to become unanimous. May the whole of Italy, starting with the institutions, feel that empty place in the Trentini home is their own and act accordingly to bring it home. May Alberto’s freedom become a shared urgency.
In recent months Armanda Colusso has made her motherhood a form of civil resistance. Keeping a light on while everything around was in danger of going out. And reminding us, with the sole strength of his never over the top voice, that the passing of time is not neutral. And that, in the face of injustice, remaining silent is never innocent.
