Maria Sol Beker
Writer · Notes & Essays
I investigate violence. I write what remains.
I work between languages — English, Spanish, and sometimes French — moving between the formal language of law and a more personal attempt to understand memory, the body, and what persists after rupture.
About me
I am an international lawyer and investigator working on human rights and international humanitarian law. For years, my work has focused on documenting violence — its mechanisms, its patterns, and its consequences across different contexts.
Alongside this, I write.
What began as a parallel practice has become a way of staying with what cannot be reduced to reports or legal frameworks. I write from the spine — trying to understand what remains in the body, in memory, and in language after violence.
I work between languages. Spanish is where I began. English is where much of my writing lives. French is a language I am still learning to inhabit.
I am also a certified Kundalini yoga teacher. This is not a hobby attached to the rest. It is part of how I live and work — the practice that structures attention, discipline, and the relationship to the body that underlies both writing and investigations.
This site brings these strands together as an ongoing process rather than a finished narrative.
Writing
A selection of essays, fragments, and ongoing work — across English and Spanish, published or in circulation. I write to translate experience into texture, rhythm, and breath.
Featured Essays
Carta a Buenos Aires
Manual de retorno para quien ya no sabe volver
Read the essay
I
Te escribo desde lejos, en un idioma que aprendí para poder olvidarte.
Durante años hablé en otras lenguas, creyendo que así podía crecer sin vos, sin tu ruido, sin la grasa de tus veredas ni el perfume agrio de las milanesas fritas en las cocinas de los edificios. Creí que el inglés me ordenaba, que el francés me refinaba, que el silencio me salvaba. Pero lo que hacía, Buenos Aires, era borrarme. Presioné delete en mi lengua, en mi historia, en mi sombra.
Y ahora, mirá: vuelvo a buscarte en tus palabras. Las que todavía me suenan adentro aunque las diga con vergüenza, como si fueran demasiado mías.
II
«No hace falta que me jures nada, Sol. Nunca fuiste de jurar.
Te fuiste con la misma calma con la que otros se quedan: sin drama, con una valija medio rota y la certeza de que había que seguir andando. Yo te vi irte. Con el saco prolijo del Banco, el pelo recogido y esa mezcla de miedo y curiosidad que no se puede disimular. Dijiste porque quiero, y fue la frase más honesta que me dejaste.
Te escuché después, en los aeropuertos, hablando raro, comprando vinos con nombres imposibles, contando chistes en inglés que solo vos entendías. Te fuiste armando un idioma nuevo para cada versión de vos misma.
No me dolió, ¿sabés? Me dio orgullo. Pero ahora que me escribís, me dan ganas de preguntarte si de tanto buscarte afuera no te cansaste de traducirte.
III
Tenías razón, Buenos Aires. Me cansé de traducirme.
Pasé media vida buscando una lengua que me salvara y lo único que encontré fue distancia. Aprendí a decir healing, closure, growth, como si las palabras extranjeras pudieran curar mejor. Pero ninguna sabía a casa.
Hoy te escribo para escucharme en tu acento. Para recordar cómo suena el cariño cuando se mezcla con bronca. Para volver — no a tus calles, sino a mí, en tu idioma.
Si alguna vez regreso de verdad, que no sea al Banco ni a los cafés donde hacíamos planes. Que sea a esta voz que vuelve a nacer en castellano.
Quizás eso sea volver: dejar de irse.
Field Notes From The Spine
Shorter pieces, written closer to the body — before meaning settles.
Reviewing Everything
Cultural commentary — music, art, books, films, the occasional fondue. Lighter, sharper, often funny. Same voice, different temperature.
Small obsessions, tiny dives, and the things that stay with me.
Books & Projects
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Untitled Essay Collection (Spanish)
A collection of essays exploring identity, place, and movement between worlds.
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Memoir
A long-form project that circles five humanitarian workers — mostly women — the men who hold space around them, and the places that have marked them.
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40 Days / Sadhana
Forty short chapters across five practice cycles, twenty thousand words, six years in the making. Discipline, the body, transformation over time.
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On Colour
An active essay series on perception, emotion, and how colour shapes memory and experience.
Entry point: I Think in Blue →
Practice
I am a certified Kundalini yoga teacher. This practice is part of how I live and work. It grounds the body, sharpens attention, and creates a space to process what cannot always be understood intellectually. It is not separate from writing or investigations — it sustains both.
Work
My professional work focuses on investigations into international crimes and human rights violations, across different contexts. It involves documenting patterns of violence, working with testimonies, and contributing to processes of accountability.
For a detailed professional profile, see LinkedIn.
LinkedIn →Speaking
I give talks and take part in conversations on:
- international justice and investigative work
- Human Rights Council investigative bodies
- writing and witnessing
- women navigating institutional spaces
Past invitations include a lecture at KU Leuven.
If you'd like to invite me, you can write through the contact form below.
Contact
If something here moved, you can write. I read everything.