"DON'T STAY FALLEN", written by Federico Gallardo, is the story of Los Espartanos, a rugby team created by Eduardo “Coco” Oderigo who managed to change the lives of countless people thanks to sports, spirituality, education and formal work. This book provides life testimonies of Los Espartanos, the rugby team of Penitentiary Unit No 48 of San Martín, Province of Buenos Aires. They confront us with a reality: there are people who are condemned from the cradle to lead the life of abused dogs. Their childhoods are raw stories, postcards from hell itself.
What hurts more? Never having received a hug or being locked in a humid cell without clothes or food? Does a mother who abandons him weigh more, six stabs in the back for a piece of bread, or a drunken father brutally beating a child? How to survive all this without resentments? Is a change of mentality possible?
The rugby ball and praying the Rosary seem to be the shortcuts that prepare the ground-work to take the great leap into the void: ask for forgiveness, forgive, and forgive yourself. When that point of maturation is reached in each person's history, people are ready to take advantage of a new opportunity. Because you can always start over. And as Pope Francis taught us: “In the art of ascending the important thing is not not to fall, but not to stay fallen".
