The name Bianca Jagger usually conjures up images of an exotic-looking woman in a white '70s pantsuit getting married to the ultimate rock star. Bianca is synonymous with rock 'n' roll decadence due to her rocky marriage to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, which was fraught with scandal.
Yet, Bianca is so much more than a former rock 'n' roll wife. She is an avid activist and humanitarian who fights for human rights, social justice and environmental protection in her native home of Nicaragua and around the world.
Bianca Jagger was born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias on May 2, 1945 in Managua, Nicaragua. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and her mother raised Bianca and her siblings on her own. As a child, Bianca saw the US-backed military rule of the dictatorial Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua for almost 50 years until 1979, according to Right Livelihood.org.
Jagger received a scholarship when she was 16 to study political science in France, which is where she met Mick Jagger. She met the iconic rock 'n' roller at a Rolling Stones concert after-party in September 1970. She married Mick a year later, and they were married until 1979. Although she still engaged in charitable work during her marriage, she was known for being a fixture in the New York club scene in the 1970s and '80s, and had friends such as iconic pop artist Andy Warhol. She also worked briefly as an actress.
Mick and Bianca's very public split was due to Mick's well-known philandering, particularly his affair with Texan model Jerry Hall, whom Jagger later married. Bianca had one daughter with Mick, Jade, who is now 41.
Bianca Jagger's interest in political and humanitarian activism came to the fore when she returned to Managua in 1972. She went back to locate her parents after a deadly earthquake left 10,000 dead. She saw that the Somoza regime was profiting from the tragedy, pocketing the money that was sent to Nicaragua to aid the victims of the disaster. Witnessing such a grave injustice inspired Jagger to campaign for social, economic and humanitarian rights.
In 1981, Jagger took part in a U.S. congressional fact-finding mission at a UN refugee camp in Honduras. When on the mission, an armed Salvadorian death squad stormed into the camp and abducted 40 refugees. Jagger and the other fact-finders chased them down, armed only with cameras, and said to them, "You would have to kill us all or we will denounce your crime to the world." Amazingly, the death squad released the captives.
In the 1990s Jagger continued her remarkable work as a humanitarian, and advocated for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, according to Right Livelihood.org. Jagger campaigned to save the tropical rainforest home of the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua, which the government was trying to sell for logging rights to a Taiwanese company. She also helped defend the ancestral lands of the Yanomami people in Brazil against gold miners, and worked with other environmental groups against the clearing of Amazon rainforests for soybean plantations.
Jagger also engaged in a great deal of humanitarian work in highly volatile areas. She helped evacuate 22 children from war-torn Bosnia. Mohamed Ribic, an 8-year-old Bosnian boy, lived with Jagger for a year after undergoing a heart operation before he was returned to his parents. In 1993, Jagger visited Yugoslavia to speak out against the rape of Bosnian women by Serbian military forces, who were carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign. She advocated to stop the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and to hold the war criminals accountable for their crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). She also reported on war crimes against Albanians in Kosovo.
She has gone on fact-finding missions to Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Bosnia, Kosovo, Zambia, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Jagger also engages in political activism. Jagger fights to abolish the death penalty in the U.S. She received the Abolitionist of the Year Award in 1996 by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. She also has written many articles and given lectures about her stance on the controversial topic.
Additionally, Jagger has worked for Amnesty International to stop torture and violence against women.
Jagger was also part of a fact-finding mission in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2003 and 2004 in order to help fight ChevronTexaco's devastation of the rainforest. ChevronTexaco dumped 50 percent more oil into the rainforest than what was spilled during the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The oil and toxic waste dumped into the environment contaminated the drinking water in the Oriente Region, which slowly poisoned the residents. Jagger confronted ChevronTexaco's CEO in 2004.
"None of my past experiences as a human rights' campaigner prepared me for the environmental devastation I witnessed in the provinces of Orellana y Sucumbios," Jagger said. "Nor was I prepared for the sad stories of human suffering and the heightened incidents of cancer and spontaneous abortions."
In June 2004, Jagger received the World Achievement Award from former Russian President Gorbachev for her commitment to human rights, economic justice and environmental protection.
The activist is a member of the Leadership Council for Amnesty International USA, the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch-America, the Coalition for International Justice and others. She has also written for the The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Guardian and a host of other publications.
Jagger continues to advocate for the human rights of people in her native Nicaragua, the United States and around the world.
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