Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
From WolfWikis
Contents |
Historical Background: The Desaparecidos
- President Peron died in 1974 and his wife Isabel Peron took over the government.
- A military junta organized a coup and removed her from office.
- After the military attack, the "Junta", constituted by Teniente General Jorge Rafael Videla, Almirante Emilio Eduardo Massera, and Brigadier Orlando Ramón Agosti, took over the government on March 24th 1976.
- The purpose of the military attack was to incorporate Argentina to the capitalist globalization process.
- General Videla clamed that "the nation would be governed by the values and morality of Christianity, patriotism and the family."(Jo Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared). He said that to achieve the "common good" it was required to resolve conflicts and protect the human rights of all the members of the society. The junta, however, thought that in order for their politics to succeed it was necessary to discipline social movements through terror; it maintained its power by suppressing domestic subversives or anyone who they believed was challenging their authority. This is why the government started using concentration or “extermination” camps.
- There were around 30 000 victims or "disappeared".
Why they started
The Victims
Given that the government had started to use “undeclared and unavowed methods of terror, repression, suspicion, torture, disappearance, and murder” to put down the opposition (Marjorie Agosin), many people (labor union members, journalists, and university activists at first, and then just random victims) started to disappear, leaving no trace behind. Thirty percent of the people who disappeared were workers, twenty-one percent were students, ten percent were professionals and the rest (thirty-nine percent) were just people who “happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time” (Marjorie Agosin) teenagers, housewives and babies included. The assigned officers mistreated two groups more than the others: women and Jews. One fourth of the disappeared were women, and ten percent of those women were pregnant at the time of their arrest. In her book, Marjorie Agosin depicted the abuses to women when she wrote: “because they were women, they were subjected to rape and other violations as well as torture.” (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo)
The Mothers
The mothers of these people would go to every police station they could find asking for their loved ones. The only answers they got were insults. The officials would tell them that the disappearances were their fault, that they were the ones who had raised subversive children.
It is hard to say when the mothers stared taking action. It was something that happened little by little, one thing followed the other. They could not find a place to meet at first. There was a lot of security so they tried using several accessories to recognize each other on the street, because they didn’t really know each other. They would sometimes meet in churches, but when they found out that they were mothers, they would not let them in. So they started meeting at the plaza. They were very few at first. They would sit at the benches and knit or stand in small groups while talking, but the security guards always recognized them and told them to move. So they started walking around the plaza, in groups of two. Everything was done very secretly.
Later they decided to take “direct action”. They decided to make it public and march in the plaza. There was a lot of surveillance, but they did not care. Many mothers disappeared too, but the rest kept marching, getting stronger every day. People would join them, even if they were not mothers, they were there to support the movement and demand justice.
The media and the government criticized them. They called them “ las locas de la Plaza de Mayo” or the crazy ladies of the Plaza de Mayo, to sabotage their credibility and “keep them in their places” (Marguerite Guzman Bouvard). The government condemned them as being violent and angry.
Their Drive
Love and anger were the mother’s motivations. Love for their loved ones, their children, and love for making society more just. Their hate and pain was what made them take on political action. They said that suppressing their anger would be hypocritical and they would rather use that anger to engage in something that would make people aware of their activities and visions.
Marguerite Guzman Bouvard explains that the mothers did not want to look like “helpless victims but rather active agents.” This meant that they not only wanted to search for their children but also demand that the ones responsible for the junta’s crimes be brought to justice.
Given that they were in a ‘’machista’’ society, the mothers had to “overcome psychological, social, and political barriers” that kept them at home. Many mothers were concerned about what other people might think of them if they marched.
After all these years the mothers still meet at the Plaza every Thursday, demanding justice and their chance to speak to society.
Why they still march
As mentioned before, up until today, the mothers keep marching every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo. They demand that the government gives them the truth about where their children are. They support each other.
One of the mothers interviewed by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard commented “I don’t know if people can understand that despite the pain and horror I have lived through, I can be happy. I am happy that people listen to me and understand how a woman whose children have been snatched form her can become a lion, that we can all do it. I believe that women have a great destiny. We have a lot to do in this world.” (Revolutionizing Motherhood) This shows how the mothers not only demand to get what they long for the most, but they want to demonstrate everyone in a very machista society that women are not weak, they are capable of great things.
Renee Epelbaum was one of the many mothers whose children disappeared and marched the Plaza de Mayo. In the book by Marjorie Agosin, she declared that “the best way to remember the disappeared is to dedicate yourself to the struggle for human rights, to refuse to tolerate injustice or to allow them to strip us of our dignity, because when people torture, they violate human dignity…as long as we don’t know where the bodies are, we have the same right to feed the illusion that perhaps…perhaps they are still alive.” (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) Her statement proves that mothers are not only interested in having justice for their own children, but justice for all. They demand respect towards human rights, not only during and after the dirty war but in the present society and the rest of the world.
Bibliography
- Argentina Dirty War 1976 - 1983: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/argentina.htm: This website had some information of the dirty war. It had the most important facts and it was very clear and easy to understand.
- El Otriba [1] (Spanish): This also provided me with very useful information about the desaparecidos and the dirty war in Argentina.
- Matilde Mellibovsky. Circle of Life Over Death. Translated by Maria and Matthew Proser. This book had both information about the mothers and several testimonies. The book was written by one of the mothers and it is very interesting to see how they felt and their view of things.It's a very interesting book, I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topc.
- Jo Fisher. Mothers of the Disappeared. This book had a lot of history involving the ditry war and the times before the Junta took over. It is mostly about the testimonies and opinions of different mothers.
- Marguerite Guzman Bouvard. Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. This book was also written by one of the mothers. She showed every aspect of the mothers, so it also shows her point of view.
- Marjorie Agosin. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.She interviews and narrates the history of two mothers, Reneé and Ester. She also gives a lot of useful background information about the dirty war and the disappeared.