To quote Stephen King: “There’s no bitch on Earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”

In 1974, Juan Perón died just a year into his third term as President of Argentina, leaving his third wife, Isabel, in charge of the country. She lacked the skill and control necessary to lead, and that, coupled with severe economic problems, led to violence and uprisings from both sides of the political spectrum. Isabel allowed the military to declare a state of siege to ‘cleanse’ the population; their secret police force (the AAA) was then used to kidnap and murder ‘subversives’, for example social activists, intellectuals, workers’ unions.

The military, however, were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the government and so, on 24th March 1976, the army, navy, and air force seized total control of Argentina, enforcing a military dictatorship. The guerrilla groups that had sprung up against them during Isabel Perón’s government were the perfect excuse to continue the ‘cleanse’, claiming to be guardians of Christian values. Extreme violence broke out, the press was censored, and people — mostly young adults — soon began disappearing.

Despite much of the armed resistance against the ruling junta being crushed by the end of 1976, the ‘Dirty War’, as the junta termed this period, lasted until 1983, and an estimated 30,000 people vanished, though the official government figure is ‘just’ 11,000. They became known as desaparecidos, and the majority of them remain so today, with only a relative handful having been tracked down through the uncovering of mass graves. Some survived the torture and were later released, but these constitute a significant minority.

As stated, most of the desaparecidos were young, aged between twenty and thirty-five, though some were as young as thirteen, and others who were middle-aged and older. At first, no-one knew why or by whom these people were taken, and so relatives — mostly mothers, as in Argentine society women tended to stay home while men worked — went to the authorities in search of their children. They would visit police stations, government offices, military garrisons, but everywhere they went, they were told to go elsewhere.

Eventually, the women began to recognise each other, and so they began to talk. They shared stories of sons and daughters who had been pulled from their homes or classes or work, who they hadn’t heard from in weeks or months. Some of them had been sneered at by authorities, who told them their daughters had run off with a man or to become prostitutes; that their sons had fled the country to dodge military service. The mothers knew this was not true, so, in defiance of the strict prohibitions, fourteen women agreed to go to the Plaza de Mayo to demand an audience with de facto president Jorge Rafael Videla.

The women were led by Azucena Villaflor, whose son and his girlfriend were abducted. She said: “We will not achieve anything on our own. Why don’t we all go to the Plaza de Mayo? When they see we are many, Videla will have to see us.” *

The place was chosen as it was directly opposite the Casa Rosada, the president’s office. At the time, military law dictated that more than two people together in public was considered a meeting, and was therefore banned, so the fourteen mothers split into groups of two. On 30th April 1977, a Saturday, they walked around the Plaza, holding signs and photos of their missing children. The first ‘march’ had very little impact; they eventually settled on Thursdays at 3.30pm, and have kept this tradition up to the present day.

As the number of mothers joining the protests increased, so too did the danger. A number of founding members of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo disappeared themselves, including Azucena Villaflor, who went missing on 10th December 1977 after the Madres published an advertisement bearing the names of their children. Her body was recovered and identified in 2003, showing proof that she was a victim of one of many vuelos de la muerte (death flights) that were carried out during the time. These entailed prisoners being drugged, stripped, and thrown out of aeroplanes flying over the ocean.

Still, the women protested. Hebe de Bonafini, who had two sons and a daughter-in-law disappear, took over leadership of the Madres, and she still holds this position today. The Madres became nationally and internationally recognised; they started to wear white scarves embroidered with the names of the desaparecidos, symbolising both peace and their refusal to give up on their children. They have been described as ‘mourners-in-waiting’; lacking proof of both life and death, the Madres rejected the government’s mandate to presume all those missing as dead. This was most certainly the truth, but their refusal denied the government the opportunity to move on after the military dictatorship was removed in 1983. 

“One of the things that I simply will not do now is shut up. The women of my generation in Latin America have been taught that the man is always in charge and the woman is silent even in the face of injustice…Now I know that we have to speak out about the injustices publicly. If not, we are accomplices. I am going to denounce them publicly without fear. This is what I learned.”

María del Rosario de Cerruti, Madre de Plaza de Mayo whose son, Fernando, disappeared in 1976

Global human rights associations and governments, particularly the Swedish, declared their support for the Madres, and many of the women were able to go abroad and tell their stories. In Argentina, they were still being suppressed — journalists were unwilling to report on their actions after several of their own being abducted, and the Church refused to condemn the government’s brutality, though individual priests and nuns supported the Madres. 

Civilian government was restored in October 1983 and a report into the atrocities, entitled Nunca más (Never again), was written, but it did not fully investigate the military or their actions. Indeed, the nine leaders of the military junta were granted a blanket pardon, and all others involved were deemed to have just been following orders.

So the work of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo continues. Some of these mothers are also part of the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo — if the military abducted a pregnant woman, they would keep her alive until after the child was born before then murdering her. The babies were adopted out to families of military personnel, or to those who were friendly with the dictatorship.

As of June 2019, the Abuelas have succeeded in finding 130 grandchildren.

In 1986, the Madres split into two factions — the Association faction led by Bonafini, which focused on continuing the political work of their children, and the Founding Line faction, focused on legislation, recovering their children’s remains, and bringing their murderers to justice.

The Association announced in 2006 that they were ending their Marches of Resistance, but the Founding Line faction pledged to continue.

They say: “We don’t forget. We don’t forgive. We are still resisting.”

*Translation from Spanish mine: «Individualmente no vamos a conseguir nada. ¿Por qué no vamos todas a la Plaza de Mayo? Cuando vea que somos muchas, Videla tendrá que recibirnos»

Sources:

• Thornton, Sally Webb, ‘Grief Transformed: The Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo’, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 41.4 (2000), 279–89
• https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/texts/madres-de-plaza-de-mayo
• https://vamospanish.com/discover/madres-plaza-mayo-mothers-argentina/
• http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/contemporary-07.html