Mothers as Agents of Political Change: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, a resident scholar at Brandeis University's Women's Studies Research Center Scholars Program and a contributor to Women's Voices for Change, is the author of "Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo," among other books. Here she discusses the history of the Mothers as well as their role as inspirational models of political activism.

Mothers marching in the Plaza de Mayo with cutouts of their "disappeared" sons. Photo by Gerardo Dell'Orto, 1990

Thirty years ago, a group of older women in Argentina banded together in defiance of a repressive military regime and also of traditional political behavior. The majority of these women were ordinary housewives who had never participated in politics. They were in their late 40s and much older. Some of them had not gone beyond grammar school. Yet they proved themselves a strong match for the junta.

The military junta that took power in 1976 suspended all political institutions and began what it referred to as "anti-subversive operations" to capture and interrogate all members of suspect organizations, their sympathizers, associates and anyone else who might oppose its rule. The government regarded leftist and reformers as a threat to Argentina's way of life and made their destruction one of its main goals. However, because the junta did not wish to incur international censure for its policies, it resorted to the deadly practice of disappearances. The state-sponsored terror was like the Nazi policy of Night and Fog, whereby members of the Resistance throughout occupied Europe were abducted and secretly transferred to Germany without a trace.

In what is now referred to as the Dirty War, thousands of gifted and idealistic young adults vanished into the 365 concentration camps scattered throughout Argentina. On the basis of the data they have gathered, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo claim that there are 30,000 los desaparecidos -- "the disappeared." There were also many cases of entire families who had disappeared and who had no one to testify on their behalf.

Susana Da Guidano, one of the Mothers, told me about her son's fate: "They stormed his apartment and beat him up in front of his wife and children and then they took him away. He never returned." He happened to be a well known nuclear physicist, but the letters that came pouring in from around the world on his behalf were of no avail.

Whole classes of medical students at the university disappeared. Many pregnant women who vanished into the concentration camps were kept alive until they gave birth. In a horrendous twist of fate, their babies were then adopted by members of the military whose wives were unable to have children.

What set the Mothers apart from other dissident groups was their bravery, their audacity and the manner in which they outwitted the junta at a time when many people sought refuge from their fear in the belief that if one remained quiet and focused one's attention on personal matters, nothing would happen.

Because so many journalists were disappeared, the only people who dared to publicly protest were the Mothers. In so doing, they risked their lives; indeed, their first leader and two other Mothers were disappeared and killed.

The Mothers first met outside the Ministry of Interior, where many of them were kept waiting for hours in their futile search for their "disappeared" children. They began to compare notes on their situation and to gather secretly in each other's homes and in some churches, arriving separately and at different times so as not to attract the attention of the ubiquitous security police. During the Dirty War, all public meetings were forbidden by the junta.

In April 1977, the Mothers decided to meet in the Plaza de Mayo right in front of the Presidential Palace. Their numbers soon swelled to the hundreds and included a network of Mothers in the interior provinces and support groups staffed by exiles and nationals throughout Western Europe. At a time when any opposition was banned and even friends and family members of people suspected to be opponents of the regime were being disappeared, the Mothers continued to demonstrate in the Plaza de Mayo every week.

At a meeting with the president of the junta to discuss the whereabouts of their children, they insisted, "You are not going to remove us from the Plaza until you tell us what happened to our children. Because you won't take responsibility for your actions, you are more cowardly than anyone."

The junta referred to the Mothers as Las Locas, or the Crazy Ones, thus equating political dissent with social deviance. In addition to threatening them physically, it deliberately ridiculed them as a tactic to isolate and weaken them and as an example to any group who might wish to oppose the regime. When the Junta blamed the disappearances on "nihilistic subversion," the Mothers called a press conference in the Plaza de Mayo to deny the statement and to blame the abductions on the government.

During this period they were quick to take the initiative when security forces sought to attack them. They would change the date of their marches at the last minute. They would join religious processions and talk to people about their cause. When the police arrested one of their members during a march, 60 mothers stampeded into the police station, shouting, "If you take one, you have to take us all."

Of course, the overwhelmed officers were only too happy to be rid of so many vociferous women.

The military junta collapsed in 1983 as a result of its defeat during the ill-fated Falklands War and growing popular disaffection. A transitional government was created and elections were scheduled for October 1983 to restore a constitutional government. That the transitional government persisted in harassing the Mothers with tear gas and night sticks as they marched in the Plaza was proof of the importance of their voice. As usual, they fought back with pointed statements.

Evel Aztarbe de Petrini in the Plaza de Mayo. Photo by Marguerite G. Bouvard, 1990

"Our peaceful movement and our denunciation of what happened is the reason why we have experienced such violent repression," they said. "If our voice was not as strong and profound, we would not have elicited such a reaction."

While the Mothers welcomed the return of a democracy, their years under the junta taught them that the Argentine people preferred to ignore unpleasant realities. They feared that in the euphoria that resulted from the junta's demise, the fate of their children would either be forgotten or become a bargaining chip in the adjustment of interests. Their fears proved justified.

By this time the Mothers had not only acquired political sophistication but had formulated a vision of Argentina that would pit them against the exigencies of the new regime, a fragile democracy still embattled by a powerful military. Many human rights groups felt that it was necessary to suspend criticism of the government's policies in order to ensure its survival and felt that too much pressure on the military would cause it to revolt and attempt to retake power.

From the Mothers' perspective, insufficient pressure on the military would create the same result. Because of this stand, the Mothers were widely considered as difficult, intransigent women.

For instance, when President Raul Alfonsin urged everyone to "heal the wounds" and move on, the Mothers were in the Plaza with their banners and thousands of followers. "There will be no healing of wounds because if the wounds still bleed, there will be no forgetting." They also chanted this slogan in their weekly marches in the Plaza: "Alfonsin has the government, the military has the power."

It was not long before the government began to malign the Mothers by circulating rumors about them and by publicly criticizing them. In response, the Mothers came up with searing slogans of their own, a new one every year. In addition to enduring verbal harassment from the media and government officials, the Mothers also suffered many instances of violence that they traced to the president's inner circle.

In fact, the Mothers always linked the continual death threats they received throughout the 1980s and 1990s to the security forces and, ultimately, the government. They publicly noted that both the robberies of their computers and the trashing of their office on Yrigoyen street always came shortly after President Saul Menem, who succeeded President Alfonsin, criticized them.

The Mothers continued to refuse to allow the government to dominate the political dialogue. Each year, as part of their 24-hour march on Human Rights Day, they unveiled their new slogan intended both to defy the government and empower their followers. After a failed military coup in 1991, they adopted the slogan To Resist is to Combat, teaching their followers and the people that power lies in those who oppose military force rather than in those who resort to it.

Defying the government under President Menem was risky business in Argentina. The executive has traditionally dominated the Congress in Argentina. President Menem made the presidential system even stronger by replacing three-fourths of the Supreme Court justices and by passing a large number of measures by decree, completely circumventing the Congress. When a judge spoke out against the practice of torturing criminals, President Menem dismissed him. It was not until the current president, Nestor Kirchner, came to power that the death threats and harassment of the Mothers ended.

According to a New York Times story from March 25, 2006, the National Security Archive, a private research group based in Washington, has made public newly declassified U. S. government cables and transcripts relating to the 1976 coup. The documents indicate that when a deputy warned Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger "to expect a fair amount of repression and bloodshed" during the coup, he was unfazed and ordered American support of the junta. "I do want to encourage them," he said.

While the Carter Administration expressed concern for the situation in Argentina and welcomed the Mothers to the United States, his successors took another tack. President Ronald Reagan supported the junta, and his representative to the United Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, claimed, "We can work with this government." It is not surprising that the Mothers take a dim view of the United States.

Today, the Mothers are in late 70s and 80s. Many of them struggle with poverty and ill health. Although their numbers have dwindled, they continue to be active and to speak out. They march with their children and grandchildren, many of whom are children of the disappeared. The Mothers continue fighting for their cause and for a more just and egalitarian society. They have established a university to train people in human rights and they have also created a number of centers in slum areas to teach and support adolescent children at risk.

But the Mothers have set a new standard for human rights work. They refuse to align themselves with a political party. They identify themselves as a collective, claiming that they have socialized maternity, meaning the disappeared child of one is the child of all of the Mothers.

As one Mother recently explained, "We have to think of the children whose parents also disappeared and have nobody to work on their behalf." Therefore, they continue marching in the Plaza with their white shawls, but their shawls do not bear the name of their disappeared children.

They have left an important legacy, transforming political style by speaking truth to power and fashioning the political dialogue, by taking space in the streets and fanning out throughout the country on behalf of political change. Their achievement has particular resonance for the current situation in the United States, where our government has framed the debate about Social Security, the Iraq war and the state of the environment.

When President Bill Clinton left office, the Social Security funds were intact. These funds have been raided by the Bush Administration, and the debate has been framed so that the issue is not whether to replenish Social Security, but rather when and how to dismantle it in favor of private retirement arrangements, something only the wealthy can afford.

People who openly oppose the Iraq war are castigated as unpatriotic. And the top scientist at NASA, Dr. James E. Hansen, who has been working on global warming (the official terminology is "climate change," which sounds less threatening) was forbidden to speak about his findings in public.

The Mothers knew the importance of keeping problems in the public consciousness and that they would have to actively take the initiative in order to do so. When denied access to the media, they began publishing their own newspaper. In fact, each issue of their monthly newspaper had a back page devoted to what they termed their "Gallery of Oppressors," a member of the military responsible for the disappearances and the tortures. In 1999, they published a book of these pages along with Pagina Doce, (Page 12), an important newspaper. The book sold out immediately and went through several printings.

They also inspired a group of older women in East Los Angeles in the mid 1980s who called themselves The Mothers of East Los Angeles. Using the Mothers' tactics of marching and speaking out, they prevented the governor of that state from placing an incinerator, a prison and an oil pipe in their already impoverished and beleaguered neighborhood.

In 1996, the Mothers created an International Gathering of Mothers in Struggle that brought together Mothers from Israel and Palestine, Serbia and Croatia, Brazilian Mothers of the Disappeared, Mothers from Kiev who opposed the conscription of their sons and Mothers whose children suffered from cancer because of the accident at Chernobyl, to name just a few. They were creating a united nations of beleaguered women. They had always had an international presence, thanks to their support groups in Western Europe, and with these conferences they reached out to women around the world.

Twenty four years after the fall of the junta, the Mothers continue their activity unabated, because even though public opinion around the world believes that Argentina has become a democracy, some members of the military and of the security police continue to violate the rights of its citizens, although on a small scale. Even under the government of Nestor Kirchner that came to power with a promise to address the crimes of the military, there have been a few disappearances of witnesses to the crimes under the junta.

In the spring of 2006, it was discovered that the naval intelligence agency continued spying on public officials, journalists and political leaders - including the president. As a result, all naval intelligences activities were suspended and the director fired pending a complete investigation. The Mothers marched in protest.

In 2004, President Kirchner began the process of establishing a museum in the Naval Mechanics School, the site of a former concentration camp and many of that era's worst abuses. As usual, the Mothers were not in agreement with the government's decision.

Hebe de Bonafini, their outspoken leader, said, "Museums mark the end of a story and we haven't reached that point in Argentina yet. It is much too soon to be setting up a museum, because the historical events in question are too recent."

Mercedes Merono, one of the Mothers, recently concluded, "We still do not know who took our children and what became of them, so our struggle is not over."

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Read more of Marguerite Guzman Bouvard's poems and essays at Women's Voices for Change.