Decades of Searching: The Mothers and Grandmothes of The Plaza de Mayo Movement
Decades of Searching
The Mothers and Grandmothes of The Plaza
de Mayo Movement
A History Drenched in the Blood of the Innocent: Introduction
“On March 24, 1976,
three commanding officers of the armed forces—General
Jorge Rafael Videla of the army, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera of the
navy, and Brigadier Ramón Agosti of the air force—staged a successful coup and
adopted the Statute for the Process of National Reorganization, later referred
to as the Proceso, that gave it power to govern.”[1]The
act of the Statute for the Process of National Reorganization, was in response
due to “the economic chaos and the lack of government political control of the
country, by 1975 terrorist attacks began to rise.”[2]
Ousting current president and the administration of Isabel Peron, who had taken
over after her husband’s death in 1974. The coup d'état, ended in the arrest of the Peronist
government, but what came from this overthrown government would be something
that would haunt the families of those who would be taken in the years
afterwards.
When General Jorge Rafael Videla
came into power on March 24, 1976, those who had helped him had argued that
they were at war with those who were against them. The new government saw
themselves “saw itself as the natural ruling caste of Argentina,”[3]
those who would guard what Argentina and its people would value. Any leftist
organization was seen as a threat, even though by this time the subversives and
the guerrillas that had been fighting against them, had long been defeated.
“Videla and his
colleagues decided that as their enemies were not a real army, any tactics were
legitimate against them, so they declared that this was a “dirty war”, under
which the armed forces could torture and kill without any respect for legality,
with no obligation to reveal to anyone what they were doing.”[4]
They acknowleged that their goal was a just one, and that they were
“preserving the God-given natural order of harmony, unity and obedience by
eliminating subversion, which it equated with pure evil. It portrayed its
efforts as a religious crusade—a Holy War that subordinated any concerns of due
process or human rights.”[5]
This gave them the right in their minds to go after anyone who was subversive
to their cause. Their actual goal was to get rid of any leftist that would
oppose them and attempt to take them out of power. Videla admitted to this more
than twenty years after he had taken over the Argentine government.
During this time
thousands of Argentinean citizens began to disappear, they had had some ties to
the leftist and the guerillas that had fought before Videla took power over the
country. These men and women had become the disappeared, they had been picked
up at home, at work, in train stations, even when they no longer had ties to
the leftist movements. They were mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, they
were human beings who had once believed in making their country a better place.
To Videla they were a threat that needed to be neutralized, and he made certain
that they would never have the power to go against him.
“A total of 364 secret
detention centres were used between 1976 and 1978 to receive the thousands of
“disappeared”, who were routinely tortured and killed, their bodies disposed of
in mass graves, or thrown out of planes at night over the River Plate.
Questioned by the press, Videla and the others insisted that they must have
joined the guerrilla or gone abroad. Only one case of habeas corpus was ever
admitted, and Videla refused to intercede even on behalf of relatives or the
children of friends who were caught up in the violence.”[6]
The total number is disappeared is in the tens of thousands, bodies never
to be recovered, what’s left behind are families. Stories of children who were
taken away the moment they were born, some raised by the men who killed their
mothers. Those children only now finding out the truth about their lives, and
their families.
From this came a
non-violent movement, of mothers searching for their sons and daughters,
grandmothers searching for their grandchildren. The Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo Movement began not as a march but as a small group of women who were
asking about the disappearances of their children. A movement that grew as the
numbers of disappeared grew. Together they had created a way to deal with the
knowledge that they many never find their loved ones ever again. As well as a
way to face the government that had taken away their children without thinking
of the consequences of their actions.
Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo: A Movement for Truth and Justice
A mother is someone who
gives a child life, they’re there for you, they protect you and care for you.
For the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the meaning took on a completely
different meaning, they had once been housewives in a society where men got
educations and women took care of the house. When General Jorge Rafael Videla
took over the government and instilled fear in the people by taking political
activist these mothers had become something more than housewives, they were
childless mothers. Their children had been taken from them, many of which would
die as a part of Videla’s dirty war campaign to rid the country of leftist who
would oppose his regime.
The movement began on
April 13th of 1977 when Azucena
Villaflor, Juana Pargament, Maria Rosario, and Maria Adela as well as several
others had gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, armed with only their identification
cards. “In a surge of emotion and determination that followed their decision,
they had settled on a day when they were all free, a Saturday.”[7] They
hadn’t realized that on the day they had chosen the shops would be closed and
there would be no one around to see them. They decided on a different day to
meet, a week later, as they found themselves in front of the government while
working against the regime that had taken their children. While some didn’t
wish to participate in the act, many others had soon joined them, including Nora
Cortiñas who had lost her son just days before the first meeting. These women
demaned answers, showing up at the ministry or walking around the Plaza de
Mayo.
Villaflor, who had been
searching for her own disappeared child along with several other mothers of the
movement had also become one of the disappeared. The non-violent movement had
sparked something greater and the Videla government had taken steps to try and
discourage the mothers from continuing to march, including getting rid of
founding members. As more and more people disappeared the mothers grew in size,
the number of those who had been disappeared goes into the tens of thousands as
Videla’s regime continued. The mothers continued to march, they had lost so
much and had wanted answers. For some of these mothers, other family members
would be taken, some of which were lucky enough to get out but not without long
term emotional scars of their captivity.
It wasn’t until
Argentina hosted the World Cup where the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were able
to gain international recognition. It had now become a Human Rights question,
which had put the government of Argentina at the forefront of what was
happening. The Dirty War had now been broadcasted to the world all because of a
group of mothers in white headscarves looking for their disappeared children.
In the years since the government had been overthrown the mothers continued
their quest for answers. Nicolas Robertson, an Assitant of Public Affairs
Officer for the Embassy in Buenos Aires said that
“The government dealt
with the disappeared and the stolen children, but it was only one of many
issues. I remember that the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo were in President
Alfonsin’s office harassing him about something and they said he should devote
all his time to resolving the cases of the disappeared. He replied that there
was a country to run, and there were other issues to deal with as well.”[8]
The mothers had been fearful during this period of how the Argentine
government would handle the trials of those involved in the disappearances and
deaths of so many citizens. The new government had planned for military courts
to handle the trials but the Mothers wanted the trials to happen within a
civilian court. The fear was that the trials wouldn’t be fair in the new
government since many of the old military officers were still involved.
When Videla was finally
tried after the end of his time in the government, he was “convicted of direct
responsibility in 66 murders, 306 kidnappings, 93 cases of torture and four of
theft. Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of his general’s rank
and civilian rights.” [9]
Videla wouldn’t spend much time in prison, he had been pardoned when Peronist
Carlos Menem won in 1989, his crimes from his time in power would no longer
have any clout in court. Videla would be retried later on for the disappearances
of five children who had been taken from their mothers at childbirth and given
to others, some of which had been his own officers. The number of kidnapped
children would rise over the years to nearly five hundred, many who have yet to
be identified.
Videla would die in
prison of natural causes after being tried for deaths from the coup that put
him in power as well as a sixteen-year trial for the kidnapped children. For
the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo movements, their journey would
only grow from the moment he had been taken out of power. For those who had yet
to find out what happened to their sons they would continue to march on, for
those who had found out that their daughters had given birth to a child their
journey would become one of trying to find their grandchildren. The mothers
refused to stay quiet, to let the government silence them, they march on with
their white headscarves and the pictures of their children as if they’re
shaming the government for attempting to hide Videla’s dirty little secret.
This is paper follows
the story of three women, they’re mothers, grandmothers, and activist. They
refuse to let the history of their plight get washed away, they refuse to let
the government hide the truth of their disappeared children. Armed with a
photo, a white headscarf, and their will they all found a way to let their
voices ring out and continue to make sure that the world doesn’t forget what
happened to their disappeared children.
Nora Cortiñas: Founding Member, Psychologist, Mother
Nora Cortiñas is a woman on
a mission, one that had started over forty years ago when her son Gustavo went
missing on a cold April morning. “He was 24 years old with a wife and baby son.
He was disappeared on 15 April 1977.”[10]
Cortiñas told Mable Bellucci back in 1999 during an interview. Before he son
had become one of Argentina’s disappeared, Cortiñas had been a house wife with
two children, her husband working for the ministry while she stayed at home
teaching dressmaking to young girls. She had married young, and her husband had
wanted her to be a traditional housewife. After the disappearance of her son, Cortiñas
would become more than just a traditional housewife, she would become a part of
a movement that would transform the history of Argentina.
Carlos Gustavo Cortiñas
had been twenty-four at the time he had vanished, he was a husband to Ana, a
father to Damian, he worked at the Ministry of Economy and was a student at the
University of Buenos Aires. When he was younger he had been an activist, “he
had once also been a supporter of the leftist Monteneros group – albeit without
participating in its guerrilla activities.”[11]
He wasn’t a violent person and at the time of his disappearance he had been
active in politics in a long time, “he disagreed with the leadership”[12].
The only evidence of his disappearance was when the military came to his home
to question his wife, interrogating her and checking her story to see if it had
matched Gustavo’s and when they had been satisfied they left them behind.
The journey to find her son had started small, writing
letters, going to the police, the courts, talking to journalist, just trying to
find her son. What Cortiñas herself wanted was the truth about what had
happened to her son, a body to bury, and a chance to say goodbye.
“Losing a child is
always a tragedy, but there needs to be some sort of process so that the person
experiencing the loss doesn’t remain in a labyrinth, and is able to help others
in the same situation. The truth is, it is best not to search alone. It used to
be that mourning was observed privately, at home. Women used to shut their pain
inside, and they became prisoners of their own anguish. They resigned
themselves to their loss.”[13]
For Cortiñas, losing her son had awoken a part inside of her, one that
wanted nothing more than to know what had happened. It consumed her, and when
the government said nothing and gave her no hope of finding her boy she decided
to find others who would listen. After tireless searches she was told by her
brother-in-law about a group of mothers gathering at the Plaza de Mayo wanting
to know the same thing she had wanted to know. Where were their children?
When Cortiñas had begun
her quest to find her child she had feared for the life of her family, as well
as herself. She feared that her husband would say the wrong thing at his job
which had been taken over by the military. But there was one thing that she was
certain of, no one was going to help her find her disappeared son. So, when she
had heard of the mothers gathering she decided to join them. “Then I began
going to Plaza de Mayo, and there I met Azucena, Maria Vela, Maria Rosario, and
Juanita.”[14]
This is when everything changed, she had found those who were going through the
same situation, they had all lost sons or daughters in a similar fashion and
they all wanted answers or a body to grieve over and bury.
“All these cases have
something in common – we were mothers and we have lost children. But there are
also differences – if there is no body, there can be no mourning. We are left
without knowing what happened to the body that has been denied to us. Without
the body, we cannot process the death and have a proper burial. The death has
happened and not happened. The anguish has happened and not happened. The
anguish becomes a litany of unanswered questions. The tragedy isn’t over. We
question ourselves all the time. Our children are not dead, they are
disappeared.”[15]
By the time she had met the other mothers, Cortiñas had already begun to
neglect her other duties as a housewife, she had neglected her other son
because she had wanted nothing more than to find Gustavo. She was in mourning
without someone to mourn, and she was on a mission to find her missing son. She
had begun meeting the other mothers, marching around the Plaza de Mayo, they
had wanted answers, they wanted their children. This was a mission laced with
fear, not from her but from others, her husband feared for her life, the police
feared her activism.
“And then all that
fear … they would phone and threaten me, they would say that they were going to
arrest me, they mistreated me. As I’m an extrovert, when I went to the police
station I was seen as some kind of leader, so the threats were harsher. Later, they
would phone my home and repeat the threats. They wrote my name, Nora Cortiñas,
on my neighborhood walls followed by the words: “terrorist mother.”[16]
Unlike Cortiñas, her husband couldn’t do anything he couldn’t say
anything, he had a job and needed to provide for his family. He had wanted a
traditional housewife and instead got a political one. He feared for her
safety, that they would take her as well, but Cortiñas knew that if her husband
was bound by keeping his family taken care of she was determined to fight for
the truth. Cortiñas, armed with her white headscarf and a group of women who
had suffered the same plight the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement began.
Even when three of the founding members had become a part of the disappeared, Cortiñas
continued. She wasn’t afraid of being taken, she had hope of finding her son
alive. “That kind of suffering didn’t make us fearful, didn’t make us afraid,
even when the mothers themselves were disappeared. In a sense it
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became the source of our courage and our capacity to continue to look for our children.”[17]
Now over forty years later, Cortiñas
is a human rights activist, she still marches in search of her son even though
he has been gone for so long. She travels the world telling her story of the
disappearances, of the disappeared, and of her struggle. Stressing the
importance of the memories of the people of a country, and how they shape the
history of the country. Cortiñas knows that people live through moments
differently, she learned this from the other mothers who have stood by her side
over the years. Memories leave a trace on the person’s mind,
“I think a person’s
memory of a situation leaves a trace. Sometimes, the same moment is experienced
and remembered differently. We have recently written a book, as a sort of test,
with other Mothers, and we narrated memories individually. We asked about
different situations and each Mother shared her own memories. In some cases,
memories didn’t match, each of us experienced it differently, proving that
memory is a state of mind, a moment, an experience, and each person remembers
differently but you create a collective memory. So, you see that the memory is
different but is both a moment in someone’s life and a moment in the history of
a society.”[18]
The collective memory for Cortiñas is what creates the history of her
nation, as they lived through new governments, dictatorships, and the
disappearances of those they love. She believes in the future of Argentina, of
the children growing up in the country today who have been taught the history
of their plight, who grow up not wanting to live through what history has
taught them. Even as she continues to march with a photo of her son around her
neck and his name stitched into her headscarf, she wants the memory of their
movement to continue to change the world.
Sara Rus: A Survivor, an Activist, A Mother
Sara Laskier Rus would
live her life knowing tragedies and atrocities that many couldn’t begin to
imagine. Rus was born in Lodz, Poland in 1927, her parents were German
immigrants, they were also Jewish Then on September 1, 1939, when Rus was
twelve years old the Nazi’s would invade Poland the world was at the beginning
of the second World War. Rus remembers the moment the Nazi soldiers first
raided her home, they noticed a small violin, Rus had started playing the
violin without sheet music only learning it from listening. The soldiers asked
who it had belonged to and when he learned it belonged to the twelve-year-old
girl “He grabs it, bangs it against the table and destroys it,” she remembers
the moment saying “That was the first visit of the Nazis that I remember. The
first time they hurt me.”[19]
Her family was moved into the Lodz ghetto, “The Jews of Lodz formed the second
largest Jewish community in prewar Poland, after Warsaw.”[20]
Rus, her family and 160,000 Jews were moved into a small section of Lodz
isolating them with fences and barbed wire.
While there Rus would
learn about loss first hand as her mother had given birth to her baby brother,
who would die three months later from malnutrition, and again when her mother
gave birth a second time, as the Nazi soldiers murdered the child right after
it had been born. She would also learn to love when she met and fell in love
with Bernado, “a young man her father invited to dinner one night, despite
their more than 10-year age difference.”[21]
There the two made plans for their future, planning to move to Buenos Aires if
they survived the war. Rus would be separated from the man she loved as her
family was moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the second of the three Auschwitz
concentration camps, the one where Rus found herself was also an extermination
camp. The camp would be the site of an estimated 1.3 million deaths[22],
and Rus had found herself in the middle of it. Her father “was sent to the gas
chamber straight from selection on the unloading ramp.”[23]
Rus and her mother would be separated, Rus would be sent to the work line on
the left, her mother would be sent to right line to her death. Rus remembers
that day saying,
“They put it on one side and me on the other. In my house we spoke German and when I see that I am without
my mother ... I dared to approach an SS with a whip that was in the middle of
the square. The people looked at me. I thought they were going to kill me. He looks at me and says 'how do you dare approach'. I said in German 'why did you get my mother?'”[24]
Rus and her mother were both spared that day, but
they knew where they were and what was happening, they knew that whoever was
there was destined for death. She worked hard until she could no longer move
after an injury, they thought that she had done it on purpose and that would
have been the end of her life but she continued on and survived.
When
the war ended in 1945, Rus was sent to her death with the rest of the others
she had worked with but they had been liberated before they could have been
killed. Rus remembers the soldiers as they were leaving, asking the Jewish
survivors if they wanted to go with them, the Americans were coming by this
point. Rus would once again find Bernardo who had also survived, the two would
marry and move in together along with Rus’s mother. While living in a refugee
camp the three made plans to move to Buenos Aires, they had family who had
moved there during the war. The family “emigrated via Paraguay to
Argentina,”[25]
they had gotten into the country by crossing a river into Formosa, Argentina,
since Perón had banned Jewish immigrants from entering the country at the time.
Bernardo and Sara had fought to stay in the country by sending letters to Perón
wife “asking for clemency as refugees.”[26]
When they had finally gain clemency, the family settled
in Buenos Aires like they had planned long before, while they were in the Lodz
Ghetto where they had first met. Five years after surviving the horrors of
World War II, Rus gave birth to her son Daniel, and later her daughter Natalia.
“We cared about giving our children everything we never had,”[27]
she had said in an interview as she thought back to this time. Rus would have
the chance to be a mother and raise her children alongside the man she loved
while surrounded by the only family she had left after living through the
horror of the Holocaust.
Thirty-two years later, the Rus family would have to
live through another tragedy, but this time there was no intervention, there
was no one there to help them. The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo had already
started marching looking for their disappeared children when Daniel
disappeared. At the time of his disappearance Daniel had been working on his
thesis, his father urging him to leave Argentina as the disappearances begun,
but Daniel didn’t leave
“After Daniel
disappeared, Sara and Bernardo traveled to Washington, D.C.; they also wrote
letters to then-military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, the pope, the United
Nations, and even the German foreign ministry, but received no information.
Sara began marching weekly with the Mothers, wearing a headscarf embroidered
with her son’s name.”[28]
There was no one to help them except the other mothers, they all knew the
same tragedy, the same loss, they searched for answers together. “Waiting in
lines in various institutions in various ministries, I got to know people that
were in the same situation as I was, I knew that I wasn’t the only one.”[29]
What they wanted were answers, many of them knowing that their children might
never return to them. The couple never stopped looking for answers. Bernardo
died a year after the country became democratic, and Rus was left behind with
her only living child still searching for answers on the one that had vanished.
In the decades since,
Rus has given up on finding any word on her son, instead like many of the other
mothers, she became an activist traveling the world educating people on the
horrors that she had lived through and speaking on the disappearance of her
son. Rus doesn’t deny what had happened in Argentina with the disappeared, it’s
a part of her history, one that is entwined in tragedy. She looks for hope even
when life had taken so much from her. Rus had said that “The Argentine military
took lessons from the Nazis,”[30]
and as someone who had survived the Nazi regime she understands what it means
to continue to hope for better. She has her family, who loves her, the friends
she has made over the years, and the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She knows
that as long as she has the will to fight she will continue to do so, she will
continue to look for the truth and to educate others.
Estela Barnes de Carlotto: Leader, Mother, Grandmother
The significance of a missing
child is something that has haunted many of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
movement. For some the knowledge that there was something more sinister at work
made the mothers worry even more, because for some their missing daughters had
been pregnant when they had been abducted and the children of those disappeared
women would come face to face with the true history of their lives later on.
That is where the story of Estela Barnes de Carlotto begins and ends, her
daughter had been taken when she was twenty-two years old when she disappeared
on November 26, 1977. Months after the movement had begun, but for Carlotto,
her struggle would be one that would continue on like none she would have
believed.
Laura had been a student
at the University of La Plata, like so many of the disappeared. Not only had
Carlotto’s daughter been disappeared, but her husband had been taken because
when they had been looking for Laura. “He was savagely tortured, went missing
for 25 days and with the ensuing kidnapping and murder of Laura, it scarred his
life,”[31]
Carlotto said of her husband in an interview. During his time at the hands of
those who would disappear many more, Carlotto was told that if she wanted her
husband back she would have had to pay a ransom. She was told that he would be
killed if she hadn’t paid the money before the changing of the guard on a
specific day. When he had finally been released he was in a terrible state due
to his diabetes.
After she had gotten her
husband back Carlotto had begun the journey to find her daughter, contacting
bishops, heads of state anyone who would help her in her search. After one
conversation with a military officer who had told her that if her daughter had
committed a crime she would be tried for it before being sentenced. In this
conversation she had realized something, saying that,
“It was then when I
thought she had been murdered, because when my husband was kidnapped he had
overheard someone say that they were murdering prisoners. When he told us this,
we thought he had gone mad. So I said to this man, “If you’ve killed her I want
her body. Because I don’t want to go mad like so many mothers looking for NN
[No Name] initials on unidentified graves.”[32]
Carlotto would not see her daughter again, even though she knew about the
child her daughter carried and fact that she was pregnant at the time of her
aduction because of the letters her daughter mailed home. Carlotto was certain
that her grandson had been born, only to be taken away from his mother hours
later before Laura was returned to the concentration camp where she had been
held. Laura would be one of the many disappeared, one that would be returned
dead to her family. Carlotto said that,
“On August 25, 1978,
the police in Matanza requested that we go to the police station. They informed
us that Laura had been killed. They said that she had been in a car and had
disobeyed the order to stop. It was all a lie. We were not able to have an
autopsy done. I could not get a physician that would certify the cause of
death. When I asked about the child, the officer said he knew nothing about
that.”[33]
Carlotto was in shock, she had learned that her daughter had died, but a
new struggle would begin for her, on similar and yet not so similar to the
other Mothers who still marched around the Plaza de Mayo. Certain that her
grandson was out there she began the journey to find him, she was no longer a
Mother of the Plaza de Mayo, but a Grandmother.
The same month that
Carlotto found out that her daughter was dead and that her grandson was now
disappeared, she joined the Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo which had been
formed in 1977. Like the mothers, the Grandmothers had their own dilemma, some
were trying to find information on their children, while at the same time
trying to find out the fate of their grandchildren. The Grandmothers would
become one of Argentina’s leading human rights groups, “and were involved in
the development of a national blood bank to identify the children born in
captivity.”[34]
Carlotto worked tirelessly in the movement eventually becoming the president of
the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement.
The disappeared children
had become something that no one would have believed, some of these children
were being raised by the same people who had murdered their own parents. This
was a cause that Carlotto was fighting for, she wanted these children to find
their families, to know the truth about their lives. As the years went by,
Carlotto feared that she would never have the chance to meet the child that her
daughter Laura had given birth to. She was getting older and she was afraid
that she would die before she was given the chance to meet the child she had
fought for so many years to find. Carlotto wondered when she would have her
chance, after tirelessly searching with nothing but a first name and when she
had believed that he had been born. Each DNA test was one victory for the
grandmothers, and one defeat for Carlotto. “When I turned 80, I begged God not
to let me die before I found my grandson, We all cried; everyone has something
to say about how they felt to have found this grandson we were all searching
for.”[35]
The other side of
Carlotto’s journey was that of her grandson, Ignacio, who had been raised on a
farm near the city of Olavarría. He had been raised as the only son of two
farmers and had been sitting with his wife while watching television when
Carlotto had come on the television. The fact that Ignacio had been raise in a
rural area that had made Carlotto’s journey to find him even harder than other
disappeared children. It wasn’t until June of 2014 when Ignacio would learn
that he had been adopted and wasn’t the child of the two people who had raised
him. When he decided on doing the test, it had been revealed that he was the
son of Carlotto’s daughter and her partner. Carlotto’s journey had finally come
to an end, she would have the chance of meeting the child she had spent so many
years trying to find.
Carlotto, and the
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have identified over one hundred children
over the years. Her daughter knows that she found the missing child, Carlotto
said that “The only thought I had was:
Laura can rest in peace now. I felt Laura said to me: “Mother, mission
accomplished.” But there’s so much still to do. I’m going to keep looking for
the other missing ones.”[36] She
knows that even though her journey has ended that she needs to continue to
fight for the others, they had been there for her when she had searched
tirelessly for her grandchild. She will continue to be there for them until
they have identified as many children as possible, because she knows that the
struggle for the truth is hard especially when the truth has been denied from
them for so long.
The White Shawl of Truth, Justice and Freedom
What is the end result
of a movement that doesn’t stop but continues on even decades after it had
begun as a group of mothers marching around the Plaza de Mayo looking for their
missing children? The end result is one of a group of women, mothers,
grandmothers, who have worked hard to find their children, their grandchildren,
and the truth of what had happened for so long. Their white headscarves a
national symbol of the movement, a history they’re trying to make sure isn’t
erased. They don’t want people to forget what the government had done, and what
the government is capable of. Especially if the world decides to forget what
had once happened. This is a story that I had chosen to tell by using the words
of these three mothers, they’re alive today working hard to keep their voices
at the forefront of their struggle. Nora Cortiñas said in an interview
“The relevance of
human rights is also measured by that concealed truth, which is in the
testimony of each family, of each Mother and those who were part. We lived
state terrorism that left a sinister, painful scar, indelible to all of us.
That’s why I, for example, value trials. Trials are writing that history that
couldn’t go missing. An added value to trials are witnesses. Witnesses who did
not forget those buried in the hell of concentration camps, death camps, camps
of so much pain. And I believe there’s great value in what lawyers do,
acknowledging testimonies of truth. That’s why I say that even if hidden, the
truth is there somewhere; it’s there. So even if they try to hide the past,
they won’t be able to. And we have public prosecutors and judges who want
justice to be served. We need the full force of the law, and all the truth.
Part of that truth is still missing, and in time, when everyone has testified
and when justice is served, the whole truth will be known.”[37]
Today’s fast
paced world, where everything is available at the touch of a button, Cortiñas and
many of the women who had lost a loved one to the government of General Jorge
Rafael Videla in Argentina they understand that the truth will one day come
out. Social media makes it impossible to hide in the same way it had been
hidden in the years of the Dirty War. Until that day comes, until the day they
find out what happened to all of the disappeared they will continue to march,
to speak out, and to look for the truth.
A WHITE SHAWL[38]
You chose
white
because you
refuse to mourn.
Your scarves
illuminate
the stained
streets, the steps of the subway,
the bus
depots with their tired passengers.
You wear
white to confound the enemy,
to be
distinguished in a crowd, your white wings
scudding ahead of
the racing ocean.
Your pañuelos
carry the wisdom
of
the household, of two hands becoming twelve,
the
multiplication of loaves and fishes.
Tied
together, they make a cordon
to
protect your young helpers from the police.
They
surround a paddy wagon with a Mother inside.
On
the tenth anniversary of the pañuelo
thousands
fluttered in streamers
among
the torches in the square
as
if snow geese were arriving from the Artic.
Wherever
the politicians and their henchmen gather,
you
stand before them, your white scarves
a
mirror before their averted faces.
You
chose white, the milky sky
before
dawn. You chose as your uniforms,
a
simple diaper, a baby-shawl.
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[1] Marguerite Guzman Bouvard,
Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Wilmington,
DE: Scholarly Resources Inc, 1994), 19.
[2] “The National Reorganization Process, 1976-83”;
available from https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/argentina/history-8.htm. accessed on 19 May 2018.
[3] Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing
Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 23.
[5] Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing
Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 23.
[7] Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing
Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 69.
[8] “Moments in U.S. Diplomatic History” available from https://adst.org/2014/10/argentinas-dirty-war-and-the-transition-to-democracy/. Accessed on 10 May 2018.
[9] Nicholas Caistor, “General Jorge Rafael Videla:
Dictator who brought terror to Argentina in the ‘dirty war’”
[10] Mabel Bellucci, “Childless Motherhood: Interview with Nora
Cortiñas, a mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina.” Reproductive Health
Matters Vol. 7, no. 3 (1999): 85
[11] Adam Lusher, “The Argentine mother who took on the
Junta dictatorship over her ‘disappeared’ son”; available from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/argentina-mothers-of-the-disappeared-plaza-de-mayo-nora-cortinas-military-dictatorship-junta-a8036386.html. Accessed 10 May 2018.
[13] Mabel Bellucci, “Childless Motherhood: Interview with Nora
Cortiñas, a mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina.”, 85
[14] Graciela Di Marco, “The Mothers and Grandmothers of
Plaza De Mayo Speak,” 96
[15] Mabel Bellucci, “Childless Motherhood: Interview with Nora
Cortiñas, a mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina.” Reproductive Health
Matters Vol. 7, no. 3 (1999): 85-86
[16] Graciela Di Marco, “The Mothers and Grandmothers of
Plaza De Mayo Speak,” 96
[17] Adam Lusher, “The Argentine mother who took on the
Junta dictatorship over her ‘disappeared’ son”
[18] EIUC - Global Campus. "Interview with Nora Cortiñas,
Founding Member of Madres De Plaza De Mayo, Línea Fundadora, Argentina."
Available from. https://vimeo.com/256928799.
[19] Leila Miller, “From Holocaust survivor to Mother of
Plaza de Mayo”; available from http://jewishjournal.com/culture/lifestyle/189080/ accessed 5 May 2018.
[20] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust
Encyclopedia, “Lodz”; available from https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005071. accessed 7 May 2018.
[21] Leila Miller, “From Holocaust survivor to Mother of
Plaza de Mayo”
[22] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust
Encyclopedia, “Auschwitz” available from https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189 accessed 7 May 2018.
[23] Christian Dürr, “An Interview with the Mauthausen
Survivor Sara Rus”; available from https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/News/An-Interview-with-the-Mauthausen-Survivor-Sara-Rus. Accessed 7 May 2018.
[24] Victoria Ginzberg, “The history of Sara Rus, Survivor
of Auschwitz and Mother of Plaza de Mayo, I fight not to forget”; available
from https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-151812-2010-08-22.html. Accessed 7 May 2018.
[25] Christian Dürr “An Interview with the Mauthausen
Survivor Sara Rus”
[26] Leila Miller, “From Holocaust survivor to Mother of
Plaza de Mayo”
[27] Ibid
[28] Ibid
[30] Uki Goñi. “40 years later, the mothers of Argentina’s
‘disappeared’ refuse to be silent” available from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/28/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-argentina-anniversary. Accessed 30 April 2018.
[31] “Missing Generation: Estela Carlotto and the
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz5i1G5Nc2o. accessed on 19 May 2018.
[32] Graciela Di Marco, “The Mothers and Grandmothers of
Plaza De Mayo Speak,” Women’s Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean:
Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship: 104.
[33] Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of
the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 58-59.
[35] Uki Goñi, “A
grandmother’s 36-year hunt for the child stolen by the Argentinian junta”
available from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/grandmothers-of-plaza-de-mayo-36-year-hunt-for-stolen-child.
Accessed 30 April 2018.
[36] Alexia Richardson “Biography: Esterla de Carlotto – Human Rights
Activist”
[37] EIUC - Global Campus. "Interview with Nora Cortiñas,
Founding Member of Madres De Plaza De Mayo, Línea Fundadora, Argentina."
Available from. https://vimeo.com/256928799.
[38] Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of
the Plaza de Mayo: 64.
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