Madres de la Plaza de Mayo- a history lesson!

On this wonderfully sunny Thursday afternoon, I ventured downtown and had an emotional, historical experience that I will never forget.

I had learned about the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) in my History of Latin America class at MSU. I was appalled that such horrific events had taken place in such recent history, and even more appalled that until my junior year of college, I had never even heard of them. The Guerra Sucia took place in Argentina between 1973 (possibly earlier) and 1982. It was not a war fought between two countries, but a period of government-sponsored violence against any sort of opposition. During this time, up to 30,000 innocent people were kidnapped in the middle of the night by government forces, taken to concentration camps, tortured and then killed. Many bodies were thrown from helicopters into the Atlantic Ocean so they could never be identified. These people are known as the desaparecidos (the disappeared ones). Most of the people disappeared were students and young professionals, in their 20s or 30s. Most of their bodies have never been found.

During this terrible period, an organization was started by some mothers of the disappeared…Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. They started organizing protest marches in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, where the government was run. They carried pictures of their sons and daughters that had been taken and wore white handkerchiefs with the names of their missing loved ones on their heads. Initially, their goal was to find their sons and daughters, alive. Later, this goal changed to find those responsible for the atrocities and bring them to justice.

Thirty years later, these mothers, grandmothers, friends and family of the disappeared still march in the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday afternoon. Thirty years later, those responsible have not been punished. The mothers are fighting now for the rights and ideas that their children had believed in, and lost their lives to, and, I’m sure, to make sure they are not forgotten.