Mothers of the Disappeared

Argentina (1977-present)

As long as mothers give birth to children, they will give birth to courage.  Who had the courage to defy the Argentine military junta who were kidnapping and secretly killing anyone who they felt challenged their rule? It was a group of ordinary women, mothers of those who disappeared. Their silent, persistent demands for truth helped topple the regime, and their quest for justice continues to this day, keeping the conscience of Argentina alive. As we celebrate Mothers Day – a  day originally set aside for mothers to work for peace – Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo are an inspiration in the pursuit of human rights all over the world.  

-- Margaret Wakeley

The military coup in Argentina on March 24, 1976, did not come as a surprise.  After a period of economic crisis and political instability, many middle-class Argentines had openly expressed their hope that military rule would herald a return to stability and order.  When it occurred, even the country’s Catholic bishops extended their blessing, reassured by the generals’ promises to safeguard the values of “Christianity, patriotism, and the family.”  Few anticipated the savage repression that was to follow.

In the name of their “war against subversion” the military unleashed a wave of terror against all “unpatriotic” individuals and organizations, including labor unions, political activists, university students, and human rights groups.  But the Argentine generals, having studied the lessons of previous military dictatorships, had determined to carry out their repression quietly and largely out of sight.  Rather than filling stadiums with political prisoners or leaving mutilated bodies on the side of the road, they perfected the practice of kidnapping their victims from their own homes, murdering them in secret, and leaving no evidence behind.  In this manner some fifteen to thirty thousand men and women joined the desaparecidos – the ranks of the “disappeared.”

The aim of this repression was to silence all protest, and it very nearly succeeded.  Political opposition evaporated.  The press was silent.  Church leaders remained willfully blind.  It fell to a group of women to find the courage to break this silence.  These were the so-called Mothers of the Disappeared.

Their common experience brought them together.  Many of them had seen sons or daughters kidnapped by security agents in the middle of the night.  Desperately, they had kept their vigils, waiting for a call, a message, a sound of returning footsteps at the door.  They had made the circuit of jails, military installations, and hospitals, hoping to find someone who could at least confirm their children’s survival, if not their whereabouts.  In vain they had pleaded with judges, government officials, and even bishops for some assistance.  And everywhere they had been turned away, often with cruel cynicism:  “Perhaps their sons had fled to Cuba; perhaps their daughter had run away to become prostitutes…”  Friends and neighbors had drifted away, not wanting to get involved, fearful of guilt by association, and troubled by the nagging suspicion that nobody gets arrested for no reason; surely these young people must have done something.

In their grief the Mothers found each other – women who shared the same pain and anguish.  At first they came together for mutual support, and then they demanded to be heard.  It began with a silent vigil in the Plaza de Mayo, a public square in Buenos Aires that faces the Ministry of the Interior.  The vigil became a weekly event.  Each Thursday, scores of these middle-aged women, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, stood silently, identified only by their white kerchiefs, and sometimes by the pictures they held of their missing children.

It was illegal to hold any public protest during the state of siege.  But the generals did not know how to respond to this mute outcry.  They resorted to ridicule; they called them the “crazy women,” las locas de Plaza de Mayo.  Then they resorted to bullying and terror.  The Mothers began to receive threatening phone calls and letters.  Several times the whole group of them was arrested, loaded onto buses, and detained overnight.  Some of the Mothers were physically attacked by government thugs.  Several of them were kidnapped and disappeared.  But the threats only strengthened their resolve.

What gave them such courage?  According to one of the mothers, “When a woman gives birth to a child, she gives life and at the same time, when they cut the cord, she gives freedom.  We were fighting for life and for freedom.  It was our insistence, our refusal to give up, that made us effective.”  As another put it simply, “When a mother loses a child, that pain is stronger than fear or terror.”

Despite the news blackout in Argentina, the Mothers’ protest was publicized throughout the world.  Tourists sought them out, and visiting dignitaries joined them in solidarity.  They were a constant thorn in the government’s side.  At a time when the truth was everywhere suppressed, the Mothers and their silent vigil became the visible conscience of the nation.  In a widely circulated declaration the Mother proclaimed their commitment to “an Argentina where there is justice, where nobody can be detained and disappear as has happened to our children, where the law is respected, and where it is possible to live in liberty, tolerance, and respect.”

In 1983 the military, by this time thoroughly discredited, yielded power to a civilian government.  The Mothers’ hopes were temporarily elevated by the dream that thousands of young people would emerge at last from the darkness of their secret cells.  But there was only a terrible silence, and they had to face the truth – that their sons and daughters would never return.  Some of the Mothers struggled on to recover their missing grandchildren – the babies born in detention to their pregnant daughters and often adopted by military families.  Others continued the struggle to bring the guilty to justice.  As one of them said, “The struggle goes beyond the lives of our children.  It’s about the future of our country.”

Sincere thanks to Robert Ellsberg
for permission to use this chapter from his book Blessed Among All Women:  Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.

Additional Resources
See:  Jo Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared (Boston:  Sound End Press, 1989).

See a moving photo essay on the Mothers of the Disappeared.