Winds of Change Newsletter, February 2006     See sidebar for table of contents

	Matilde Mellibovsky, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

Not Just Any Thursday

by Janet Keating and Carey Lea

We are supposed to be on vacation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but we just can’t take a vacation from our values. When we learned that Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) were still protesting the disappearance of their children that occurred between 1976-1983, we wanted to see them and as it turned out, Carey and I joined them as they marched. Although many of the mothers are stooped by age and nearly 30 years of continual protests, their spirits remain strong and steadfast.

According to the Lonely Planet and Rough guidebooks, starting on April 30, 1977, 14 mothers whose children disappeared during what is known as the Dirty War, marched on the Plaza de Mayo demanding to know what happened to their children. (A military junta had taken control of the Argentine government in 1976.) The young people who opposed the military regime had banded together to form the Montañeros – considered to be a left wing guerilla group which resisted the new regime.

A mind-boggling 10,000 to 30,000 civilians died, whisked from street corners or from their beds never to be seen or heard from again. They vanished without a trace to be tortured, murdered or sedated, then dropped from a plane into the Rio del Plata.

  What began with a handful of women continued to steadily grow. The mothers, still seeking answers, met weekly on the Plaza del Mayo in an effort to embarrass the military regime and to find support in each other. The government claimed that the young people had merely gone abroad. Although Las Madres never got the answers which they were seeking, they continue to protest once a week to this day, dressed in their iconic white scarves (the white headscarf adorned with a picture of their missing child emerged as a way to identify each other and is still worn today by the mothers).

In spite of not getting the answers they sought from the authorities, they played an essential role in history as the first group to openly oppose the military junta ,which then opened the doors for later protests by others.

The courageous and tenacious Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, standing up to a brutal, murderous regime (which was assisted, if not created, by foreign imperialists), offer an incredible example of the repressed fighting back. Those who oppose mountain and community destruction by the coal industry can find strength for the long haul by remembering their honor in suffering.