J
uana
de Pargament speaks bold- ly, passionately, and without stopping.
This indomitable 90- year-old marches around the Plaza de Mayo in
Buenos Aires at 3:30 PM every Thursday, arm-in-arm with other mothers.
Juana
is a founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, women who protested
their children’s disappearances during Argentina’s brutal
military dictatorship, the so-called “dirty war,” from
1976- 1983. She has been marching for 27 years.
Juana
and the other Mothers, revolutionaries hardened by battling state-sponsored
terror, continue to wage war today. They regularly speak out against
the repayment of foreign debt, the U.S. embargo on Cuba, the war
and abuse of prisoners in Iraq, and the plight of factory workers
in Argentina.
When
protests against Argentina’s economic policies erupted in December
2001 (street memorials to fallen activists still dot Buenos Aires),
the Mothers joined in. They denounced “Yankee imperialism”
and described President Bush as a “fanatical assassin.”
Their outspoken president, Hebe Pastor de Bonafini, has met with
Fidel Castro and Subcommander Marcos. The Mothers blame Argentina’s
current woes on foreign aid dependence, fomented by Presidents Carlos
Menem and Fernando De la Rúa, and harsh restrictions imposed
by the International Monetary Fund. They also support the “
piquetero
”
(picketer) protests against mass unemployment, although Bonafini
has criticized some of its methods.
The
Mothers’ weekly revolution has become a tourist experience.
Walking calmly and wearing their trademark white kerchiefs embroidered
with the names of “
los
desaparecidos
” (the
disappeared), the Mothers barely notice the fans surrounding them.
“When we are in the Plaza, we feel something different. We
put on our kerchiefs and we feel like our children are with us.
That is why we don’t talk about death, we talk about life,”
says Juana.
The
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo began the fight as a group of 14 on
April 30, 1977. After former president Isabel Peron declared a state
of siege, a military junta stepped into power in 1976. Under the
“Doctrine of National Security,” fighting communism and
upholding Christianity were trademarks of a regime based on censorship
and persecution of sub- versives.
Dazed
by a sudden surge in the kidnappings, which had begun as early as
1971, the Mothers banded together to demand information. When General
Jorge Rafael Videla refused to meet with them, former President
Azucena Villaflor suggested they assemble in the plaza facing the
Casa Rosada
—the presidential palace.
The
middle-aged and older women, most of whom had never been politically
active before, suddenly faced snarling dogs, police brutality, and
death threats, which continue today.
According
to Bonafini’s account in the
History of th
e Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo
, the women were condemned as mothers of
“terrorists.” Several original Mothers, including Villaflor,
disappeared. In 1979 they resorted to secret church meetings for
fear of harshening repercussions. “Our children were militants,
they knew about all this, but we didn’t. We were still working
in our kitchens,” says Juana. “We went into the streets
to look for them. We knocked on every door. Everything was, ‘No.
We haven’t seen them, we don’t know them, we don’t
recognize them.’”
Juana
says their fight made them tough. “When we fought for our one
child, we realized this was weak. But 100 mothers making the same
request were very powerful. And that is how we got to know each
other, how we insulted the military…and how we created a sisterhood
from the same fight.”
The
Mothers eventually discovered that their children were held in 340
secret detention centers where they were tortured, killed, and sometimes
thrown into the ocean (the largest and most infamous, the Navy Mechanics
School [ESM], will be turned into a public space next year).
Exiled
journalist Miguel Bon- asso, writes in his memoir,
Diario de
un Clandestino
, that if captured, he was prepared to kill himself
to prevent the torture of his wife and children. Juana says lawyers,
doctors, and psychologists participated in the systematic torture,
with doctors determining how much prisoners could withstand each
day without dying. The Mothers have also accused Pepsi, Coca-Cola,
and the sugar refinery Ledesma of lending trucks for kidnappings.
When
asked about her own dirty war fatalities, Juana is uncharacteristically
hesitant. She says they do not usually tell their own stories, referring
instead to the collective fight. Finally, she consents.
She
had just retired from the Royal Bank of Canada. Her two children,
Griselda and Alberto, both doctors, were grown. Her husband had
died in 1960. But then one night in 1976 her son Alberto “disappeared”
in 1976 when he was 31 years old. He was involved in a political
movement, but Juana is still not sure which one. She never knew
to ask.
The
night of his abduction, Alberto attended patients in his office
in Juana’s home until 7:00 PM. He was taken from his apartment
around 2:00 AM. His pregnant girlfriend was told to cover her face
while armed men robbed their house. Juana never heard from him again.
“I
had just retired and wanted to live for myself a little. But what
happened, it changed my life, and all the other Mothers’ lives.
Now we don’t think about ourselves, but about them and about
the absence in each of their families that no one can replace,”
says Juana.
The
Mothers decided the way to ease their own pain and celebrate their
children was to continue their fight. “Our society is in great
pain, which is not easy to quell. Only with this fight are these
spaces filled inside us, and we do it for these beautiful children,”
Juana says. “They were revolutionaries. They wanted to produce
change so this country would be worth living in.”
Despite
the palpable fear inspired by omnipresent Ford Falcons patrolling
the streets, the Mothers were defiant. “I don’t know if
having them in our wombs for nine months gave us courage, but we
were never scared,” says Juana. “We looked the military
in the eye. We didn’t ask, we demanded.”
Juana
was arrested three times in the plaza, once spending a day and night
in jail before she was released. She proudly recounts one conversation
with an interrogator.
“I
told him, I want you to answer me. If you were taken today, don’t
you think your mother would link arms and walk for her son? He didn’t
like it, not at all. He told me, ‘Get out, get out’.”
Juana
and the other Mothers agitated internationally, eventually provoking
criticism of Argentina by journalists, human rights organizations,
and the United Nations— earning a UNESCO Prize for Peace Education
in 1999 and inspiring women’s groups from Holland to Guatemala.
However, even as they were promised help, State Department officials
maintained covert business relationships with the military. In fact,
many military officials had been trained in U.S. military academies
to fight the spread of “communism.”
“We
believed they were listening with love and understanding. But it
was not true,” Juana jabs the air for emphasis. “Carter
tricked us, they all did.”
During
Operation Condor—the code name for the secret regional South
American plan to share intelligence on suspected Marxists—the
Mothers received no support from the Chilean military government
and activists were detained in Brazil and Uruguay as they tried
to escape. The Mothers also received little aid from the Catholic
Church, even though nuns and priests also disappeared. “Of
the 80 bishops, only four understood us,” says Juana. “The
rest supported the military, like the pope.” According to Juana,
former papal envoy Pio Laghi entered concentration camps and signed
death sentences. “He kicked the kids that were being tortured
and said, ‘Tell them everything you know and you will be saved.’
And they still weren’t saved.”
Juana,
who is Jewish, claims about 2,000 Jews were among the disappeared,
with Jewish prisoners receiving “double the torture.”
They were made to walk on all fours and paint their bodies with
swastikas, as Nazi music blared. When the Mothers asked the Israeli
embassy to save the Jewish disappeared, the Mothers were told Israel
didn’t want them either because they were revolutionaries.
After
the transfer to democracy in 1983, the Mothers met with new President
Raúl Alfonsín, but found him unresponsive. He formed the
National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP), which released
explosive details of military repression, but found only 9,000 disappeared.
The Mothers estimate at least 30,000.
Under
Alfonsín, the so-called “full stop” law was created,
stating that no new complaints could be issued against crimes committed
during the dictatorship. The subsequent “due obedience”
law, which eliminated punishments for underlings following orders,
further infuriated the Mothers.
Bodies
were exhumed from mass graves and sent to the Mothers, who did not
accept them. “I’ll tell you what we’ve said from
the beginning. We don’t want posthumous memorials. The battle
itself speaks of what they wanted, what they gave their lives for,”
says Juana. “We didn’t want their cadavers or bones.”
Alfonsín
offered them $250,000 per “disappeared,” but the Mothers
saw it as a ploy to buy their silence. If they accepted the money,
they would have had to sign a document affirming that their children
had been killed in armed confrontations with the military and they
could no longer criticize the government. “[Others] responded
with pacts and silence…we say we will not forget and we will not
forgive. Those who were there during the repression collaborated
in killing 30,000 people,” says Juana. “They programmed
terrorism against anyone who did not think like them.”
Juana
believes the military regime successfully harnessed a legacy of
state-sanctioned terror in Argentina.
Juana
says this climate of fear persists today. In part because Menem
granted amnesty to dirty war participants, freeing convicted junta
members and effectively put- ting the military in the street.
The
Mothers have formed a better relationship with current President
Nestor Kirchner, who offered them unparalleled access to the
Casa
Rosada
.
Under
Kirchner, amnesty laws have been annulled, allowing for the possible
trial of military leaders. He also repealed Decree 1581, which De
la Rúa issued to bar Argentine judges from agreeing to foreign
extradition requests for war criminals. Kirchner also vowed to fight
corruption among the police, which Human Rights Watch has denounced
for brutality and excess force.
When
Kirchner took control in 2003, he told the Mothers, “I understand
your fight because it (the disappearances) reached even my closest
friends.”
“We
remain vigilant, because this man has received a hot potato that
can burn him with all the problems in this country,” says Juana.
“We will see how much he can comply with what he has promised.”
Even
as they continue to agitate, the Mothers have also moved into a
new role—teachers. Visitors often use them as a primary resource
to understand a past Argentines are loath to discuss. “We do
it with pleasure,” says Juana. “By knowing the story,
it won’t be repeated and it won’t be forgotten.”
The
Mothers have written several histories, profiles of the disappeared,
and a monthly newspaper. Their headquarters houses a revolutionary
bookstore, cafe, and library. In 2000, they began the Popular University
of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, offering an activist education
unavailable in mainstream schools. “This history we lived,
you’re not going to find it in the textbooks. There are parents
that don’t want to tell their children what they lived through.
That’s why they come here. They tell us, ‘If my mother
knew I was coming here, she would kill me,’” says Juana.
“We want to leave something for the next generations. We had
a president who burned books in the street. We are now giving culture
to the young people in the university.”
The
1,600 students choose from 8 majors, including human rights, political
and social economics, and journalism. A course on the history of
the Mothers’ struggle is mandatory. According to Juan Francisco
Maciel, who completed a Masters degree in human rights from the
university, it is “a space for discussion, battle and resistance.”
Juana
thinks young activists should immerse themselves in history, but
steer clear of violent conflict. “Save the country with concepts,
with feelings, with morality, not with the savagery of the military,”
she says. “We fight so new leaders are born to govern with
honesty and love. When we don’t live anymore, we want people
to remember our example and what happened in this country that made
us give our lives to change it once and for all.”
Amanda Schoenberg
has worked as a reporter for
The Tico Times
,
in San Jose, Costa Rica.
