ARGENTINA: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Want a Revolution

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 26 1997 (IPS) - They are all women and they have an average age of 74, but age does not keep them from raising flags which their missing children raised in the 70s.

The world-known movement of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo of Argentina, become every day more radical and uncompromising in their standing and isolate themselves ever more from the political stage.

In their last meeting, the Mothers of those “disappeared” during the military dictatorship (1976-83) decided to abstain from voting and to remove from their ranks those who are running for office in the October legislative elections, or who accept the indemnification that the State has given to families of the victims.

Instead, they decided that they will support “social resistance and struggle movements, which express the rightful claims of free people, the taking of lands, sit-downs, rights of way, protests and union mobilizations” as their children would have done, they said after the meeting.

Their leader, Hebe de Bonafini told IPS that they have never changed their position and for the past twenty years they have consistently called for “the return of their children alive and for the punishment of genocides”.

It is only that now they have gathered ‘revolutionary’ slogans that identify them with their children.

A National Meeting was held this month in the western province of San Juan and was attended by representatives from 15 districts. Of the total of 450 mothers who are part of the organization, there are 50 who are very active, despite the fact the majority of them are more that some are as old as 85.

At the House of the Mothers in Buenos Aires, the walls are covered with the faces of the disappeared and with the countless gifts, memorabilia and other acknowledgements of the achievements of these justice-seeking women.

The Mothers’ headquarters, often the target of anonymous attacks, raids, vandalism and unexplained assaults, always smells of food and it is difficult to turn down the insistence of the hostesses to try one of their home-made dishes.

As in a block party, after eating and before meeting each Tuesday, they come and go carrying paper bundles, many of them tottering on legs swollen from varicose veins.

Bonafini, who met with IPS during a break in the meeting, considered it “horrifying to use the death of children to rise to power”, alluding to three mothers who are running in the elections and others who entered the political arena years ago.

The decision not to vote at the polls for the partial renewal of the House of Representatives is based on the idea that “no candidate, nor any political party, represents us.”

The left-center National Solidarity Front (FREPASO), allied more than a month ago with the Radical Civic Union (UCR), placed senator Graciela Fernandez Meijide as the first candidate chosen to represent the province Buenos Aires, the most important district in the country.

Fernandez Meijide has a disappeared child, but her militant activity was always with the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, not with the Mothers.

Now, a dozen groups such as the Assembly and this legislator herself criticize Bonafini for being “intolerant and sectarian.”

“We don’t change, we only add slogans and the others separated from us, giving in more and more to the system,” said Bonafini in her response.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo only keep a relationship with the Association of Formerly Detained Disappeared (Ones), which also opposes what is called “reparations” in which the State gives funds that are allotted in the Treasury as an indemnification to the families of the disappeared.

They also reject the union members, the church hierarchy -with the exception of two bishops-, the entire military leadership, including the commander in chief of the Army who proclaimed a historic self- criticism and who Bonafini branded as an “assassin”, and, of course, the government.

Bonafini, 69 years old, clarified that her group does not support any political party, not even the ultra-left groups with which they unite, but instead she highlighted her growing internationalism in support of popular protests in other parts of the world.

Two Mothers are touring this month in Italy, visiting grassroots religious communities, while another two travelled to Sao Paulo (Brazil) to receive a prize for their work.

Before that, they were in Cuba, attending the World Youth Festival, and in Peru, where they were called by the guerrillas of the Tupac Amaru movement to mediate in the hostage crisis in the Japanese embassy.

As for herself, Bonafini had to decline an invitation to participate in the march of the Zapatista guerrillas to the Mexican capital, as well as a demonstration by Blacks and Latinos in Washington, D.C. in October, in order to attend a concert in Buenos Aires in a soccer stadium produced by a dozen rock bands in honor of the Mothers.

The children of the disappeared who also formed their own organization, acknowledge the “integrity” of the Mothers, their rejection of all forms of power and, above all, their denunciation of any immunity for those responsible for the crimes committed during the last military regime.

The armed forces that took part in the illegal repression benefitted from the legislation enacted during the term of Raul Alfonsin (1984-90)

Later the members of the three ruling juntas of the dictatorship, condemned by the courts, were exonerated by president Carlos Menem.

“We want to be remembered for not having lied, for not having made deals, compromised or given up,” say the mothers, who acknowledge that in 1986 some of their members resigned when the association hardened its positions.

In this sense, the group supports positions rarely held by women of their age. In a time in which neo-liberalism has become the dominant system in the world, they believe that “revolution is a living dream”.

“We know that hope has not died, that the ideologies have not died,” as they claimed solidarity with “all the revolutionaries of the world who prefer to die fighting with dignity rather than begging in political parties.”