This past Thursday, I ventured out to Plaza de Mayo (the area with a bunch of government buildings) to see the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. Every Thursday, these elderly ladies walk a small circuit around the center of the plaza, wearing scarves on their heads and holding signs with the faces of their children who were some of the desaparecidos. The desaparecidos are the people who literally disappeared in the late 70s and early 80s during a corrupt government.
Or so this was what I thought when I went to see the Madres. There seems to be no question that this atrocity happened; the government admits there are more than 9,000 desaparecidos unaccounted for and some people have admitted to the public the ways they tortured people during this period of history. However, there seems to be some disparity when it comes to verifying the truth of the claims of the Madres. When I came back and told my host mother I had gone to see the Madres, she told me she thought they were all awful liars, pretending to have lost children, while really their children are in Spain and they’re receiving money from the government. She told me that her husband’s sister lost children during that time, but never joined the Madres because she didn’t believe they were telling the truth. But at the same time, yesterday when I went to church, the pastor mentioned the Madres as the social conscience of the nation.
So now I’m left very confused. Who do I believe? What is the truth? I would like to believe that these elderly women wouldn’t march every Thursday for 33 years for a lie. I would like to believe that they wouldn’t deceive a nation if they knew there was another truth. But yet, my host mother was so convinced she was correct. I’m left without answers, just as clueless as when I went to see them. I can’t help but think back to when the strike was beginning with the universities. I heard that strikes happen all the time and that this is just the students’ way of not going to class; someone else heard that this truly was a monumental strike and had been building for years. It’s hard to know from just one study abroad what is true and I think I’m going to come back with a somewhat biased opinion of Argentina. But I guess an opinion of some sort is better than none? Maybe?
Location: plaza de mayo, buenos aires, Argentina
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Answer to your question of the title:
DON’T believe your host mother.
Apart from any criticism to Abuelas, Madres and their outspoken leader Hebe, their relationship with the Government (based on the fact that this is the administration that reopened trials against the military involved in the killings, some other say it’s because they are paid for supporting the government), besides the fact that military and police were killed by guerrillas before the Junta took over, apart from any manipulation of the Human Rights cause for political gains, beyond all of that: DON’T BELIEVE HER.
Her argument of the disappeared people being on holiday in Spain is 30 years old, it’s what the Junta and it supporters here said, when the Mothers came up, and when Human Rights organizations like Amnesty began raising awareness about an extermination plan in Argentina.
30 years later, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team continues to find bones of people who were buried as unidentified bodies…thanks to DNA tests, we know they were desaparecidos. Abuelas de Plaza de MAyo continue finding people in their early 30s (102 so far) who, when they were born, they were appropriated in concentration camps where their parents were being held. They were raised under a false identity and their mothers and fathers killed.
Recommended literature: “La Dictadura Militar” by Novaro and Palermo, or “Dirty Secrets, Dirty War” (in english) by David Cox.
Living in Spain? thousands of people? more than 30 years, not a single case came to light? Seems like an insane conspiracy theory.
I would keep conversation with your host mother down to small talk. Her position is slightly comparable to denial of the Holocaust.
Read the NUNCA MAS. Read Carta Abierta a la Junta Militar, by Rodolfo Walsh. Ask people (anyone) who do not live in Recoleta. Watch La Historia Oficial, you can download a copy with subtitles. Just a few suggestions…
Maybe you should go out to Garage Olimpo to see of the toture facilities. Or ESMA in Nuñez. Or Club Atletico in San Telmo. Read the NUNCA MAS report.
It was the Recoleta crowd that supported the Military dictatorship to begin with… DUH!!!
Venture a thought – some are telling the truth and a minority are lying?
Even if it was only 1 child, how awful to have your child disappear, never to hear any more…so much to try to understand….Keep asking questions and thinking …
Even if it was only 1 child, how awful to have your child disappear, never to hear any more…so much to try to understand….Keep asking questions and thinking …