Marching with Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

For the past 1,662 Thursdays, a group of women has marched at the Plaza de Mayo, in the center of Buenos Aires, asking for answers. These women are the mothers of men and women who “disappeared” during Argentina’s military dictatorship thirty-two years ago. They began asking what happened to their children—30,000 of their sons and daughters—but never received exact answers.

Now, they march for a different cause: to keep their children’s dreams of equality alive. They formed an organization called Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, which is one of the most respected human rights organizations in Latin America, and internationally. They fight for better quality in schools, scholarships, better infrastructure for low-income housing, and equal rights for everyone in Argentina, regardless of socioeconomic status. They started their own university, Universidad Popular de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo—where anyone who wants can study, and if they can’t pay the Madres will figure it out for them. They have three majors: law, social work, and history.

We walked with the Madres last week in March 1,661, and it was more of a slow promenade around the plaza than a march—but it was still an incredibly powerful experience. But, for me, the most powerful thing was seeing these women who have marched every Thursday for over thirty years, women who have become icons of remembrance and social change. These are women I read about in Spanish class in Massachusetts, and being there to march with them was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I feel very lucky to have had.







The organization is still headed by the original mothers, who are now in their eighties and nineties. We were lucky enough to be able to meet with Madre Juanita Pergement, one of the founders of the organization, who is still fighting for her son, thirty-two years after his disappearance. She is ninety-five years old.

I have a very strong fear (maybe rational, maybe not) that, once the original mothers are no longer here to march with their white panuelos and portraits of their children, the organization will lose power, lose passion, and, eventually, it too will disappear. The generation to care and take over was the generation wiped out, the generation we’re supposed to be remembering.

Argentine culture seems to be much less politically charged than Chilean culture—people don’t discuss politics much in general. I was there for two weeks studying the effects of the dictatorship on the educational system, but no one once mentioned the name of the dictator. No one mentioned what happened, other than in the context of our educational focus and the desaparecidos.

I’m afraid that all the never again talk will go away when the Madres do. I’m afraid that all the work they have done for equality will have less of a force behind it without the living symbols that have made it possible. I hope I’m wrong.