Mothers of the Disappeared: Challenging the Junta in Argentina (1977-1983)
By Lester Kurtz
July 2010
While a military junta ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, dissent was silenced. In broad daylight or in the middle of the night dissidents were swept from their homes, and across the nation those who spoke suddenly “disappeared,” either to prison with torture or the grave ...
The silence was broken by a brave group of mothers, searching for their missing children, who at first were motivated by family rather than politics. They gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace, the national cathedral, and various government ministries. At the first demonstration on 30 April 1977 only fourteen women participated but by the following year, hundreds were participating. On Mother’s Day, 5 October 1977, 237 mothers included their names and identity card numbers on a half-page advertisement in the national newspaper La Prensa calling for a “the Truth” regarding the disappearance of their children ...
... They were assisted by Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), a grassroots movement with an Argentine affiliate that worked through churches across Latin America. It was founded by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, an Argentine sculptor, architect, and university professor turned human rights organizer ...
In the wake of an economic crisis and a humiliating defeat by the British in the Falklands-Malvinas War, the junta’s rule was widely discredited. Open resistance emerged among formerly-silent religious and labor leaders, as well as increasingly vocal opposition parties. Moreover, a power struggle emerged within the military itself with mutual finger-pointing about the lost war, and then-President General Leopoldo Galtieri was replaced in June 1982 by another general, Reynaldo Benito Bignone. Veterans of the war joined students, housewives, the unemployed and the unions protesting in the streets and the junta announced it would hold elections (Fisher 1989: 117). Raul Alfonsin, of the Radical Party, was elected president and, despite continued struggles and some compromises with the military, managed to restore democracy to the country ...
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/mothers-disappeared-challenging-junta-argentina-1977-1983/
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