Catálogo Colectivo

Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is an Argentine human rights association formed in response to the National Reorganization Process, the military dictatorship by Jorge Rafael Videla, with the goal of finding the ''desaparecidos'', initially, and then determining the culprits of crimes against humanity to promote their trial and sentencing.

The Mothers began demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo, the public square located in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in the city of Buenos Aires, on 30 April 1977, to petition for the alive reappearance of their disappeared children. Originally, they would remain there seated, but by declaring a state of emergency, police expelled them from the public square.

In September 1977, in order to provide themselves with an opportunity to share their stories with other Argentinians, the mothers decided to join the annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Luján, located outside Buenos Aires. In order to stand out among the crowds, the mothers decided to wear their children's nappies (diapers) as headscarves. Following the pilgrimage, the mothers decided to continue wearing these headscarves during their meetings and weekly demonstrations at the Plaza. On them, they embroidered the names of their children and wrote “Aparición con Vida” (Alive reappearance).

During the years of the Dirty War, the name used by the military junta in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) hunted down political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism or the Montoneros ''guerrillero'' movement. The Mothers constantly opposed the ''de facto'' government and suffered persecution, including kidnappings and forced disappearances, most notably in the cases of founders Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, María Ponce de Bianco, and French nun supporters Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, perpetrated by a group led by Alfredo Astiz, a former commander, intelligence officer, and naval commando who served in the Argentine Navy during the military dictatorship. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, known for having found and identified the remains of Che Guevara, would later find their bodies to have been killed on a death flight and their bodies disposed of in the sea.

On the first days of December 1980, the first "March of Resistance" was held, consisting of marching around the public square for 24 hours.

Despite democracy being re-established in the 1983 general election, the movement continued to hold marches and demonstrations, demanding sentences for the military personnel that participated in the government that overthrew Isabel Perón in the 1976 coup d'état. This would eventually culminate in the Trial of the Juntas of 1985.

They have received widespread support and recognition from many international organizations, including being the first organization laureated by the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and helping several human rights groups throughout their history. The 1980 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was an active supporter of the association, for which he was the subject of harassment by the dictatorship.

Since 1986 the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have been divided into two factions, the majority group "''Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association''" (presided by Hebe de Bonafini) and . Ceremonially, every Thursday at 3:30 p.m the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo march around the May Pyramid at the central hub of Plaza de Mayo, and at 4:00 p.m they give speeches from the Equestrian monument to General Manuel Belgrano, where they opine over the current national and global situation. Provided by Wikipedia