...the news headlines include a number of stories that reflect the persistence of a past that is everlasting and does not wish to pass...
(Jelin, State Repression and the Struggles for Memory, 2003)
Infojus Noticias has a great piece on Adelina Dematti, a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who photographed the group's struggle using a Kodak hidden under her clothes. She said she did it so that her disappeared son Carlos "would know he was not alone, that we were looking for him". She never found out what happened to him.
Her act of recording meetings and demonstrations was extremely dangerous under the dictatorship and provides us with a record of the Madres movement from an insider's perspective. The Madres are now active on social media and I think we can be sure if those options had been available to them in the 1970s and 80s, they would have used them, but as it is, Dematti's photos are unusual.
She photographed the Mothers' gatherings, the participation in the large Marches of Resistence, meetings with Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, writer Julio Cortázar and, later, president Néstor Kirchner. I particularly like the picture of the 1983 Marcha de la resistencia showing the silhouette cutouts of the disappeared - the "silouetazo".
The white headscarf worn by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo has been declared an Argentina national symbol by the country's chamber of deputies.
A little bit of background: the mothers looking for their children in the early, and extremely dangerous, years of the dictatorship needed a way of identifying each other. They chose a white cloth nappy (diaper) to wear on their heads, but this soon developed into the proper headscarf, often with the name of their child embroidered on it. The mothers of the Linea Fundadora group (see image above) still wear these, but the Asociación Madres do not single out any one of the disappeared over the others. The headscarves are now painted on the square in the front of the Casa Rosada where the mothers have been gathering for over 30 years.
The initiative of Leonardo Grosso (FPV) was backed by 176 deputies, while seven voted against and four abstained.
There has been some opposition to the move on social media, however, with users drawing attention to the links between the Madres group and the Kirchner regime, and the allegations of corruption the Madres have been linked with.
An editorial in La Nación also criticises the decision as one of "political correctness" and accuses it of fostering division in the country rather than reconciliation.
I do see the headscarf as an important symbol for Argentina, but I cannot deny that the reputation of the Madres (by which I am referring to the Asociación Madres led by Hebe Bonafini) has suffered in recent years. The group has broadened its mandate very significantly from a focus on justice for the disappeared to education and explicit political aims. It has also been linked with a shady housing scheme. It's hardly surprising if these things stick in people's minds more than, or alongside, the original uses of the iconic headscarf.
Enrique Pérez Albizú, vice-deacon of the faculty of medicine at the university of La Plata, has stepped down from his post after a Mother of the Plaza de Mayo accused him in court of complicity with the dictatorship.
In the trial concerning the detention centre La Cacha, Adelina Dematti de Alaye said that surgeon Pérez Albizú had signed false death certificates which were then used by the military to cover up deaths in custody by attributing them to deaths in "shoot outs". Another 20 doctors are said to have done the same thing.
Laura Bonaparte, a member of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, died on 23 June aged 88.
Here she is with her daughter, one of the people she kept fighting for.
It's impossible to imagine how she felt when not just this daughter, but seven members of her family were disappeared by the military regime (her ex-husband, three children and the partners of all the children). Yet instead of crumbling or giving in to bitterness, she started a neverending battle for justice. I don't think it's going too far to say that the world, never mind just Argentina, owes a lot to people like her.
“She was a brilliant woman, who fought for memory and justice despite
suffering so much,” stated Mother of the Plaza de Mayo Founding Line
member Taty Almeida.
Yesterday, 30 April 2013, it was 36 years since the first, small group of women got together in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to call for the return of their detained-disappeared children. I'm sure they never imagined that they were embarking on a lifestyle of struggle.
The overwhelming majority of the mothers never got their happy ending: their children did not come back to them. Most of them do not even know what happened to them. But, as it says on the Madres' website, they made the best out of the worst. They turned their own tragedy into political activism - and that is, of course, why they are not uncontroversial figures, saints of the people.
The Asociacion Madres attended an event in their honour at the ex-ESMA site, where groups including the children of the disappeared, HIJOS, paid tribute to their work. The Linea Fundadora madres attended a separate event at the Plaza de Mayo.
La Nación had a very interesting article about urban memorials this week. It's worth checking out for the pictures. Here's a translation of just the part dealing with the dictatorship:
Walking in the capital can turn into a journey back in time. On the pavements of Buenos Aires, hundreds of coloured tiles contrast with the boring grey of the city and interrupt the daily walks of pedestrians with a message which recalls the most recent dictatorship.
"Here lived Roberto Fernando Lertora, abducted along with Adriana Mosso de Carlevaro, militants of the people, detained-disappeared on 27 March, 1977, in an act of State Terrorism", reads one of the mosaic plaques, which is almost a square metre large. Photo: LA NACION / Sebastián Rodeiro
The project is the work of the local coordinator for memory and justice (Coordinadora de Barrios por
Memoria y Justicia), a federation of local assemblies which started leaving traces of the disappeared on 2 December 2005, near the church of Santa Cruz in San Cristóbal.
Since then, they've never stopped. "There must be about 500 stones in the capital and other parts of the country," says Pablo Zalazar from the group.
"The idea of the tiles is that the 30,000 disappeared people won't be just a number, but a history of life," Zalazar explains. Before installing each mosaic, the coordinator investigates the person it is going to remember - who they were, where they lived, what they did, how and where they were abducted.
Then, they record the data in a book edited by the space of memory institute (Instituto Espacio para la Memoria), which is currently working on the third edition.
Piecing together the history of the life of a disappeared person is a complex task. "Sometimes there were five or six of us. Not even the relatives got close," points out Esther Pastorino from the group. "But in other cases, there were families separated by the dictatorship who got back together because of the placing of a tile".
Why do they do it? "It's a message that memory remains. For us, they're not tombstones, but a signpost for our fellow city-dwellers," reflects Zalazar, and brings up the point of the project: "We want young people to be aware of the issue, so it really will never happen again".
The city's "Never Again"is also evoked by the memory park (parque de la memoria) next to the university campus, the memorial under the 25 de Mayo motorway, on the avenue Paseo Colón, and the 32 white headscarves of the Madres on the ground of the Plaza de Mayo.
Painted 25 years ago by the Madres' support group (Frente de Apoyo a las
Madres), the headscarves "represent life", Hebe de Bonafini told La Nación. "They don't bear any name because they represent all the 30,000 disappeared", the head of the Madres points out, adding "The headscarf has to do with the purity of the ideals of our children, whom we do not recognise as dead".
This is a rather odd intersection of two of this blog's main interests. I was surprised to see news stories appearing about how Movadef, the pro-Shining Path movement which supports an amnesty for senderista prisoners, had met with representatives of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo and with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
The Peruvian government and media have both responded angrily to the meeting, as it lends legitimacy to a group allied to terrorism. I haven't been able to find coverage in the Argentine press or statements from the human rights group itself, so I'm not clear how much this meeting was planned in advance and was its exact purpose was. Peruvian prosecutor Julio Galindo suggests that Movadef essentially just showed up and surprised the Argentines, but he doesn't seem to know this for certain. It would, however, not be the first time that the Madres' connections have caused controversy.
Pérez Esquivel's website now contains a statement explaining that he listened to Movadef "as he has many other organizations from the continent and the world" and pointing out that "listening does not equal support". This is true, of course. I assume that for Movadef, however, there was an interest in contact with a highly respected individual, and a group, from the human rights scene and that they are pleased with the resulting publicity (which, you could argue, I am now contributing to as well). Now they are a group active on an international scale! Overall, I don't think this is a massive deal, but it will be interesting to see how they try to capitalise on the publicity and it's also a good illustration of how people try to get close to the Madres for their own purposes.
The ins and outs of the Argentine human rights scene are not much discussed in English, where if the Madres (and Abuelas, Hij@s, and so on) are seen uncritically as heroes, if they are known at all. In Argentina, they can divide opinion. In this blog, I have expressed a great deal of respect for their work, and I make absolutely no apology for doing so. But humans being humans, it's all a bit more complicated than that, as I discussed some time ago and as explained in a recent article from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
For decades, the Argentine human rights group, Madres de Plaza de Mayo
(Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), has been respected for its work bearing
witness to the thousands of disappearances during the Dirty War
(1976-1983). In recent years the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo,
a faction of the original group led by Hebe de Bonafini, has sparked
significant controversy because of her divisive comments on topics
ranging from September 11 to anti-Semitism. Most significantly, the
recent embezzlement scandal involving the organization’s housing program
as well as Bonafini’s possible involvement in illegal activities
threatens to destroy the reputation of the group and harm its political
allies.
President of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, has received threatening phone calls which she believes were connected with Sergio Schoklender, who was recently released from jail. Certainly not the first time the Mothers have faced threats, but of course this time the suggestion is that they originate from a former associate. Las amenazas contra Hebe (Pagina/12)
Almost three decades after the end of the “Dirty War” in Argentina, prosecutors have begun to hold speedy trials before those accused of human rights violations pass away.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/16/2912628/argentina-speeds-up-trials-of.html#storylink=cpy
Nearly a year after a scandal broke concerning financial irregularities at the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the organisation's former financial manager has been arrested. Sergio Schoklender has been charged with embezzlement of funds intended for use in social housing. Sergio was arrested following a court hearing, while his brother Pablo also turned himself in to police later and a third man, Alejandro Gotkin, has also been detained.
The leader of the Mothers, Hebe de Bonafini, said she was "satisfied" with the developments. The BBC rightly points out that the scandal has not been good for the group.
Meanwhile, the Buenos Aires Herald notes that the judge in the case has defended himself against accusations that it has not been making fast enough progress.
On Thursday, 30 April 1977, a small group of women met in the Plaza de Mayo with the aim of handing over a letter to then-president Jorge Videla, appealing for information about the whereabouts of their children, detained by the military regime. At that time, unauthorised public gatherings of more than three people had been forbidden, so the police moved in to break them up. The women started to move around the square in a circle, linking arms in pairs - there was no ban on just walking in twos. And so one of Argentina's, and indeed the world's, most influential human rights groups was born.
Fast forward 35 years, and the Madres have endured humiliation, persecution, and a split within their own organisation. They have also been honoured internationally, travelled all over the world, assisted relatives' groups in other countries and finally been acccepted by their own country's establishment. Some have died, while others have been able to witness the generals on trial for their crimes. But the remaining mothers whose health permits it still gather in the square every Thursday.
The BBC article has published an excellent background article on the mothers for the anniversary, which also explains the division of the Madres into two separate groups.
Pagina/12 reports that the remains of one of the disappeared, Ana Teresa Diego, have been identified in an unmarked grave in Avellaneda cemetery, Buenos Aires.
Diego was an astronomy student and Communist activist when she was abducted in 1976. She even has an asteroid named after her, "Anadiego", Asteroid 11441. Her mother, Zaida Franz, is one of the founding members of the Madres de Plazas de Mayo. Now aged 84, she commented that the discovery "filled an emptiness with light" and also called for continued action for justice against the military perpetrators and civil accomplices of the dictatorships.
Not surprisingly, the Argentine government and other organisations are coming out strongly in support of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, recently found to have abused his power by a Spanish court. Garzon is a hero to human rights activists in Latin America for his work prosecuting Southern Cone dictatorship figures.
Argentine human rights secretary Eduardo Luis Duhalde has called the case "scandalous" and said it reflected badly on the Spanish justice system (he's not alone there as there has been widespread criticism of Garzon's lack of right to appeal).
In typically strident language, president of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, warned:
"You have to be very careful: These bugs are like cockroaches, and after the atomic bomb hits them, everybody thinks they're dead, but no," she said. "Germany still has its Nazis, Spain its Franquistas, Italy its Mussolinistas and in Paraguay you can see how the people of Stroessner still act. So you have to be very careful."
President of the Abuelas, Estela Carlotto, described Garzon as honest and committed.
With the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo well known internationally, it's hardly surprising that media outside Argentina has picked up on the whiff of scandal. I think the distraction is a shame though, considering that there are still pressing human rights issues to deal with in the country. Coverage has focused both on how close links with the now-tainted group could be damaging to Cristina Kirchner in the run-up to an election, and conversely, on how close involvement with politics has been damaging for the group in recent years.
53% of those questioned in a recent poll believe that the scandal will have far-reaching consequences for politics. Political scientist Carla Carrizo argues that the structure and working methods of Argentina's ruling Justicialista Party end up placing significant power in the hands of non-state actors. Mothers of Plaza de Mayo scandal "toxic" for president (IPS)
This is also a very critical article. Look at how it sets the scene for the foreign reader:
The group’s reputation in Argentina has soured, owing to the leftist activism of its leader, Hebe de Bonafini, who has praised the authors of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001.
The image is also captioned "No longer a lily-white reputation". I mean, it is correct that Bonafini has long been a controversial figure and she does make blatantly anti-US remarks. She is arguably a poor figurehead for the Argentine human rights "scene". Still, snide coverage like this ends up leaving a nasty taste in my mouth because ultimately, the Madres are not Bonafini. Let's not forget the disappeared in all this. The mother of all scandals? (The Economist)
The Madres de Plaza de Mayo are no strangers to media attention, but this week they have hit the headlines again for all the wrong reasons. The case surrounds the group's legal adviser Sergio Schoklender, who has been accused of fraud connected to government-funded housing projects. Schoklender has apparently massed huge personal wealth while officially earning a modest income. The Mothers themselves are not officially accused of wrongdoing, but are clearly tainted by the apparent corruption from someone in their inner circle. They have hurriedly distanced themselves from Schoklender and, it is now being reported, wish to appear as plaintiffs in a case against him.
There's quite a lot going on here, I would say, and the shadow of the dictatorship is apparent in it all. On a general level, people worldwide often seem to have a desire to unmask others perceived as "too good to be true" - you seem to see the same kind of glee when a squeaky-clean family man, a Tiger Woods or a Ryan Giggs, say, is revealed as hiding some grubby secrets. The Mothers have been one of the key moral spokepersons in Argentina for decades. Strident, uncompromising, tough: their leader, Hebe de Bonafini, is seen as a heroine by many and an embarassment by some. She has been closely linked with the Kirchner regimes for several years and her unabashed politicism has not increased her popularity in some circles.
The scandal was apparently revealed by Clarin newspaper. Yes, that is the same Clarin newspaper which is rabidly anti-Kirchner and whose owner is fighting a court case seeking to prove that her adopted children were stolen from disappeared people. The Madres, other human rights groups, and the government have all unequivocally viewed this story as an attempt to attack human rights and memory activism in Argentina. The president of the Abuelas (Grandmothers), Estela de Carlotto, was quoted in Clarin and the right-wing La Nacion as accusing Bonafini of being compromised by the Schoklender case. She later told Pagina/12, the paper most sympathetic to the human rights groups, that her words had been "twisted" in an attempt to split the human rights movement. The Abuelas together with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Linea Fundadora (a breakaway group of the Madres), HIJOS (the children of the disappeared) and Familiares (family members of the disappeared) issued a joint statement condemning attempts to tarnish their struggle.
The one thing that does really astonish me is why Bonafini was close to Sergio Schoklender and his brother Pablo in the first place. I had never heard of them before yesterday, but it turns out that they were involved in a notorious crime of the early 1980s, when both were jailed for the murder of their parents. I find it hard to understand why people convicted of such a serious crime would end up so closely connected with a human rights group whose entire purpose is justice for murder, after all - but clearly I'm missing something there.
Artists Rosana Fuertes and Daniel Ontiveros have their first joint exhibition in Buenos Aires, running until 31 March - and you can probably see why I've chose to highlight this on the blog. An even more impressive photo can be seen here.
I learned from the website of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo that Matilde Mellibovsky has died. Mellibovsky was the mother of Graciela Mellibovsky, disappeared in 1976, and the author of a book about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Circle of Love over Death.
Hello again guys. It's been good to remove the pressure to post regularly, but I can't quite leave the blog behind ;-) Now it's the weekend, and here's an update of the memory news out of Argentina this week.
It's the usual good news/bad news combo from the human rights trials. Following the triumph of Bignone's conviction, there was further cause for optimism when the Supreme Court overturned the pardon of dictatorship-era economy minister José Martínez de Hoz. Once known as the "wizard of Hoz" for the magic he practised on the Argentine economy (for a brief period), Martínez de Hoz was one of the most powerful civilians in the military regime. Pagina/12 ran with the headline "Up to his ears in it" - can you guess why?
At the same time, however, IPS is repeating complaints that the justice process is plagued by delays and setbacks.
"The judicial branch is mainly responsible for the delays. There are cases of complicity with the dictatorship, because certain sectors entrenched in federal power want to guarantee impunity," lawyer Andrea Pochak, deputy director of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), told IPS. [...] "Nowadays, Mendoza is our main concern. Because of complicity, some judges delay the prosecutions and leave the trials in limbo, waiting for the accused to die (of old age) before justice can be done," she complained.
"This trial has to do with denouncing the sellouts, the accomplices, those who never said anything when we were imprisoned," she told crowd of several hundred people. "What we don't want is for the same journalists who lied then to keep doing it now."
The event had an extra political charge because of the government's ongoing conflict with the media group Clarin. This Reuters article makes the case that the issue surrounding the biological parentage of Felipe and Marcela Noble Herrera is politically motivated. I'm quite sure that the Kirchner adminstration will be celebrating if Ernestina Herrera de Noble is officially outed as an accomplice of the dictatorship, but such a charge also strikes me as deeply unfair to the main group behind the struggle, the Abuelas de Plazas de Mayo. No, the grandmothers aren't saints, and they have their political opinions, but they been fighting to discover the disappeared children for over thirty years now. They simply won't back down because this family is rich, powerful, and prepared to fight them through the courts.
"For the Grandmothers this is not a fight between the government and a media group... It's not about politics. It's about human rights," Estela de Carlotto, head of the Grandmothers, told state-owned Channel 7 television last week.
Finally, there's an article from the National Security Archive on how the Madres provide inspiration for relatives of the disappeared all over the continent - in this case, Mexico.
34 years after the coup in Argentina, the children of the disappeared remain at centre stage in the memory of the dictatorship. The Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo are still fighting on, and the grandmothers in particular are heavily involved in a number of cases going through the courts, but gradually they will start to hand over to the Hijos, the children of the disappeared. Former disappeared children in vastly differing circumstances are also becoming emblematic of the memory landscape in the nation.
Here's a quick scan of the Argentine press and the type of images they choose to emphasise: Pagina/12 is always big on human rights issues so it was inevitable that the anniversary would make its front page. They go for a close-up on the children of the disappeared:
It's practically obligatory for children of the disppeared to be shown with photographs of their parents, the black and white images looking rather older than they actually are, silent reminders of the missing generation.
From Critica Digital, here are the mothers with their iconic white headscarves, and Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers. Her voice has been particularly loud in recent times as she has coordinated the discovery of several disappeared children and spoken out against the prevaricating in the Noble DNA case (plus, she's the best looking 83 year old I know). Today she specifically named Ernestina Herrera de Noble, among others, as "accomplices of hunger" and supporters of neoliberalism.
Conservative La Nacion does not go for the anniversary as front page news, but does feature a photo slide show prominently on its website, which includes another typical Madres/photos of desaparecidos pose which could have come from just about anytime in the past twenty years.
Clarin also does not feature the commemorative actions on its front page and manages to misspell [president of the Madres] Hebe de Bonafini's name in this article (at least, in the version of it I am looking at right now). Well done there. Its images are mostly wide shots of large crowds in the Plaza de Mayo. Naturally, it would be striking if this newspaper were to have focused on a child of the disappeared as Pagina/12 did; Clarin's owner is accused of illegally adopting two such children herself.
The Argentine press is reporting that politican Elisa Carrió has been expelled from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos; APDH). The reason? Her opposition to the policy of forcibly acquiringDNA samples from suspected disappeared children. She claims that this is designed to specifically target the owner of Clarin newspaper, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, whose adopted children may be the biological offspring of disappeared parents.
The statement of the APDH is short and to the point. Here it is in full:
Dadas sus declaraciones públicas absolutamente incompatibles con los principios y valores de los derechos humanos, la Mesa Directiva de la Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos ha decidido separar a la Sra. Elisa Carrió de esta institución. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, 26 de octubre de 2009. Mesa Directiva
In the light of her public declarations, which are absolutely incompatible with the principles and values of human rights, the Board of Directors of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights has decided to expel Elisa Carrió from the institution. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, 26 October 2009. Board of Directors [translation mine]
It's an unusual move - the only other person to have been thrown out in this manner was Carlos Menem (for introducing the amnesty laws!). Carrió is defiant.
The issue of the DNA sampling is obviously a controversial one. On a broader level, though, I'm interested in the divisions which can occur between activists who should be on the 'same side'. Emotions run deep on all these issues and despite an awareness that in-fighting only harms their ultimate cause, different groups often find themselves unable to avoid treading very different paths.
One clear example is that of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres de Plaza de Mayo). The original mothers' group split in the mid-1980s, torn apart by differences of opinion on the direction of their struggle. Very briefly, the more militant mothers led by Hebe de Bonafini wanted to continue to insist on Aparicion con Vida (Reappearance with life) and also to broaden their fight so that they did not concentrate on their actual biological children, but on all the disappeared, and on wider issues of social justice as well. The other group, who developed into the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo - Founding Line (Linea Fundadora), were slightly more conciliatory in that they were prepared to work with a democratic government, and they also continue to use the names of their own children on their white headscarves. In addition, it has been suggested that class differences played a role in the disagreement, with the more middle class of the mothers tending towards Linea Fundadora (see Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood).
Do personal and political differences merely create a fragmentary situation which opponents of a memory culture can take advantage of, or can a variety of viewpoints enrich the memory landscape? As usual, the answer is probably a bit of both, but in Argentina, such debates are played out on the public stage and become part of the history of redemocratisation.
Here she is with her daughter, one of the people she kept fighting for. 
murder of their parents. I find it hard to understand why people convicted of such a serious crime would end up so closely connected with a human rights group whose entire purpose is justice for murder, after all - but clearly I'm missing something there.
Artists Rosana Fuertes and Daniel Ontiveros have their first joint exhibition in Buenos Aires, running until 31 March - and you can probably see why I've chose to highlight this on the blog. An even more impressive photo can be seen here.
bad news combo from the human rights trials. Following the triumph of Bignone's conviction, there was further cause for optimism when the Supreme Court overturned the pardon of dictatorship-era economy minister José Martínez de Hoz. Once known as the "wizard of Hoz" for the magic he practised on the Argentine economy (for a brief period), Martínez de Hoz was one of the most powerful civilians in the military regime. Pagina/12 ran with the headline "Up to his ears in it" - can you guess why?
bad news combo from the human rights trials. Following the triumph of Bignone's conviction, there was further cause for optimism when the Supreme Court overturned the pardon of dictatorship-era economy minister José Martínez de Hoz. Once known as the "wizard of Hoz" for the magic he practised on the Argentine economy (for a brief period), Martínez de Hoz was one of the most powerful civilians in the military regime. Pagina/12 ran with the headline "Up to his ears in it" - can you guess why?
It's practically obligatory for children of the disppeared to be shown with photographs of their parents, the black and white images looking rather older than they actually are, silent reminders of the missing generation.
Conservative La Nacion does not go for the anniversary as front page news, but does feature a photo slide show prominently on its website, which includes another typical Madres/photos of desaparecidos pose which could have come from just about anytime in the past twenty years.
It's practically obligatory for children of the disppeared to be shown with photographs of their parents, the black and white images looking rather older than they actually are, silent reminders of the missing generation.
Conservative La Nacion does not go for the anniversary as front page news, but does feature a photo slide show prominently on its website, which includes another typical Madres/photos of desaparecidos pose which could have come from just about anytime in the past twenty years.
Posts
