T
his past Monday, April 30, marked 41 years since the first demonstration by
the women who became known as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. On that day
in 1977 a dozen or so of them assembled in the square across from
Argentina’s pink version of the White House to bear witness on behalf of
their children—journalists, students, activists, the hapless—who’d been
“disappeared” by the military dictatorship then in power. The Madres
marched every Thursday afternoon thereafter, in increasing numbers,
demanding answers and justice. With the rightist “dirty war” going on
around them, their outcry constituted an act of defiance as crazy brave as
that of the man who stopped the tank column in Tiannanmen Square. Yet the
mothers were more effective than Tank Man in the long run, obtaining
information on many of the estimated 30,000 disappeared, helping put about
700 of the perpetrators in prison, and even identifying a few of their
grandchildren who’d been handed over to military families as newborns,
their genetic mothers having been executed after giving birth.
What are Josephina and Carolina to do? Why, of course they decide to throw
Belén a baby shower.
