The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Struggle against Impunity in Argentina

The Grandmothers ofthe Plaza de Mayo and the Struggle against Impunity in Argentina RITA ARDITTI We must notjbrget or be silent. Our duty is to keep the memory, to keep talking tirelessly about the horrors ofthe Argentinegenocide. We mill not let any episode, insignificant as it may seem, go by without expressing our Dieu«. We mill clarify and spread the truth, the whole truth, to enlighten the minds ofthose u>ho still refuse to understand. —Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo 1993 The Association ofGrandmothers ofthe Plaza de Mayo is a human rights organization that has struggled for truth and justice in Argentina since 1977. In 1976 the military staged a coup inArgentina thatopened the door to the bloodiest regime that the country had ever known. A few months before the coup, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, when asked by journalists about the fight against subversion, answered: "In order to guarantee the security ofthe state, all the necessary people will die." And when asked to define a subversive, he answered, "Anyone who opposes the Argentine way of life" (Simpson and Bennett 1985, 76). General Videla went on to become Argentina's new president as part ofthe first militaryjunta that took control ofthe country after the coup. There have been several coups in Argentina in the twentieth century but the 1976 takeoverwas not "justone more coup." The military replaced the Constitution with a Statute for the Process ofNational Reorganization (popularly known as El Proceso) and concentrated all judicial, legislative, and executive powers in their own hands. The political cornerstone ofthe regime was the Doctrine of National Security, a loose set of concepts, some contradictory and poorly delineated, whose cohesive power rested on its definition of"the enemy" as communism. This doctrine held that [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 19-41]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 19 a "third world war" was being waged between the "free world" and communism and that Argentina was a key battleground. The doctrine was a remnant ofthe cold war and it was designed to protect the hegemony of the United States in Latin America. It was the fear of"another Cuba" that drove the United States to fund and train Latin American armies to obliterate the menace ofMarxism. As General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez explained: On one side were the subversives that wanted to destroy the national state to convert it into a communist state, a satellite in the red orbit, and on the other side, us, legal forces, which by the authority of two decrees of the then-constitutional powers participated in that struggle. (Frontalini and Caiati 1984, 2) The military used as their methodology ofrepression the kidnapping, torture, and murderofthousands ofpeople. They broughttheword "desaparecido " (disappeared) into common parlance, forever now associated with Argentina. Nobody was immune. Male and female, young and old, pregnant women, students, workers, lawyers, journalists, scientists, artists, teachers, nuns and priests, all swelled the ranks of the disappeared regardless of their political activity or affiliation. Human rights organizations believe the number ofdisappeared to be around 30,000. The majority of the people who disappeared were young, between the ages ofsixteen and thirty-five. It is estimated that 30% ofthe disappeared were women and that 3% were pregnant. People were kidnapped by armed groups acting on the order ofthe government and disappeared in the "night and fog" ofthe regime. The methodology ofdisappearances was very effective because it allowed the government to deny its actions, and there were no dead bodies that could catalyze a public protest. While people disappeared into the more than 365 clandestine detention centers scattered all over the country, the government stated that ithad no knowledge of the events.1 The victims were shot in mass executions, thrown from airplanes into the sea, or died in captivity, often as the result oftorture (Nunca Ma's 1986; Verbitsky 1996). This article explores the work of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to locate their missing grandchildren and how this work contributes to the struggle against impunity in Argentina. Speaking up, refusing to give in to complacency and silence, and becoming active members of the human rights community have allowed the...