Right to memory and resistance

EVERY DAWN THE STRUGGLE IS RENEWED, WITHOUT GIVING UP

NORA CORTIÑAS

We have been walking, searching, and raising the banners of the 30.000 for over 45 years. We walk more slowly, it's true; many mothers and grandmothers are no longer with us, but we are propelled forward by the strength of the new generations. Memory does not fade, truth is our daily cry, and justice is a debt that must be paid. The 40th anniversary of the return to democracy represents a true victory that we must all cherish. Today, as yesterday, the struggle is renewed with each dawn, without ever giving up.

We take up the banners of struggle of our sons and daughters; we can say that they "gave birth" to us. Thus, on this long road that never stopped, we absorbed and embraced that commitment and dedication they instilled in us, and the courage and solidarity that are innate gifts.

Year after year, it is essential to continue to mark the memory of that fateful day in 1976 with fire, mobilized, every March 24th. It is an opportunity to renew the condemnation of the civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, which was yet another link in the series of coups d'état in South America in the 50s, 60s and 70s, orchestrated from Washington and the School of the Americas in Panama.

The toll of the systematic plan of repression in our country is well known: 30 women and men detained-disappeared, torn from their families, their jobs, their union or political activism; thousands murdered, imprisoned, exiled; half a thousand babies appropriated from their captive, pregnant mothers, most of them waiting to find their true identity, as 132 have managed to do thanks to the tireless search of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Personally, I joined the marches that began on April 30, 1977, around the Pyramid of Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to demand answers about my son Gustavo, a political activist kidnapped on April 15, 1977. He was a student and began his activism alongside Father Carlos Mugica in Villa 31. Since then, shoulder to shoulder with other courageous women, we have become mothers to all the 30.000 young people taken away during the darkest night of contemporary Argentine history.

The first round was on a Saturday, then we chose Thursday because, according to a mother, in folklore, days spelled with the letter R bring bad luck; that left us with only Monday and Thursday. Monday was impossible, we had weekend tasks to finish. So it was Thursday at 3:30 pm, since that's when the largest crowds of people are leaving their offices in downtown Buenos Aires. You can still see us there and join us in the round, which was only interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our struggle, surrounded by the warmth of our people, was very difficult in its beginnings. The first mothers were united by pain, anguish, uncertainty, not knowing where they were, why they were taken. They did not tolerate us taking to the streets with our white headscarves; many doors were closed to us; we were called "terrorist mothers"; a dictator called us "the Madwomen of Plaza de Mayo"; we were persecuted, and three of our comrades were taken away on December 8th and 10th, 77: Azucena Villaflor de Devincenti, Mary Ponce de Bianco, and Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, along with the French nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domont, and a group of human rights activists, victims of the genocidal Alfredo Astiz and his gang of kidnappers at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA). We honor our comrades with every step we take because they put their bodies on the line during times of the most brutal repression.

The search for truth is linked not only to the trials of the perpetrators (slow, incomplete, biased, and delayed), but also to the search for the remains of the disappeared. Bones speak, they accuse, they heal wounds, they open new paths of struggle, they nourish memory. It is important to highlight the work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), both scientifically and humanly, in supporting each family in their search and in the moment of identifying a son or daughter.

47 years after the 1976 coup, 40 years after the restoration of democracy, the Mothers remain steadfast, supporting popular struggles, embraced by the warmth and affection of boys and girls who have taken up the torch of the 30 and continue to cry out for memory, truth, and justice.

NORA CORTIÑAS
MEMBER OF THE MOTHERS OF PLAZA DE MAYO FOUNDING LINE OF ARGENTINA

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The last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, which lasted from March 24, 1976 to December 10, 1983, was characterized by implementing a systematic plan of state terrorism with 30 disappeared detainees and thousands of murdered, political prisoners and exiles.

Keys to understanding the problem

The era of coups in Argentina

1930 marked the beginning of the era of civic-military coups in Argentina with the overthrow of the Radical president Hipólito Yrigoyen, followed by five more: 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966 and 1976. In the 53 years that passed from the 1930 coup until the return of democracy in 1983, the six illegal regimes totaled 25 years in power with 14 dictators occupying the presidential seat.

The 24 March 1976

The commanders of the three branches of the armed forces, Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Massera, and Orlando Agosti, overthrew the constitutional government of María Estela Martínez de Perón in the early morning of March 24, 1976. Martínez de Perón had assumed the presidency following the death of General Juan Domingo Perón on July 1, 1974. They formed the so-called Military Junta and appointed Videla as de facto president. Since 2002, this date has been commemorated as the "National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice" in remembrance of the victims of the dictatorship.

The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep)

Created by Raúl Alfonsín on December 15, 1983, five days after assuming the presidency, with the objective of clarifying and investigating the forced disappearance of people produced during the military dictatorship in Argentina, the Conadep gave rise to the Report «Nunca Más» which, in its prologue, states: “We have before us the immense task of reversing a situation of impunity and social injustice, which implies overcoming the hostility of powerful sectors that with their complicity of yesterday and today with State terrorism and neoliberal policies made it possible.

The Trials

On December 9, 1985, the Argentine Supreme Court convicted five of the top military leaders, including Videla, Massera, and Viola, in what became known as the "Trial of the Juntas." Years of laws acquitting mid-level commanders followed, along with a decade—the 90s—of impunity, during which the demands for justice from human rights organizations and society remained strong. With Néstor Kirchner's rise to the presidency in 2003, a new phase of trials for those responsible for state terrorism began, a process that continues to this day.