MARJORIE AGOSIN
Translated from the Spanish by the author
The Autumn of the Mothers It is impossible not to see them this autumn, every autumn, because their bodies move with the calm slowness of dead leaves or maybe they are dead leaves, fallen from the menacing nakedness of the sky. I think about them, I listen to them sweeping the Plaza de Mayo, detached but always earth-bound. Sometimes they seem to be strange specters, sorceresses in this city of witches and oblivion. To some, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo can continue to follow and be part of those crazy women who erupted into the Argentine political scenario when silence was imperative and devoid of life, when talking, even the inane whispers of small groups of more than three, was highly dangerous. But they, the Mothers, appeared searching for life, looking for their missing adolescents, and they became the ethics and the memory of the country. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo are with us, how can we not invoke them? It is difficult to forget them because there is something brutally innocent and truthful about their presence; maybe that innocence perturbs us. Maybe it is that innocence, of beings like us, citizens affected by pain caused by the state's terrorism. A pain imposed by a government which declared itself the owner of the laws of the nation and with impunity caused the disappearance of a whole generation of youths. Sometimes I think that if we applied the terminology of the European Holocaust, we could say that what happened in Argentina was a Holocaust against the youth. We, the young Latin Americans of the 1960's, have heard of them, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. The youngest of us have crossed rivers and mountains to march with them because their presence puts us closer to the truth, to our history; fills us with the illusion and hope of transformation, because. In the faces of those daring women, we saw our own disenchanted faces; we searched for them in that history that had suddenly been stolen from us, that was silence and depth and despair. If the presence of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo was a problem in those ferocious days of the Argentine military dictatorship, when the citizens were divided between the military and the civilians and the civilians moved facelessly through the streets, I think that the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo now represent a full transition to democracy, a dimension even more ambiguous for us, the spectators who listen to them and feel them almost languidly every Thursday at 3:30 P.M. We are also part of that disenchanted generation of youths who attempted to change the world and instead became amputated beings who faced the abuses of a long dictatorship. When faced with the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo we asked ourselves about our future as a generation and even more so, we wondered how to live that future among the military and the civilians. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have placed themselves within the fight for social justice developed by their own children. Very few times and because they belong to a different generation than that of their children, they are presented as united front forging alliances with the previous generation. But we cannot forget that these sons and daughters who were activists, and, sometimes warriors, were the product of homes that offered them an incentive to seek social reform. The sons and daughters who disappeared from these homes belong to a political group of unionized character, some to socialist parties or the Communist Party, workers' groups, but according to the reports of "Never Again" and the "Commission on Human Rights", it is very clear that none of them belonged under the category of common criminals. The arrest and forced disappearance of the children of these homes, implies the complicity of a belief, of a way of looking and of inhabiting this world that not only took them from their homes, but from the national mainstream and their families. That is to say, that making the neighbor's son or daughter disappear is equivalent to ripping apart the family, which in a larger scale is the nation. The search undertaken by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, as well as those of all other movements that continue to function visibly, although excluded from society, are movements born from affection and their structure is based on experience, on their daily routine, a space where the mothers, the children and the grandmothers cohabit, eat, sing, and enjoy life together. As soon as the state usurps their lives, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo leave their homes and impose their condition as mothers with the language of love, the daily and cozy words, by creating a public voice and thus, the language of women obtains a public dimension. The political presence of the feminine in conjunction with the search for the missing children, not by the father as is usually the case in Greek tragedies, but by the mothers, dislodges the whole of the Argentine political scheme whose "slogan" creates a hegemonious image of maternity and the home. The sociologists, in their research, question whether the Mothers were conscious of gender and ideology when, in April of 1976, the first group of fourteen mothers went to Plaza de Mayo to march, thus inaugurating one of the most daring human rights movements in Latin America. I believe that gender-consciousness existed, but did not follow the classic definitions of the feminine and that which western feminism means according to the patterns established in the 1960s, especially as defined in the United States. Gender-consciousness is born from solidarity among women and that has been essential to the structuring of the feminist ideas of this century. Solidarity implies various terms and proposals. We must note that there are mothers among them who live in the wealthiest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and others who have to take several buses in order to arrive at Plaza de Mayo. The movement eliminates the economic divisions that have commonly defined Argentine society. Although this movement is born from the internal feelings of affection and the home and does not theorize around legal or social human rights ideologies, the Mothers do assume an ethical posture on the understanding of human rights because their movement stresses the well-being of humans, dignity, and the fact that no one should be tortured. The Plaza has become a site for ethics. Even if the movement has received international attention and there have been hundreds of researchers writing about them as well as sociologists, historians, scientists and politicians, I dare suggest that little has been said about the movement of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo as a way of rethinking the ethics and morality of the citizenry. It is this that makes the Mothers' movement transcendental and unique. To talk about the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is to assume a fusion between the citizenry and the military forces. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo forge a position of ethical clarity before life. In Argentine society, besieged by a culture of death, silence and fear, the presence of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a physical presence that defies fear, silence and the daily and nightly horrors, presents an alternative to the dark politics of the military forces. The Mothers are the citizens who attempt to say No to authoritarianism, No to the state's terror. We see an assembly of civilians and of civility as a counterpoint to the murderous State. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, holding hands, sunk in the deepest collective pain, are also surrounded by the hope of those alliances that they have forged and they assume responsibility for the integrity of life. The Mothers represent a counterpoint to the evil of the military r‚gime. Another essential aspect of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo as an ethical and moral movement, is the power that these seemingly ordinary beings have to combat the extraordinary and maleficent power of the military forces. This would place them not only as witnesses but as the rescuers of memory, of their homes and their country. To assume that the Mothers march only because they have been affected would be to ascribe to them a very simplified character. One of the most vital aspects of the Mothers is their collective conscience. The Mothers march so that passersby will notice them. The Argentine citizenry that has not been affected remains silent, it hides, it does nothing. According to R. Katz, a philosopher, evil must not be ascribed only to names like Hitler or Stalin, but must wear the face of those citizens who were indifferent and who adhered to the voices of the general power. The Mothers refuse to be silent, to be anonymous, they make their personal pain a national tragedy. Their presence makes others uncomfortable and it is uncomfortable to see them, to feel them. It is uncomfortable to walk beside them. We can draw a parallel relationship between groups of people in Nazi Europe who hid the Jews during the Holocaust, who gave them food and who did not turn them in, and the Mothers, who, although personally affected, have assumed that role of guardians of justice, truth and a fundamental ethic related to memory and the presence of it as a posture before life. One of the questions of the current democracies in the Southern cone is how to assume responsibility for memory. This is why we must ask ourselves, how do nations remember? What do they remember? What do they chose to forget? What memory retains is that which history can integrate into the current system of values; the rest is ignored, "forgotten," although in some circumstances that which is forgotten can be recuperated. The system of values acts as the selecting agent for that which is incorporated into "tradition". From the past, only those episodes which are "exemplary" or edifying for tradition, as it stands in the present, are incorporated.1 The most moving and all-encompassing phrase is "A people can never forget what it did not receive." Then, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, from the beginning of the movement to the present day, act as the voice of memory, or better yet, as the memory and the ethics of remembrance because to remember implies a sense of responsibility, of tolerance, of a desire to make memory last for the generations to come, generations like mine who are now of the same age as those who disappeared - which is in itself an overwhelming experience. During these democratic transitions, those who remember are the Mothers, the affected ones, the ones who are still united in their struggle; they are the victims who have not found their sons and daughters, who fight arduously to regain the nation's memory. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, in the midst of this democracy of the Southern Cone, insert themselves in a fundamental agenda that would be that of recuperating the collective memory as well as part of the human rights, because to forget permanently would be to deny life, the life lost by members of that generation who attempted to change their world and gave up their own lives to do so. Elizabeth Jelin, who has contributed immensely to the study of social movements in Latin America, especially in Argentina, says: . . . any demand for justice consists of a desire to restore the damaged balance. In this general manner, the exercise of justice requires that one be conscious of the depth of the damage done in order to know what is necessary to repair it. Disappearance is effectively a form of damage. Damage of a very peculiar nature . . . Disappearance, as a damage, implies the kidnapping of the body as well as the deletion of a world of knowledge. Here it is we find one of the peculiarities of the human rights movement: in order to respond to an uncertain damage, they develop an undetermined demand for justice. All that can be said at the beginning is that something has happened. One of the first tasks of the movement is to establish, with the greatest degree of certainty, what.2 Without any doubt, the unofficial history of Argentina is made up of women, and more precisely, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who guard and recover our memory. This phenomenon has ties to issues of gender because throughout the history of western civilizations, women are the repositories of memory and they transmit it through oral history and family stories, just as jewelry and dowries are passed on from generation to generation. The role of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is connected to the role of women, not as passive repositories of cultures, but as active transmitters. The Mothers began a new period in the collective imagination of Latin America, which was the constant presence of life through remembrance, through memory, as well as through non-partisan political actions, but also through the politics of ethics which transcend party politics. It must be noted that the Mothers' movement did become divided and separated around 1989 because a group of the so-called founders would not negotiate with the established political parties; they did not want to accept the possibility of their loved ones' deaths. We are almost at the beginning of a new millennium, and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo place themselves at the forefront as a historical and ethical movement. This movement is made up of human rights activists and those who were affected the most during the military r‚gime's repression and who are being affected now in their struggle to regain the unofficial history and memory of their country. In the same vein, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and other human rights groups have tried to create the House of the Disappeared, a museum of memories where these historical archival and testimonial materials from the years of the so-called dirty war were to be gathered. All of these efforts have been in vain. Only in Chile, with the personal and financial backing of the families of the Disappeared, have they created in Santiago a memorial to the Disappeared. The memorial is shaped so that on one side we see the names of the Disappeared and on the other side the names of those who were executed during the years of the military r‚gime. If in modern-day Germany there has been an effort to remember through monuments at the various sites where atrocities were committed, in the democracies of the Southern Cone, where the texture of memory - its blisters and wounds - are always open, the government agencies have attempted to erase all traces of these memories and even have gone so far as to declare amnesty for the military personnel involved in the dirty war. The idea for this amnesty was born while Raul Alfonsin was in power, but it was not until M‚nem became President that amnesty was granted to the military. The civilians knew what was happening; it was impossible not to know. For example, how not to know that the military broke into the house next door, at midnight, to arrest the young neighbors? How not to know at school that people are constantly disappearing? The politics of fear and silence set in place by the military r‚gime gave way to the politics of denial. Thus, they created a history of deception; a history that tries not to judge its own past. As Elizabeth Jelin shows, there are those who resist memory: "The human rights movement is primarily dedicated to activating memory and preserving memories . . ." A central part of the ideological and political labor is developed on the identification of a memory and the constriction of culture and identity. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo's attempts to steer society in this direction remain part of their weekly meetings. But Jelin affirms that: if remembering and not forgetting are always part of recreating traditions, during periods of transition and democratic reconstruction, this task has more immediate political consequences: the public and official recognition of the information on violations and violators (the reconstruction of a historical "truth") constitutes the crucial moment of assigning responsibilities.4 To this we should add that in all democratic transitions, there is a fusion that has to do with which truth we are referring to and how it is being created. The official government history will pretend to preserve the fact that the only truth is that at the time there was a civil war against subversive elements. The truth of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is that there was a clandestine war against idealistic youths. However, the central role of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is that of humanizing memory so that there is an alliance between memories, history and life. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, with their photographs tied to their bodies and their kerchiefs whistling in the wind, look as if they are wearing uniforms. They are a collective symbol of the fight against forgetting. When they dance together, silently, it is impossible to identify each one of them separately; it is impossible to know who they are or where they live, but they are one dance of life that transmits the absence of the other lives. There is in them a process of humanization. If the act of forgetting, and its implications of denial and destruction of a remote and past history, work in an emblematic fashion with the military and official culture, memory is also a lament, a place to remember, a space where return is impossible, but also a space that shows the possibility of a new future through the aura of remembrance. If the exiled ones recreate the landscape of their nation to return to it in their dreams, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo recreate the space of their children as the basis for a collective memory. The Plaza becomes the center of memory like the bodies of these women who wander in it, like the spectators who look or do not look. Walking around with photographs on their bodies is the most salient act of commemorating memory. It is also a way to give the Disappeared a collective and dignified burial, the burial of the nation, and at the same time asking that the nation take responsibility for the Disappeared. Ana Pizarro, in her article, "The Home and the Street, Women and Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean", writes about the relationship of the Mothers and the culture of the streets because the street environment is also part of what the Mothers have tried to legitimize. If the street environment historically has represented that which is masculine, the streets and the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina represent a change. Although the streets have never been part of the women's environment, the Mothers articulate their pain by means of their experiences on the street where they congregate to speak about their lives with affection, with bag lunches and their posters. This is the street presence within which the Mothers' movement has placed itself. Pizarro states that: The Mothers' discourse imposed itself, except, obviously, in terrains of greater ideological adversity, and had an international echo because they assumed an ethical dimension proper to an environment which is traditionally assigned to the social division of labor. The Mothers' discourse engenders intense social, political and aesthetic fields. It generates an alternate modality to the impersonal dimension of the street which then becomes almost poetic. The street becomes, to an extent, an altar where the presence of the living and the dead is conjured. The memory of the Mothers is the memory or lack thereof of the passersby, but to establish a poetic public discourse based on memories is to make the act of not remembering a violation of human rights, a denial of life, a denial of death and the recuperation of life through those who remember, the Cassandras of the future. To emerge from the secret houses filled with secret sorrows and to make the Plaza and the street a living memorial to the horror that they lived is to create an alternative to an existence filled with prejudice and accomplices - on the one hand, the military who committed the violations, and on the other, those who could have done something but kept quiet and thus became accomplices of a political regime dominated and controlled by fear and silence. The last few decades in Latin America have witnessed the situation of women in their positions as leaders for change and social transformation either within their countries or in exile, as pillars of the community, where many of them have assumed the responsibility for their homes, the collective memory and the act of remembering. From those ill-fated areas of oblivion, they rise, the daring, courageous women, who carry the names of those who once were, walking forever in the memory of history, discovering the power to denounce, the humanization of horror through a non-violent approach and the encounter with truth through memory. As Hirsh proposes in her analysis, truth is not only to remember, but the act of remembering itself is part of the process of mourning: "For survivors who have been separated and exiled from a ravaged world, memory is necessarily an act not only of recall but also of mourning." Memory is not only the act of mourning or lamenting, it is probably the most immediate way to recover the identity of that which was lost, the absence of the Disappeared body as well as all the ties of affection that bound us to that body. That is why many of the symbolic manifestations of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo unify us - like the act of women ritualistically dancing together with the faceless silhouettes that they draw on the pavement surrounded by the slogan: "Give a hand to a Disappeared." This is a bonding gesture with the missing body which implies the reconstruction of that being who had a past and a memory. While the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust speak of the lack of ties with a world that has been lost, a world where past history is filled with pain and the tragedy of lives lost, of a world filled with ashes, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo create passion from the memory, a flagship of their existence which becomes an elegiac obsession with life itself. That is why they cannot be stigmatized or accused of being subversive. The Mothers, on the one hand, break the laws of oblivion, and on the other hand, they seem so vulnerable and pious. They only march; they do not talk; they are there like the ruins of times gone by and which citizens choose to forget. In a moving article by Marianne Hirsh about the memories of the Holocaust survivors as well as that of their children, she writes: None of us ever knew the worlds of our parents. We could say that the motor of the fictional imagination is fueled in great part by the desire to know the world as it looked and felt before our birth. How much more ambivalent is this curiosity for children of the Holocaust, survivors exiled from a world that had ceased to exist, that has been violently erased? [Unpublished essay] To these words by Marianne Hirsh I have added the social and historical
image of the Mothers. But here the phenomenon is inverted: the world which
has ceased to exist is that of the children, not that of the parents. It
is the mothers who attempt to rethink how life would have been if their
sons and daughters had lived. Thus, the political militancy is also a way
of living and regaining, of rebuilding and recreating a world devoid of
missing children, with the courage of not succumbing to silence, or
becoming passive accomplices. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have
contributed to the civil future of societies in Latin America where
ethical and responsible participation will be the basis for the
consolidation of a just society keen on preserving the values of human
life and the dignity of men and women. It is the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
who are clear transmitters of memory and the future of this and all
memories.
Notes: |