They called it the “Dirty War.” After the military coup in 1976, people deemed to be “subversives” began to disappear. They disappeared if they raised their fists, raised their voices, raised their eyebrows. They disappeared if they sang freedom songs; joined a union; worked to alleviate poverty, hunger, illiteracy; were seen with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
CHILDREN DISAPPEARED
There were heavy footsteps in the night, muffled screams, and then nothing — no body, no proof of torture, no world outrage. The families of the “disappeared” waited and endured, bewildered. With no confirmation of death there could be no funeral, no closure, no coming to terms, no mourning period, no healing.
During the Dirty War, as many as 30,000 left-wing people disappeared. Some were arrested, taken to torture centers, drugged, and loaded onto military planes from which they were hurled into the Río de la Plata. Pregnant women were taken into custody by the secret police and killed after they gave birth; their babies were given to childless military families to be raised with “conservative values.”
The mothers sought information. They waited in barren corridors at the Ministry of the Interior in Buenos Aires, only to be told to go home.
One day, an official smirked as he dismissed Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti who sought information on her disappeared son Néstor. As she passed other mothers on her way out, she muttered, “It’s not here that we ought to be, it’s the Plaza de Mayo.” And that’s how it all began.
MOTHERS GATHERED
The next Saturday, April 30, 1977, Villaflor and thirteen other women left their homes to do the bravest thing they had ever done. At a time when all public demonstrations were forbidden, they stood together, witnesses to the disappearance of their children. Later, they looked back on that day, joking that, even in the heart of the most vicious dictatorship, no one cares if you demonstrate on a Saturday afternoon in a deserted square.
After that, the women decided to go to the Plaza on Thursday afternoons when it was crowded. Because it was illegal for more than three people to stand together in a public place, the women walked slowly around and around the Plaza. They had been “walking in circles” anyway, at government offices. Now, they would walk in circles on behalf of their children. Their numbers grew, and they became known as “the Mothers of the Plaza”.
Their public witness made them bold. On October 4, 1977, they paid for an ad in La Prensa with photos of 237 of their disappeared children and the names of the mothers under the headline: “WE DO NOT ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN THE TRUTH.” Ten days later, several hundred women marched to Congress carrying a petition with 24,000 signatures. They demanded an investigation into the disappearances.
MOTHERS DISAPPEARED
The government reaction was severe. Many protesters were arrested. American and British journalists who tried to interview the Mothers were harassed or detained. Still, the women came. They were no longer looking for their individual sons or daughters: they were seeking each others’ children as well.
Azucena Villaflor, martyr
On December 10, a new ad ran in La Nacion. That same night, men armed with machine guns abducted Villaflor from her home. Her body washed up on a beach a few months later.
Fear gripped the Plaza as some of the Mothers were disappeared, never to be seen again. Now, few women dared come on Thursdays for fear of being taken. No doubt, the junta’s secret police felt smug as they purged Argentina of left-leaning “subversives.” It seemed that guns, torture, and terror could defeat even the Mothers of the Plaza.
Little did the military regime know that, in churches around Buenos Aires, the Mothers continued to gather. They entered dark sanctuaries, as women do in cities all over the world every day. Some lit candles, then found a place in the pews to pray.
What the authorities couldn’t see was that the women were passing notes to each other as their heads were bowed. In these “silent meetings,” decisions were made without a word spoken aloud.
MOTHERS REAPPEARED
It must have been a great surprise to the military regime when, seemingly out of nowhere, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo stepped out of the darkened churches in May 1979, determined to formalize their organization. Within several years, their official membership numbered in the thousands.
The women returned to the Plaza. They wore flat shoes and white scarves embroidered with the names or initials of the relatives they were seeking.
White scarf graffiti began to appear on pavements and walls. The Mothers carried photos of their disappeared children.
Some days, after walking the circle, a few women would leave the square, take a megaphone down a side street and each tell her personal story. They learned that it was easier for people to identify with the agony of one parent lamenting the disappearance of one child than it was to grasp the notion of thousands who had disappeared.
THEY PROVED THAT COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS
This is a story without an ending. The women endured tear gas, nightsticks, arrest, and torture, but something had changed. The Mothers were determined that they’d never again retreat into silence and shadows.
Their visible courage was contagious. Onlookers who had been too afraid to stop long enough to acknowledge these ordinary-extraordinary women, now stood still to applaud the Mothers as they circled the square.
The Mothers inspired women in other countries to stand up to repressive regimes, and they helped bring the day, in December 1983, when Argentina inaugurated a democratically elected government.
In July 2005, the body of Azucena Villaflor was finally identified, along with the bodies of several other founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza. Forensic experts confirmed that they were victims of the junta’s “death flights” and had been flung from a military plane into the ocean or gulf. Villaflor’s remains were cremated. At the 25th Annual Resistance March of the Mothers, in December of 2005, her ashes were buried in the center of the Plaza de Mayo, to remain forever as a symbol of courage.
Now, the Mothers have become the “Grandmothers of the Plaza.” They support the work of finding their stolen grandchildren, using DNA to determine their existence and true identity. The story continues…
TO GO DEEPER
Circle of Love Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, edited by Matilde Mellibovsky, one of the founding Mothers. She collected the testimonies into a book, first published in Spanish in 1990, in English in 1996.
“U2 – Mothers of the Disappeared” (5:21 mins)
“Mothers of the Disappeared” / U2 cover by Evenstar (7:21 mins)
“Argentinean Mothers of the Plaza Commemorates 35 Years of Struggle” News Report overview (2:16 mins)
“Madres de la Plaza” slide show and song, by Bandido Urbano 83 (2:34 mins)
On museum visits, we view chipped vases decorated with images of women bearing water jars. In Sunday school, we learn about the woman-at-the-well.
(April, 2015) Last week’s World Water Forum was basically non-news, but social media was flush with photos of Siabatoa Sanneh, the strong and imaginative 43-year-old from Gambia who used the Paris Marathon to generate publicity about the water crisis.
(April, 2015) Women from the town of Sopore stood in the middle of Chanakhana Road earlier this month and threw earthenware pots to the dry ground. The clay shattered and traffic stopped. What good are pots, when there’s no water to fill them?
(February, 2015) Hundreds of women, some carrying babies, blocked traffic for seven hours to protest the water shortage in Loitokitok.
(February, 2015) Several women broke through security and invaded the hotel where organizers were planning the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, objecting primarily to the new golf course and luxury apartments being erected in the city.
(August, 2001) Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. This successful action inspired two films. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see YouTube clip below.) 
(January, 2014) Although Nigeria is one of the world’s major oil producers, the Niger Delta, where the oil is found, remains poor and undeveloped. Women in Bayelsa State blamed Shell. The oil company had not kept its promises to provide clean drinking water for the local population, replace a faulty generator, and renovate a school.
Lady Godiva was creative and compassionate. You gotta give her that. She may not, however, have been real. Or, she may have been real but her ride wasn’t. In any case, the legend lingers.
Only one man gave in to curiosity. “Peeping Tom” was struck blind for taking advantage of Godiva’s courage, compassion and vulnerability.
Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was at odds with patriarchy from the start. As a child with an eye for the practical, she vowed to learn Hebrew and Greek so she could determine if the Bible passages which seemed to grant men power over women had been properly translated.
After dress reform advocate Libby Miller introduced Turkish style pantaloons (later dubbed “Bloomers”), Stone began wearing the outfit and, in an even more daring move, cut her hair short. She seemed fearless in the face of public scorn and endured ridicule on the lecture circuit, but eventually found the cause too distracting.
Inspired by Henry David Thoreau who had spent a night in jail twelve years earlier for refusing to pay taxes in opposition to the US war with Mexico, Stone and Blackwell returned their bill for property taxes, unpaid. They sent along an explanation — that taxation without representation was a violation of American principles.
The world didn’t make sense to 32-year-old Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914). On the one hand, she was considered a French citizen, expected to obey the laws of her country and pay property taxes. As a woman, however, she was denied the right to vote. She began plotting a way to unhinge the unfair system.
Auclert was an energetic organizer, activist, and writer. She’d been drawn to Paris, eager to fight for women’s suffrage. She had no parents or spouse. She wrote,
In 1881, Auclert co-founded a newspaper, La Citoyenne [Female Citizen], with Antonin Levrier. She also organized petition drives, demonstrations, and boycotts. She traveled to England to meet with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and British suffragists. In 1885, although it was not legal, she ran for elected office, a symbolic gesture she repeated in 1910.
In 1908, she was arrested for symbolically smashing a ballot box during municipal elections in Paris, which she denounced as “unisexual suffrage.”
Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette