esma y madres de la plaza de mayo

this past week we got to delve into one of the periods of argentina´s history that is the most ugly, the most controversial, and the most hidden in some ways. i´m going to recount two of the activities we did in reverse of the order in which we did them, because thinking of the situation that way helped me to understand a little better what happened and how that´s still impacting argentina today. i´m not going to go into to many details, but i would really encourage you to check out some info about all this on the web or whatnot because it´s super interesting and super important.

bueno, esma used to be a military training school but during the military dictatorship in argentina between 1976 and 1983, it was turned into a place where the armada, or navy, tortured and kept "los desaparecidos", or politically oppossed people who were eventually killed and thrown into the southern atlantic in the famous "death flights". our group is one of the first tourist groups that has seen esma as is it now, an almost open museum for the public for the advancement of human rights. during our morning there we took a tour of the different buildings where people were kept and tortured. the group there now has done a very thourough investigation into the various ways in which the building was used, which has brought about disturbing conclusions. basically the navy men slept and ate and tortured all in the same building, night and day. they dragged the prisoners up and down the same stairs that they used to go from their offices to their food. they even had offices in the same area where torture occurred for years.

really it was rather creepy to be there for me, to walk around on the same ground and stare at blank walls where 5,000 people were tortured and most died. i think that it was good for me, because you can hear about torture about death, but you have no idea what that means for people, or as you´ll see later, for people´s relatives. there´s just no way to understand what happened and the inhumanity that happened right where i was.

the other group that we visited that is fighting for justice concerning los desapercidos is las madres de la plaza de mayo. these are women whose children, most of whom were in university at the time, were stolen right from inside their houses, and were never seen again. there is also a group called the las abuelas de la plaza de mayo, whose grandchildren were stolen from them. the mothers have ben trying to recover their children, tell them their true identity and bring them back into their family. what´s horrible is that some of the children were given to families who were friendly with the military government during the time, and raised as if they were a part of that family. all that i can really understand about their experience is the extreme emotional trauma that they went through and are still going through today because of what happened. the violation they experienced went as far as all of the furniture being taken from their houses and sold in businesses owned by sons of military leaders, who are still rich today from the profit.

we talked with one of the madres and later we went to the plaza to watch them march. the woman that we talked with was very forceful, very heartfelt, and very anti-bush. what i did appreciate was what she said that the mothers value, which is justice, love, friendship, citizenship, equality. but, our experiences seemed to be too different and our time together too short for our group to understand the evolution of the causes and role of the madres. it was an amazing conversation that i still haven´t quite grasped. the madres have been a political voice for justice since the time of the military dictatorship, but their voice has also evolved to include other political terms. somehow, in a way that i don´t understand, the mothers have adapted many causes and now are seen as leaders of a people´s movement of sorts. their story is amazing, heartbreaking. seeing old women be so strongly political on the left of the political spectrum was very different for me, i don´t really know how else to put it. i really appreciate the experience because i feel like it is opening my mind to the reality of different cultures and how history and trauma can shape the differences in between us in a way that no one person can justify or comprehend.


las madres in their weekly protest, which they have held every thursday for 30 years