The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo: Trauma after the Disappearance of Their Children and the Trafficking of Their Grandchildren
- Autores: Zoila Clark
- Localización: Ruptured Voices: Trauma and Recovery / coord. por Karen O´Donnell, 2019, ISBN 978-1-84888-372-7, págs. 13-24
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
In 1976, a military coup d'état occurred in Argentina in which many university students and their unborn children were kidnapped for having socialist ideals and for protesting against the state’s commitment to free international market policies that conflicted with the interests of national workers. The number of victims has been estimated at 30,000 people. Wearing the white cotton diapers of their children on their heads, the mothers walked counter-clockwise around the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential Pink House in protest. The children were given to rich people in the country, or taken abroad against their will. All the children born to the protestors were raised with new identities and educated in accordance with right-wing beliefs. I argue that the reason why The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo ended up forming a strong women’s movement, which continues to protest every Thursday in the same plaza to this day, is that it provides a means of confronting a double-pronged trauma that resists closure. I analyse the discourses in their historical documentary because they establish that their children gave them a reason for living. They also provide testimony as to how this sense of purpose was obliterated by the abductions and the ways in which the women have managed to find renewed meaning in their lives. The media have also documented legal cases where some grandmothers have gained a modicum of relief by recovering their grandchildren. However, while a number of younger grandchildren returned to their blood families, some of the older ones chose to live with their kidnappers. Ultimately, both grandmothers and grandchildren experienced different kinds of trauma.
