Mothers of the Disappeared, by Jo Fisher, Boston: South End Press, 1989.

Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Wilimington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994.

For centuries the Latin American marianismo tradition has defined appropriate behaviors and attitudes for Latin American women. On the basis of this tradition, women are assumed to be morally and spiritually superior to men. Sadness and mourning are also characteristics of marianismo. The image of the mater dolorosa, the grieving mother, is prominent among Latin American women. For the last two decades, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have embodied these elements publicly in the streets of Argentina. They have reshaped these images of powerlessness and redefined the parameters of motherhood, using the role of mother as a catalyst to form one of the most astonishing political movements of the late twentieth century.
In March 1976 a military junta assumed control of the Argentine government. Over the next seven years the junta carried out a "dirty war" against those suspected of subversive tendencies. As a result, thousands of people were "disappeared," their fates unknown to the families and friends left behind.(1) A group of bereft middle-aged mothers came together in their grief and despair to demand an accounting from the Argentine government. They became known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and their courageous and tireless efforts to obtain information about their lost loved ones and to hold the government of Argentina accountable for their disappearances were instrumental in focusing the attention of the world on the unsavory activities of the Argentine military. The story of how these formerly apolitical women challenged a vicious military regime is told in the texts examined here, largely in the Mothers' own words.
Although several books were written about Argentina"s "dirty war," Mothers of the Disappeared, published in 1989, was one of the first books to focus exclusively on the activities of the Mothers.(2) Fisher's interviews with the Mothers make up nearly the entire text, and the story is thus told in the words of the women who lived it. Descriptions of events are arranged in rough chronological order. Fisher's narrative comments are unobtrusive, serving only to introduce a subject or to provide necessary background information. She allows the testimonies of the Mothers to speak for themselves. In developing her analysis, Fisher consulted a number of secondary sources. However, the interviews with the Mothers are Fisher's primary and most significant resource material.(3)
In contrast, in Bouvard's book the author is clearly the teller of the tale. Bouvard also relied extensively on interviews with the Mothers, but her book provides considerably more background, analysis, and commentary than Fisher's work. The Mothers' comments appear occasionally, but they do not make up the main body of the text. Bouvard had the advantage of compiling her work at a later time than Fisher, so that a more extensive collection of primary documents was available. However, the muzzling of the press during the period of military dictatorship largely eliminated the Argentine newspapers as a resource even for Bouvard. Her newspaper sources are contemporary only as they apply to the more recent activities of the Mothers. The articles she consulted were nearly all published after 1990, and although the Mothers were (and are) still active, the development of their movement predates much of Bouvard's source material by more than a decade.
On the other hand, Circle of Love Over Death is a work apart. It was written by Matilde Mellibovsky, who is herself one of the founding Mothers. Like Fisher and Bouvard, Mellibovsky interviewed many of the Mothers, and she used these interviews to tell their story. Her own experience is interwoven with the interviews, not as that of a dispassionate observer but as that of an active participant. Mellibovsky and the Mothers with whom she spoke wanted to make sure that their children would be remembered, and it is on the disappeared children that the narratives focus. Each woman's testimony is introduced by her name and the name and age of her missing child, and the date of the child's disappearance. The testimonies themselves constitute the text as well as the source material. Mellibovsky was undeterred by her lack of scholarly credentials, and stated her challenge in unambiguous terms: "I propose to achieve something that goes beyond my strength. With a scream of rage and rebellion I challenge the prejudiced notion that only those with a university education have the capacity to achieve."(4) Her challenge was successful; of the three, Mellibovsky's book is the least scholarly but the most readable and by far the most powerful.
Each author describes her purpose in the first pages of the works. Bouvard mentions that her research on the Mothers was part of an "oral history project on women human-rights activists around the world."(5) Her stated intention helps explain her emphasis on the Mothers' activism and her own lengthy analysis of it. As she became absorbed in the movement through her research in Argentina, she temporarily set aside the larger project to focus on the Mothers' story. The book's primary subject is the political movement which developed as a result of the Mothers' activism, and their comments are included mainly to emphasize Bouvard's points.
Fisher states in her preface that "The sole aim of this book is to give a voice to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo." (6) This goal was achieved to the extent that her book consists almost entirely of transcripts of recorded interviews. Much of the content of the interviews is autobiographical, as the Mothers describe their lives and families before the disappearances began, including their own childhood, education, and marriages. The book is the story of the Mothers themselves, of their lives, their families, and their introduction to political activism.
Mellibovsky's intention was equally clear. She wanted the next generations to know the Mothers and their children, and to know exactly what happened. In her own eloquently simple words, "What I would like most is to sit beside you and to tell you everything . . . The book is my effort to sit beside everybody." (7) The tone of the book is indeed conversational, as the Mothers relate the terrible events that led to their activism. They lovingly describe their children's lives, their infancy and toddlerhood, their talents and accomplishments, their idiosyncrasies, and their concern for social justice. Their accounts are so profoundly personal and immediate that the reader is filled with a sense of involvement, as though she were reading a letter from an old and much-loved friend.
Although the Mothers' story is presented somewhat differently in each of these texts, it is recognizably the same story. The process of the Mothers' political development is clearly traced in each work, and can be seen as a natural and predictable outgrowth of their roles as mothers. Each of the Mothers moved, in her own way and time, from "ordinary" mother and housewife, to anguished and terrified parent of a disappeared child, to outraged and militant political activist.
Prior to the disappearance of their children, the Mothers had been "primarily homemakers, content with their absorption in family and household and expressing little interest in the world beyond."(8) Fisher's work includes many comments from the Mothers such as these: "I didn't know about anything really. . . . The coups never seemed to affect me. If you don't go out to the streets you don't see anything." "Before all this I'd hardly ever been outside my home." Even the fiery, outspoken leader of the Mothers, Hebe de Bonafini, told Fisher, "After I got married I closed myself off. The rest of the world wasn't important to me. . . . I was a mother of five children . . . I didn't have time to think about politics. The rest of the world didn't interest me." "My life had been the life of a housewife--washing, ironing, cooking and bringing up my children, just like you're always taught to do, believing that everything else was nothing to do with me."(9) The Mothers in Circle of Love speak less of their lives prior to 1976, before the disappearances. They reveal their pre-disappearance lives in more subtle ways, describing their fears at being involved in something so public, after years of virtual seclusion within their homes. "My first times in the circle I was very scared." (10) Their lives before and after the disappearances are sharply divided: "Absolutely everything that happened from then on is related to that fateful night. In our lives, a 'before' and an 'after' make their appearance."(11) Mellibovsky says simply, "Life is totally different now." (12)
What did not change was the role as a mother, and the accompanying maternal tasks. For months and in some cases years after the disappearances, the women continued to clean and maintain their children's rooms, change the bed linen, keep freshly washed clothing ready, cook their favorite foods, so as to be always and immediately prepared for their return. (13) The tasks and habits of motherhood could not be put aside or abandoned in the unexplained absence of the child who had been, and would continue to be, at the center of a woman's life. The desperate search for a missing child was simply an extension of a mother's duty, incorporated by each of the Mothers into their daily maternal tasks.
The Mothers' frantic search efforts were at first carried out alone. Bouvard notes that initially, "As Argentine women in a traditional society, they were wary and did not speak to the others around them." (14) As the women began to see the same anguished faces in the prisons and police stations, they began tentatively to offer suggestions and advice to each other and to compare notes. One Mother, Azucena de Villaflor De Vincente, opened her home to them and they began to meet to plan their strategies.(15) It was Azucena's idea to take their cause to the Plaza de Mayo, where they might attract the attention of officials and passers-by and confront General Videla about the disappearances.(16)
At first the Mothers did not seriously question the government or the Church. Bouvard notes that they "regarded themselves as good citizens and church members." (17) Many of the Mothers were devout Catholics, and their first thought was to turn to the Church for help when catastrophe struck. But the Church that they had supported and trusted all their lives could not, would not, help them. Simpson and Bennett, co-authors of The Disappeared and the Mothers of the Plaza, observed that "The Church as a whole was noteworthy for its silence during the years of repression . . . . Very few priests took up the cases of people who had disappeared."(18) The unwillingness of the Church to speak out against the brutality of the junta was a bitter betrayal, a betrayal which many of the Mothers would never forgive. Rita de Krichmar told Fisher that, "The church (sic**) was the worst of all. They were more terrible than anyone could imagine . . . The church was very false. Very false." Marina de Curia said, "The church . . . threw us out when we asked for a mass for the desaparecidos."(19) Many of the Mothers would eventually turn their backs on the Church which had turned its back on them. In their commitment to telling the whole truth, the Mothers have been outspoken in their criticism of the Church's position during the dirty war. Mellibovsky writes:

This tragedy took away my most profound religious convictions. I had been brought up in a deeply religious household. Now I question my religion and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. I have found proof of how far they are from what the Gospel preaches. The attitude of most of the members of the Catholic Church has made me feel swindled, defrauded.(20)

The failure of the Church to oppose the activities of the junta was a primary factor in the radicalization of the Mothers. Argentina has a long history of close partnership between the military and the Church. The stance of the Church toward women is and always has been support of traditional women's roles as wives and mothers. The Mothers had every reason to believe that the Church would assist them in the pursuit of the intrinsically maternal goal of locating their disappeared children. But when the aims of the Mothers and the junta were in conflict, the Church refused to side with the Mothers, thereby abdicating its position as the protector and advocate of the family. In some cases the Church actively supported and participated in the junta's nefarious activities, destroying its credibility with the Mothers in the process.
Often the Mothers could not even meet in the churches. Dora de Bazze told Fisher, "Only the smallest churches, a long way out, lost in the middle of nowhere, would let us in. The rest closed their doors when they found out we were Mothers." Aída de Suárez spoke for many of the Mothers when she said, "It was a terrible shock for a believer like myself to go to the church for help, for support and solidarity and to have the doors closed in our faces." (21) Groups of Mothers visited the Pope on at least four different occasions, but he would not listen to them or agree to help them. Hebe de Bonafini was present on two of these occasions. She remains outraged and unforgiving, and her criticisms of the Church are harsh and blunt:

We believed the church would support us, that they, more than anyone else, would defend the right to life and the security of the family. . . . If they had spoken out this never would have happened. The church was an accomplice in the genocide. They provided the priests to bless the weapons of the military, they gave confession to the torturers. When we went to them in desperation they used our information for the support of the dictatorship. Except for a few honorable exceptions, they refused to give us masses for the desaparecidos, they refused to give us a place to meet. They closed their doors on the Mothers. (22)

The Mothers of the Plaza were women who had accepted without question the Church's definition of their primary roles as wives and mothers. It was within the context of these roles that the Mothers came together and sought the help of the Church. The Church's refusal to support them as mothers was, to a large extent, the catalyst for the Mothers' rejection of the traditional mater dolorosa image. Neither the Church nor the junta expected that a few grieving, sorrowful mothers would defy the marianismo tradition in favor of a radical redefinition of the maternal role.
The supreme irony of the success of the Mothers' political activism lies in the fact that the public space they claimed was safely open to them only because they were women. The presence of a group of angry men in the Plaza de Mayo would never have been tolerated by the military, and in any event the fathers of the disappeared still had to work. Women, on the other hand, were not perceived as a threat, at least not at first. Fisher wrote, "After their success in stamping out all organized resistance of working-class and political organizations, the military dismissed as laughable the suggestion that a group of women could pose any threat to their position."(23) When the Mothers continued to come to the Plaza, they were called las locas, the madwomen. Aída de Suárez told Fisher, "Of course they called us mad. How could the armed forces admit they were worried by a group of middle-aged women?" Marina de Curia said, "They didn't destroy us immediately because they thought we couldn't do anything, and when they wanted to, it was too late."(24)
The conflict in values which was apparent to the Mothers was made public by their presence in the Plaza. Fisher explains:

The military had acquired much of their moral authority by promoting themselves as the only ones capable of defending the values of Christianity and the family in the face of a threat from 'Marxist subversives.' They found themselves confronted by the very image which, in a vision they shared with the church, personified the stability and order of family life. They did not know how to react to the silent and accusing presence of the Mothers in the square, and in their underestimation of the strength and determination of the women, they fell victim to the misconceptions of their own machismo. (25)

Because the authorities underestimated the determination of the Mothers, they did not immediately react forcibly against them. In the brief space opened up by this refusal to take the women seriously, the Mothers coalesced into a powerful political force, and as Marina de Curia observed, by that time it was too late to stop them.
Their status as women did more than just make a space for them, however. The traditional mother's role is an integral, although expanded, part of the activism of the Mothers. The women believe that it is because they are women and mothers that they have had the strength to persevere. Their notions about female strength and courage as products of maternity challenge the ideas of mainstream feminism, and force a reassessment of feminist politics within the context of motherhood. Paradoxically, the Mothers of the Plaza are "radically traditional" in their views of men and women. One woman told Fisher, "If a mother loses a child she would risk anything. That's why it was the women who were fighting." Another said, "Men think more before doing something. I think a mother doesn't think if her child is in danger. . . . It seems men have less resistance to all this. Not that a father doesn't love his children as much but a woman is stronger . . . for having suffered the pain of childbirth." Hebe de Bonafini, in her outspoken way, had this to say:

It wasn't less dangerous for women but perhaps a mother is prepared to take more risks. We had less fear. My husband was scared to death . . . . And women have more willpower. Men get tired quicker and give up. When a woman gives birth to a child she gives life and at the same time, when they cut the cord, she gives freedom. We were fighting for life and for freedom. . . . Women, because we are stronger, and mothers, because we give life and we will defend life as many times as is necessary. (26)

For the Mothers of the Plaza, their motherhood was not only the source of their power but the instrument of their politicalization. The black mantilla of the mourning mother was rejected in favor of the white pañuelo, the symbol of childhood which has become the proud badge of mothers who refuse to grieve in helpless and invisible silence.(27)
The political goals of the Mothers have broadened over the last two decades. Bouvard documents their political development, and the shift to what she calls "maternal politics." She describes maternity as defined by the Mothers as "a new form of political participation." (28) The values of love and compassion which are usually associated with women and especially with mothers are values which the Mothers want to integrate into the political system and the larger society. Their courage and dedication have given Argentina and the world an example of what can be accomplished by a handful of angry and determined women seeking justice for their children.
None of the Mothers fights only for her own child. The strength for their struggle has grown through their solidarity with each other and with all the families of disappeared children. In a radical transformation of the role of motherhood, they have expanded their hearts to encircle not just their disappeared children but "all of the present and future youths of Argentina." (29) The change in the mothers' perspective is not a philosophical change, but an experiential one, based on intuitive knowledge. One Mother said, "The child of one is the child of all of us, not only those who are missing, but the ones who are fighting for their rights today. . . . We learned this from our guts, not from philosophic concepts." This constitutes the very essence of "women's ways of knowing," the process by which women move beyond external knowledge and learn to trust their own inner experience in a radical perceptual shift. (30) María del Rosario explained it this way: "When you begin to fight you realize the struggle isn't about a child, it's about a system which destroys everyone who thinks, everyone who disagrees. So one child is converted into thousands of children and the struggle takes on a different meaning." María speaks for all the Mothers when she says, "I have socialized my maternity."(31) The intimate and personal has become the global and political for these Argentine women. Matilde Mellibovsky, in her eloquent way, explains why she and the other Mothers must maintain their presence in the Plaza de Mayo: "Of course we'll come back. Who can doubt it? And I will remain with them. Here they claim the whole world's attention. From these paths in the Plaza, summoned by the presence of these children, the Mothers become the world's moral conscience." (32) A role as public as "the world's moral conscience" is a new one for Argentine women, steeped as they are in the housebound traditions of marianismo. But the image of an anguished woman searching for her missing child is an old one. Demeter, in her fury, was able to render the entire earth barren until Persephone was returned to her. In twentieth-century Argentina, as in ancient mythical Greece, the power of an outraged mother is a power that can change the world.

Notes
Works Cited