Defeating Death
For over thirty years now, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been living to defeat death. While the Dirty War of Argentina is today just a memory, the Mothers gather every week for “Jueves en la Plaza.” They walk for thirty minutes around the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada. The plaza today has become one of the only original plazas in the world where people still gather to get their voices heard; it’s the political center of Argentina. However, when the mothers started their weekly walk, it wasn’t this way. The mothers risked their own lives in search of their missing children and to protect the human rights of all Argentine citizens. They not only demanded answers about the desparecidos, about their children, but they demanded change. They brought to the forefront the unspoken truth of Argentine society during the Dirty War: the fact that people were being tortured and murdered by the government. In 2006, the mothers made their final walk to demand social change in the Argentine political system. Twenty years after their first walk, the Mothers agreed that the government was no longer hostile to the desparecidos, they were no longer forgotten. Nevertheless, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo continue their weekly walk around the plaza in the quest for action in other causes. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo have become an international symbol for social and human rights. They have come to represent the possibility for change.