"Little Old Ladies" Still Giving Birth to Rebellion: Argentina's Madres de Plaza de Mayo
By Elizabeth Borland, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
The following is drawn from a chapter entitled “The Mature Resistance of Argentina’s Madres de Plaza de Mayo” that will appear in a book called Social Movements in Latin America: Globalization, Democratization, and Transnational Networks, which will be published by Rowman and Littlefield in Summer 2006. Please contact the author (borland@tcnj.edu) for complete information on cited references.
Many students of Women’s and Gender Studies have heard of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), women who became activists when their sons and daughters were “disappeared” during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983). People have long admired their courage because the Madres stood up to the military and contributed to the fall of the dictatorship. But most people would be surprised to learn that the Madres—who are now in their seventies and eighties—continue to be active in politics. In fact, they have spent much of their recent time and effort working on poverty, hunger, unemployment, and other social problems plaguing modern Argentina that seem unrelated to their original activism. To the Madres, these issues are intertwined with their earlier actions against the dictatorship. They draw on almost thirty years of activist experience, and their current work is shaped by the fact that they are now “viejitas” (little old ladies, a word they use to describe themselves). As part of my research on aging and activism, I ask what it means for the Madres to be activists who are viejitas, and how this identity informs their activism.
If being women and mothers was a tool of resistance and a shield from repression for the Madres during the dictatorship (as Marguerite Guzman Bouvard argues in her 1995 book Revolutionizing Motherhood), I think that being viejitas functions in a similar capacity for the Madres. Just as they were able to subvert patriarchal views about women’s roles as mothers during the dictatorship, today, they also indirectly challenge ageism. The fragility of being a viejita can be a strategic tool in the Madres’ activist claims. They use their identity as old women to shame opponents. For example, during a sit-in occupation and hunger strike inside the Cathedral of Buenos Aires in protest of hunger in Argentina in 2002, one Madres said: “the [Cardinal’s] secretary wants to throw us out of here, we who are a bunch of old ladies…but we are not going. We will stay here until tomorrow afternoon.” The quote displays an interesting combination of courage and fragility, as it plays on the idea that old women should not be harassed, even as they challenge the powerful Catholic Church and commit acts usually not associated with viejitas by engaging in a hunger strike.
Yet despite, or perhaps because of their age and their history, the Madres have a perpetual association with young people. They are always surrounded by images of youth in the young faces that stare out from the photos of the disappeared. If they were still alive, most of the disappeared would now be middle-aged, but they are forever young in photographs. The Madres demand that we remember the past and the disappeared, but at the same time, their recent activism is very much about the present and Argentina’s recent problems: soaring unemployment and poverty rates, neoliberal cutbacks to social programs, and other widespread social upheaval. Their activities put them in daily contact with young activists who are also working on these issues. As Diana Malamud, a young human rights activist leader explains, “They have been a great example of struggle and also of constancy; it gives one strength to keep fighting, above all in difficult times like the ones we are living in now.”
The Madres inspire young activists, and challenge them to find their own strength in the face of injustice. As Hebe de Bonafini said in 2002 in an interview published on the Madres website: In general, mothers say: ‘No, don’t go out, don’t get wet, don’t let anything happen to you, be careful”…We are the opposite, we say that you have to go out, when they pick up some kid [we say], “Let’s go to the police station, let’s face the milicos (the denigrating term the Madres use for the police or military), let’s get him out”…and the kids think, “Wow, I wish my mom was like that.”
As they act as watchdogs for contemporary human rights in Argentina and create connections with young activists, the Madres often speak about how they are “passing the torch” to the many young people active in progressive movements, just as they “took up the battle flags” of their own sons and daughters. By fostering relationships with these “kids,” the Madres become a bridge between past and present resistance.
The Madres have also amplified their role as mothers by nurturing fledgling movements, extending motherhood politically to protect and mentor young activists and organizations. The Madres lend protection in protest, and stand up for victims of repression as a human rights group with moral authority and ready public recognition. According to her grandson Pablo, 83-year old Madre Pepa de Noia tells him to leave the protests when they are marching: “When things get rough, she kicks me out, and tells me she is watching out for me [to keep me from] the police, but that she is going to stay.”
Although they may be viejitas, the Madres use the language of fertility and motherhood in describing these activities, “giving birth to rebellion.” They see it as a legacy for the future, a future that they recognize they will not live to see: “Our wish is that when the last day arrives, we can look back and find a furrow planted with love, with resistance, and watered with our tears….It will be others who harvest, it will be others who retake our path” (1995 Newsletter).
Thus, while Argentina’s disappeared may have been “frozen in time” by the violence of the Dirty War, the Madres are not stuck in the past. Over almost thirty years of activism, they have weathered military dictatorship, the solidification of democracy, neoliberal policies which transformed Argentina’s economy, and pardons of dictators. They have lived to witness a massive economic crisis, and recently, the Supreme Court’s declaration that amnesty laws are unconstitutional (July 2005). Over this time, they have gained activist experience, and they have become old women. Aging has affected their activism, and as viejitas they have become a bridge between past, present, and future. This is part of their living legacy, and it challenges all of us to recognize that little old ladies can still “give birth to rebellion.
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