The Surprising Two Sides of a Local Argentine Leader. What I’ve Learned About the Madres de Plaza de Mayo
One day in February 2022, I went to the Museo Del ISER (Instituto Superior de Enseñanza Radiofónica) aka the media, art, and culture museum in Buenos Aires. I went with one of my hostel's Spanish volunteers. She’d be mad that I called her Spanish as she’s from one region that has disputes with the mainland’s claim over them (there are roughly six of these) but I forget which it was.
The museum is in this big glass building with a smaller glass building inside of it shaped like an amorphous glass blob suspended in a larger structure. This smaller blob was closed at this time.
I couldn’t understand most of the exhibits as they were in Spanish. I find if I stare at an extended Spanish text long enough there are enough similar words to English and French that I can sometimes get the gist. I did my best but found myself getting bored. My travel companion had this trait similar to my mother where she would stand and read every exhibit in its entirety and sometimes read them multiple times.
I think people pick up this tendency for museum attentiveness from parents who dawdle in museums. As children, they learn to take their time so effectively while waiting for their parents to pore over every sign that they start to enjoy it. Then they subject their own children to it and create a new generation of museum dawdlers. While I am the child of a museum dawdler (and enjoy museums) I’m currently trying to break this generational trauma.
Anyway, our extended time at the museum gave me lots of time to think and research.
Among the exhibits was one room dedicated to a lady named Hebe de Bonafini. From what I could gather, she was an influential figure in holding the Argentine military junta of the 1980s responsible for disappeared children and a founding member of the Madres de Plaza De Mayo.
I won’t go into the whole history of the military junta takeover in 1980. Here’s a good article for that (and I may need to write about it later). In short, it was a military takeover of the country where the army (under the influence of the US and its allies) decided it needed to usurp the government and root out communists and all other forms of dissidence in the general population.
In a witch hunt with echoes of McCarthyism and the cultural revolution in China, anyone thought to be a communist party member or sympathizer was quietly spirited away to be interrogated and often killed. Their property was seized and assets were stolen. The casualties of this sad era totaled about 30,000 over six-ish years.
Alongside these abductions, 500 children disappeared. It is guessed that when women seen as dissidents were abducted, their children were redistributed to new families loyal to the regime. Today about 130 of these children have been found, coming forward as adults who realize they:
Look nothing like their parents
Can’t find a picture of their mother pregnant
See large holes in their family trees
This Mothers of Plaza de Mayo group was founded in 1977 by Hebe (and others). It was a group of mothers of these missing children who would go out into the streets (specifically the Plaza de Mayo) and demand answers from the government every Thursday. They would do this in groups of two as groups of three were considered group meetings which were not permitted. Shortly after, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo) was also formed by the grandmothers of said children.
While at first their efforts largely concerned getting the government to find and restore proper custody of these children, most of these children became legal adults in the 1990s making such claims to the children impossible.
After the 1990s, the Grandmothers changed tactics to awareness campaigns meant to get potential lost children to think about their heritage. This has since brought more children forward. The Mothers group split in half during the aftermath of the junta due to their response to the government’s reaction. One half focuses exclusively on finding out where their kids went and the other became an activist faction for the modern era.
The Madres have become quite well respected in Buenos Aires with some political clout. They even have their own university, Instituto Universitario Nacional de Derechos Humanos "Madres de Plaza Mayo"
Back to Hebe, it was obvious to me that the exhibit was meant to portray her as a key figure for human rights in Argentine history (and by all accounts, she was). There was a massive movie screen with her speaking along with an adjoining room documenting her entire life from girlhood to middle-aged activist. Finally, there was a small room, almost a shrine, with her famous Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo headscarf suspended on the head of a mannequin. It’s a simple white cloth with the words inscribed in elegant cursive on the brim. The room it’s displayed in is utterly dark except for a spotlight highlighting the thing. The crackly noise of a speech of hers recorded during the 80s flits ambiently off the soundproofed walls of the room.
In my opinion, museums (especially free ones) are a window into the opinions that the government - or the institutions that run them - wish the public to have. China has a plethora of free museums of varying quality that push a strong party line as to what the local people’s view of history should be. My favorite exhibit from China was a collage of Chinese farmers smiling with soldiers as they “voluntarily” left their homes to allow for the creation of the Three Gorges Dam.
While this exhibit seemed to deify Hebe, Argentinians I talked to had mixed views on her. Most believe the missing children issue was indisputably just, but other aspects of Hebe's campaigns are widely disparaged.
The Madres de Plaza de Mayo was driven in half in 1985 because Hebe was disappointed that the new president didn’t do more to prosecute members of the junta. Her half of the organization became more of a political faction. One that vocally and sometimes financially supported what some would consider terrorist groups.
This support included a statement from Hebe in 2001 supporting the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center. She declared herself staunchly against social democracy, capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, and the International Monetary Fund – all strong stances to have in almost any modern UN nation today. To me, it’s a prime example of a strong leader who was necessary in the hard times of junta control but became troublesome during the easy times after.
Despite the controversy, Hebe notably became best buddies with Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – the husband/wife duo that held the Argentine presidency between 2003-2007 and 2007-2015 respectively (talk about a power couple!). From the outside, this seems the likely relationship that put her in such good graces with the current government.
The drama of Argentine politics since the ’70s could fill volumes though I suppose the same could be said for any country. My biggest takeaway from museums in Argentina is that the current regime wants to make absolutely clear to its constituents that it has no relation to the military junta leaders of old. I’ve visited other public museums of a similar bent.
My Spanish friend and I went through a couple other exhibits before leaving that day. One was an exhibition of works of a famous cartoonist (no, not Mafalda) who I’ll need to look up. Finally, I’d had enough of looking at signs I couldn’t read and corroborating with Google. I left as the sun set and walked calmly down the tree-lined boulevard adjacent to the Plaza General San Martin.
Hope you found this interesting. Until next time,
-Peter