Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

I checked the news this morning to see if there was any explanation as to why I heard firecrackers and yelling last night after I went to bed. It may have had something to do with Argentina winning a gold medal in soccer in the Olympics. It's a preview of what I have to look forward to on Christmas. Hernan told me people go crazy with fireworks and a lot of people die. Great!

Anyway, instead of finding out the cause for celebration last night I found a story about the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo - the Grandmothers. They found grandchild number 93.

This relates to the conversation I had with Luis the other day. He was born in 1977, so maybe that is why he is upset with the grandmothers for wanting to create a DNA bank - he was born withing the years of the dictatorship (1976-83) and I guess would have to be tested. Maybe he's afraid of finding out his real mother was thrown in the river after he was born.

Watching the news recently, a big story was that two old guys, Bussi and Martinez, were on trial for the disappearance of a politician somewhere in the north. Bussi got sick during the first day of trial and had to be taken to the hospital for observation. He was deemed fit to stand trial and was fitted with oxegyn. He later apologized for his part in the crimes. Martinez, his co-defendent, who was also an old man in his 80's, read a statement that was replayed over and over again on the news. In his statement he complained that Argentina is the only country in the world that tries people for defending their homeland. He said that they were at war with terrorists and he was defending his country, and now HE is the one on trial.

I discussed this with Luis, who thinks it's time for Argentinians to just forget that there was a dictatorship and that 30,000 people disappeared. I told him that this defense of defending democracy was really interesting because they seemed to have forgotten about democracy in their efforts to save it. If these people that they picked up were guilty, as Luis seems to think, then they should have been charged with crimes and tried in court, rather than kidnapped, tortured and thrown in the river or ocean, sometimes while they were still alive. This is my same argument for those who are being kept at Guantanomo and other secret detention sites in the US and elsewhere. If we are defending democracy from some unknown threat, in order to preserve it, we need to use it and not throw it to the wayside.

Luis' response was that those guys were military and that is why they did not use democratic, legal means.

So, the abuelas and the madres continue to meet in the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday to maintain visibility for their cause to find justice, to find out what happened to their children, and to find their grandchildren, who were born in capitivity, and then given away to military families and their parents thrown in the river. No matter what criticisms people throw at the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, they may be communists, they may be terrorists, to me they are mothers doing what mothers do, and in doing that, they are the ones who are preserving democracy through their protests and their calls for justice.