A Seventh Year of Unknowing

A group of women in Argentina spend most of their time asking one question. They've done so for six years. They say, for them, there is no other question. They ask the government what it has done with their children. Are they alive or dead?

More than 10,000 people, probably as many as 30,000, disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and the end of 1979. Half of them were under the age of 30. Early on, some women joined together to search for their missing children and husbands. Most of these women were housewives. Few had any interest in politics. They were out of context in that arena. Their interest was to recover those they loved. The women came to be known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Until recently many Argentines did not believe that there was any reason to listen when the Mothers pleaded for an answer from their government. Some sneered at the women. Now, after the Falklands debacle and with the economy in shambles, there is more and more talk about government treachery. Morality has become essential; a country struggles for it. The Mothers are revered now as that country's conscience.

In March, 1976, the military took power from Isabel Peron's corrupt civilian government. For more than 40 years, Argentina had zig-zagged between civilian and military rule. Now the country was on its knees. Inflation soared at 450 per cent. Marxist guerrillas and rightist vigilante groups lunged at each other and succeeded mainly in terrorizing Argentine society.

There were frequent bombings and shoot-outs in the streets. Charred and bullet-ridden bodies, left here and there, had become a common sight. Kidnapping was a popular leftist strategy.

Ransom monies paid for more arms. Many Argentines quietly welcomed the military junta with its pledge of a return to stability.

On the first day of its rule, the military declared a process of "national reorganization." Congress, political parties, business associations, and labor, professional, and student organizations were all suspended, as were most civil rights. The junta amended Argentina's constitution, thus legalizing its own rule.

The judiciary was stocked with military men. Many businesses unofficially came under military control. Right-wing economic policies were instituted. Social sciences were greatly restricted in Argentine universities. Marx, Freud, and Einstein were described as subversive theorists who undermined Christian values. It was these values which the military had seized power to protect, they said. With the ferocity of holy warriors, the military promised to destroy all traces of subversion once and for all in Argentina.

Soon men in unmarked cars were arriving at homes, restaurants, and work places. At first they came when it was dark; then they grew bold. They claimed to be under police or military orders, and they took people away for questioning. Most of these people never returned.

"It was a time when everything broke down," said Robert Cox, who edited the Buenos Aires Herald from the early 1970s until December, 1979. "There had been an enormous amount of ruthlessness from the Left. A climate was created where very decent people could say, as I've heard them say: 'I don't care what they do to the guerrillas. Burn them. Put them in ovens.'

"A few of the disappeared actually were guerrillas. Some may have been on the fringe of things. Many were totally innocent.

"People didn't want to know about any of this. They became angry if the disappearances were mentioned. The silence was tremendous."

Lines began to form in front of government offices. Relatives of the missing, mostly mothers, would come day after day begging for information. Government officials would rarely speak with them. When they did, the mothers were told that there was no record of their children's detention. Some of the women began to turn to each other for comfort. Thus the Mothers Movement was born.

Hebe Pastori Bonafini, once a dressmaker, is now president of the Mothers Organization. She has two sons. Both divided their time between office work and university studies. One was interested in the union movement and loved to sing. Both were in their twenties when they disappeared.

Her hands turn into fists when she speaks of them: "Every morning when I wake up, I think only about my sons and about what I can do to take them from where they are. It is as if lions grew inside of me, and I am not afraid."

The Mothers decided to submit a petition describing their anguish and need for redress. Their statement included many names of the missing. When the government refused to accept the petition, as it still does, the women began a silent, illegal protest. As the number of disappearances grew in Argentina, so did the group of silent, walking women. Every Thursday they walk one by one, in a circle, in front of government offices in the Plaza de Mayo. Each wears a white handkerchief embroidered with the names of her missing children.

Yet the majority of families never publicly acknowledged that relatives were missing. There was a pervasive feeling in Argentina that reporting a disappearance to authorities might be signing that person's death warrant. To stir things up would, at the very least, cause more danger and reprisals. Some families felt that, as day follows night, in time the innocent would return. It was better then not to meddle but to let things take their course. Human rights agencies estimate that for every disappearance recorded, there were probably three which were not.

Accounts of the disappearances reached the U.S. State Department. Patt Derian, assistant secretary for human rights in the Carter administration, visited Argentina several times on fact-finding missions. As early as 1977, Derian was told by Argentine generals that they had "broken the back of the guerrilla movement."

The military refused to make public this statement, and the disappearances continued. In 1978 the U.S. embargoed arms sales to Argentina until the human rights situation there was improved.

"Certainly Argentina had a terrorist problem," Derian said, "but their response was to institutionalize terrorism. If someone was suspected of subversion, persons whose names were found in his or her address book would probably be brought in for questioning. If someone didn't like the way you looked, you could be picked up. People were encouraged to inform on one another.

"Even if the interrogators, who routinely tortured, became convinced of your innocence, after having been at a secret prison for just a few days, you knew enough about operations there to be a security risk. None of these prisons supposedly existed.

"Sometimes people were tortured for years. After a while some would confess to anything just so the torture would end. The military didn't know how to stop this campaign once they had begun. I'm not sure they wanted to stop."

In 1978 the Argentine Supreme Court referred to a "prevalent absence of justice." By then thousands of writs of habeus corpus had been filed to obtain the release or ascertain the whereabouts of the disappeared. Every one of the writs was dismissed from the courts because the military refused the judiciary information about the missing.

Besides the disappeared persons, at least 5,000 political prisoners had been held for prolonged periods in "preventive detention." For most there were no charges or trials. Lawyers who worked with political prisoners or families of the disappeared would themselves often disappear.

According to an Organization of American States (OAS) report, Daniel Antokoletz, who disappeared on November 10, 1976, was one of Argentina's most distinguished attorneys and university professors. Maria Adela Gard de Antokoletz, a tiny, majestic woman more than 70 years of age, vice president of the Mothers Organization, spoke about her son: "Daniel's work was geared to the defense of political prisoners. How can anybody say that he was subversive when he acted in broad daylight, without arms, doing the work that he had sworn to do? What sort of subversion is that?"

In 1979, the OAS planned to send a commission to investigate allegations of widespread human rights violations in Argentina. As the commission's scheduled arrival time approached, reports were leaked from the U.S. State Department: the secret detention camps were being dismantled; mass murders of the captives were in progress.

While the OAS commission was in Argentina, the junta passed a law. Pat Derian called it "one of the most cynical moves a government has ever made." Any person whose disappearance had been reported between November, 1974 and September, 1979 could be declared legally dead, if after a few weeks of newspaper advertisements nothing new was learned of the person's whereabouts. Either a relative or the government could begin such proceedings.

Very few relatives, even today, have used this law for any reason. That there was such a law probably increased a family's fear of publicly reporting a disappearance. Still, during the OAS visit, relatives stood sometimes 10 hours in lines waiting to record the names of missing family members with the commission.

"Many people in Buenos Aires would stare at those lines," Robert Cox recalled. "Frequently one could overhear: 'I didn't know that so many were gone.'

"Sometimes people would ask me about the lines and were confused when I explained. 'Who disappeared? They're not in jail or being tried? Where are they? Can this be true?' Some still thought all this talk of missing persons was only a leftist propaganda campaign."

Dr. Jose Westerkamp, noted Argentine physicist and human rights activist, said in May of last year, "Even now more than half of Argentina doesn't realize that widespread disappearances ever occurred."

The OAS visit was largely ignored by Argentina's press. And the junta launched a nationalistic advertising campaign portraying the commission as an irresponsible interference in Argentine internal affairs.

In 1980 the commission published its report, which concludes: "The decision to form the command units that were involved in the disappearance and possible extermination of thousands of persons was adopted at the highest level of the armed forces....All moral and legal considerations were dispensed with...."

Argentina is full of horror stories. A construction worker told of massive group graves which are now paved-over parking lots. Children scuba-diving in lakes have been said to surface screaming and vomiting after they had untangled themselves from headless and handless corpses. Many of these reports have been verified by Amnesty International, which has stated, "Regularly, in various places throughout the country, unidentified bodies are found floating in rivers, at the bottom of lakes, decomposing on rubbish dumps or blown to bits in quarries."

April 28 marks an anniversary. Six years ago the Mothers first gathered publicly to plead for information. Now as then their cry is the same: where are our children?

"If the children are being held somewhere, and there are charges against them, these charges must be made public through legal channels." Hebe spoke for her group. "We do not ask for an unconditional return of our children. We ask for a return to legality. If our children are dead, give us their bodies. Let us have that much. Let us finally know, for sure, that they have been killed."

For some of the Mothers this demand for an accounting has become a political position, but many of them don't believe that their children are dead. "What if I stop searching, and she is still alive somewhere?" one mother said.

Occasionally word comes to the Mothers from a chaplain or an officer. "They're alive. Someone saw them. Secret camps."

But in the fall of 1982 more than a thousand bodies were found in unmarked graves in Argentina. The government has not yet allowed the bodies to be exhumed for identification.

For six years the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have lived with a nightmarish hope that pierces and pulls at them and keeps their losses fresh. These women came together at the moment when any organized protest movement in Argentina was most in danger.

By far the majority of the women lived modest, essentially private lives. They joined the group quietly, one by one. The movement continued to grow even after several group leaders disappeared. Now 2,500 mothers are members of the organization.

"At first each mother thinks that she is alone, that she is the only one," said Maria Adela. "Little by little she comes to understand what has happened in our country. Then she changes and searches not only for her son, but for all our children. We work for all the children."

Officials have given various explanations for the Mothers. The government sometimes has said that these were barren women hallucinating that the military had stolen the children of their dreams. More often, without further explanations, authorities have tried to dismiss the Mothers as las locas--"the crazy ones."

Foreign diplomats were occasionally told that these women belonged to an international clandestine leftist conspiracy. From time to time the government has said that it shares the Mothers' distress, but that Marxist guerrillas dressed in stolen military uniforms were responsible for Argentina's disappeared. Sometimes the police simply said that the Mothers were tourists strolling in the Plaza.

"The fathers did not march with us because of our special request." As always, Maria Adela spoke softly and firmly. "We wanted to be women alone. We thought that the men would be the first victims--that they would be imprisoned and would surely disappear. Enough had been taken away from us already."

As early as 1977, Patt Derian had told the generals, "The United States is most concerned with the Mothers' well-being." If the junta considered it politically unwise to destroy the organization, it did what it could to terrorize it. The Mothers often received death threats. "If I am killed, who will fight for my children? This is my great fear," one of the Mothers has said.

There were threats that other children still at home with some of the Mothers would disappear in reprisal for the women's activities. Some did. Scores of Mothers lost their jobs.

The women were often beaten as they walked in their silent circle in the plaza; many times they were dragged away by their hair. Provocateurs, civilian or plainclothes military, would regularly jeer at the Mothers. "Isn't it a little late now?" they'd laugh. "Why did you let them take your son at all? What kind of mother are you, anyway?"

"These were terrible times," Hebe remembered. "One night a number of Mothers were arrested. Forty of us shared a cell that night with a dead young man. On seeing him, the pain came back. We didn't know if he was one of our sons. The police do these kinds of things to put pressure on us, to show us how powerful, how regrettably powerful they are."

The larger the Mothers Organization grew, the more it was harassed. For a period of nearly two years, its leaders considered it too dangerous to meet openly in the Plaza de Mayo. "So we started going every Thursday to the same church to convey to others how we worked and what we did," Hebe explained. "In the middle of our prayers Maria Adela used to stand up and say, 'Well ladies, now we are going to do such and such'; then we'd continue praying. In this way we kept abreast of events, but with great caution."

In 1979 the Catholic church closed many of its doors to the Mothers. Argentina has 80 bishops; the Mothers have said that for years only two gave them any support. Few priests would say Masses for the disappeared. The clergy insulted the women and pressured them to put an end to their protests.

But in 1980 the church began to stand behind the Mothers' prayers for information. By this time widespread disappearances had ceased. "If the church had spoken out years ago, many of the missing would still be here," said one of Argentina's human rights leaders.

Like the Argentine church, Argentine information sources said little about either the disappearances or the Mothers Movement until 1980. The Buenos Aires Herald, owned by a U.S. newspaper chain, was the only exception. Despite numerous death threats to its editor, Robert Cox, the Herald regularly carried both news and strong editorial comment on these issues.

Jacobo Timerman's L'Opinion had been covering them as well, before his newspaper was expropriated in 1977 and subsequently closed. The junta had passed a law in 1976 which forbade "the dissemination of news for the purpose of discrediting the activities of the security forces." Approximately 100 journalists disappeared after ignoring that statute.

Newspapers did often accept paid advertisements from the Mothers Organization. Lists of the disappeared could be published, but only in that format. La Prensa, a large Buenos Aires newspaper, once printed a whole supplement filled only with names of the disappeared. Since disappearances were seldom mentioned in news columns, the Mothers' advertisements added to a feeling that perhaps these women were las locas.

"I was terrified that the Mothers would disappear," Robert Cox said. "Publicity was their only protection, and they had so little. We kept a watch: someone from the Herald would attend their meetings and marches; we always wanted a witness there with the Mothers."

There was a more private terrorism at work as well. Latin families traditionally provide close mutual support. But many of the Mothers discovered that they were no longer welcomed by family and friends. One mother was told, "Let's pray for your son; let's forget him. Please, you mustn't come here anymore."

"People wouldn't talk to the Mothers," Cox has said. "It was as though they feared disappearances might be contagious.

"I do remember one man, a 90-year-old American. He made himself an honorary Mother and attended as many of their meetings as he could. But he was one of the very few who would even be seen with them."

With such a climate at home, the Mothers began to ask for help outside their country. By early 1978 the women were donating to a travel fund. A few of the Mothers visited the United States and Europe to explain for all the Mothers what was happening in Argentina. They spoke with high-level diplomats, politicians, and religious and community leaders from around the world.

In 1980 the Mothers Organization was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the prize for his work with the poor in Latin America, is a longtime friend of the Mothers Movement and a fellow Argentine. He considers his award to be the Mothers' award as well. On many Thursdays, Perez Esquivel walks with the women.

Argentina has longed in recent decades to recover its once stellar status in the Western community; international censure wasn't easy for Argentina to swallow. For whatever mix of reasons, that one among them, in late 1979 the junta began referring to the successful completion of its campaign against subversion. Disappearances became infrequent.

"Argentina was fighting a dirty war which went beyond good and evil." High-ranking military officers use this sentence again and again when asked to justify their methods.

"If there were charges against those who disappeared, why weren't they brought to trial?" Emilio Mignone, an attorney and founder of several of Argentina's human rights agencies repeatedly counters with those words. "No government is above the law," he says. "A crime is a crime."

His daughter Monica was taken from the Mignone residence by six heavily armed men who promised her parents that she would be home again in a few hours. That was on May 14, 1976. Monica, who was 24 when she disappeared, worked as an educational psychologist in Buenos Aires slums.

"She worried about those people." Her mother speaks quietly with a voice that soothes as it penetrates. "Monica felt that people must help each other. This was her crime."

Angelica Mignone has been a member of the Mothers Movement from its beginnings. Emilio Mignone, who has served as director of education for the O AS and as undersecretary of education for several previous military regimes, now spends most of his time providing legal assistance to families of the disappeared.

In the spring of 1981 the president of Argentina's military government traveled to Washington. Jimmy Carter, with his high-priority human rights policy, was now out of the White House. Ronald Reagan was vitally interested in securing Argentina's continued support for the fight against alleged hemispheric communist expansion. Indeed, it was reported by CBS News in March of 1982 that Argentine troops were working in conjunction with U.S. military advisers in El Salvador.

Human rights issues under the Reagan administration would be talked over, as befits friends, through "quiet diplomacy." Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan's ambassador to the U.N., described the human rights situation in Argentina as "much improved." Yet when President Viola was asked at a news conference during his visit if there would be an accounting of Argentina's disappeared, he answered, "If Hitler had won the war, Nuremburg would have been held in Virginia."

Members of the junta have said over and over that there are no disappeared people in Argentina. Paradoxically, this government has repeatedly promised to make public its lists of the disappeared, within a "reasonable period of time."

The United States is now considering an end to the arms embargo against its ally. Last year Congress agreed to do so if Reagan could certify marked improvement on human rights in Argentina. An administration spokesman said that Argentina was "on the way" to being given the arms sale go-ahead when the Falklands were invaded. Secretary of State Shultz has the matter under advisement.

In the aftermath of the disappearances, still other domestic problems remain in Argentina. Hundreds of women are raising their grandchildren now that their children are gone. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo hope to establish a foundation in order to give "in a dignified manner" to those grandmothers, to the families most in need.

But in some cases grandchildren too have disappeared. No less than 100 children below the age of seven are missing. Some journalists and social workers say the figure is 800 or higher. More than 80 pregnant women were taken away.

Although these disappearances occurred years ago, many relatives are just acknowledging them now. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an affiliate of the Mothers Organization, are compiling documented cases. Every month a few more women come forward to ask for help in searching for their grandchildren, some of whom they have yet to meet.

When government officials are contacted, they usually "know nothing" about such disappearances. Occasionally the grandmothers are told by authorities that they raised one generation to become subversive and thus forfeited their right to be entrusted with yet another.

Some of these grandchildren have been adopted by childless military couples; some have been located living in other countries. In 1979, for example, two small children were abandoned in a plaza in Valparaiso, Chile. No one knew for sure where they had come from. Soon they were adopted. Much later a social worker began investigations which enabled the children to be identified. Their parents were among Argentina's disappeared. How the children arrived in Chile is an unanswered question.

Sometimes adoptive parents welcome grandmothers into their children's lives. Other times painful issues of custody and visitation rights arise. But for most of the women, tracing missing grandchildren is like following invisible threads. Still, Hebe expressed confidence that "little by little we will be able to find all our grandchildren."

The Mothers' headquarters is always bustling." Dr. Westerkamp twinkled and grinned as he spoke. "Whether it's day or night, you'll see rooms full of women. Everybody moves very quickly, busy with dozens of different projects. The Mothers are always thinking of new ways to fight for information. I wonder sometimes how one building can hold so much energy at one time."

The women occasionally hold 10-day fasts to draw attention to the disappeared . They distribute a monthly newsletter and have recently published a collection of poems written for their children. Angelica Mignone writes:

To my darling Monica:

How many things you did in twenty-four years--
Work, study, shared time and love.
What you could have done in a long life,
you did in twenty-four years.
You always remembered the hands of the poor people.
You dreamed a country free and serene.
Many times I remember you lying down
in the backyard
of the grandparents' house looking at the stars.
My dear, always we feel you very close
and we know that one day, sooner or later, justice will come.
All of us are together, very strong.
You can be sure that we share your ideals.
My sweet Monica, we continue your road.
Your presence is with us.
And a big kiss.

Mama.

The Mothers want as many people as possible to know about the disappearances, "to prevent this from happening ever again, anywhere in the world," as one of them has said.

They act as a watch in Argentina. Last winter a young woman disappeared. All evidence suggested another government abduction. The Mothers were notified and began to protest. Newspapers covered their activities. The young woman was found by a road, dead, several days later. But now in Argentina, at least silence no longer shrouds a disappearance.

The Mothers also work to remind others of Argentina's political prisoners and exiles. Although they are increasingly wooed by various political parties, the women feel that it's essential for them to remain non-partisan. But perhaps most importantly, the women continue to provide a touchstone for each other. They've sustained each other, for a long time now, when the evasions and the unknowing have begun to choke them.

Over the last 18 months Argentina's military has lost most of its credibility. Three days before Argentine troops invaded the Falklands, labor unions, together with some political leaders and human rights activists, organized huge anti-junta demonstrations. The military had scheduled a return to civilian government for 1990; these crowds demanded it immediately.

After the Falklands defeat, public outcry exploded and seemed able to sweep the junta from power. The military survived, but it promised elections in 1984. Last fall the discovery of the large number of bodies in unmarked graves, coupled with a further weakening of the economy, led to a series of massive demonstrations and strikes. The Mothers led one of the largest of them.

The military has again rescheduled the elections. November 1983, is targeted.

Many of the military fear that the disappeared will return to haunt them in Nuremburg-like trials and are asking for guarantees from the politicians that no such accounting will take place. A few of the military have suggested that if they are pressed too hard on the disappearances there will be reprisals.

A person still disappears occasionally in Argentina. The Mothers have been receiving an increased number of threatening phone calls. Human rights activists point out that the repressive apparatus remains to a large extent intact.

The Mothers will continue to walk on Thursdays. This much is sure throughout all of Argentina's political upheavals. The Mothers' losses tell of a government's betrayal of its people and its laws. The Mothers Movement is a commitment to the worth of life and to legality. These concerns are hardly theoretical. The Mothers' values come from their flesh and could irrigate Argentine society.

And now a seventh year of unknowing has begun.

Elizabeth Hanly was a freelance writer in New York City and was working on a book about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo when this article appeared. Special thanks for this article go to Dr. Cesar Chelala for his invaluable help.