MOTHERS OF THE PLAZA DE MAYO

THE dIRTY wAR

Started in 1974 and ended in 1983
Period of state terrorism in Argentina during which military and security forces hunted down any political dissidents

THE dIRTY wAR

• About 30,000 people disappeared
• Unable to report the missing due to the nature of state terrosim
• Usually targeted students, writers, artists, militants, trade unionists, and journalists
• The disappeared were usually tortured then murdered by drugging them, stripping them, and throwing them in ‘death planes’.
• Death planes - planes for the disappeared that was flown into the ocean with occupants on board

THE DIRTY WAR

• In response to a period of political instability and intensified violence after the death of President Juan Peron.
• Estimated that 10,000 to 30,000 citizens were killed, of which many were the ‘disappeared’.
• Many detention camps were set up for thousands of political dissidents or threats to the junta

LOS ABUELOS DE LA PLAZA DE MAYA

A human rights organization that has the goal to find the children that have been stolen or illegally adopted during the Dirty War.

LOS ABEULOS DE LA PLAZA DE MAYO

• Founded in 1977 to locate the children kidnapped during the repression
• Mary-Claire King by 1998, had led to the location of more than 10% of the estimated 500 children kidnapped
• Began to march in 1977 at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace
• They usually wear white head scarves to symbolize the diapers of their lost children

LOS ABUELOS DE LA PLAZA DE MAYO

• The mother relentlessly pried for information on their children
• They also highlighted the human rights violations occurring, and raised awareness on local and global scales.
• The military government considered these women to be politically subversive; the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor, along with French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet who supported the movement, were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the military government

LOS ABUELOS DE LA PLAZA DE MAYO

• After the military gave up its authority to a civilian government in 1983, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo rejoiced that they might learn the fates of their children
• Beginning in 1984, teams assisted by Mary-Claire King began to use DNA testing to identify remains, when bodies of the "disappeared" were found.
• In addition, together with Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers have identified 256 missing children who were adopted soon after being born to mothers in prison or camps

THE DISAPPEARED

THE DISAPPEARED

• Between 1970 and 1980, more than 30,000 children or political dissidents became one of the "Desaparecidos" or "the disappeared."
• These people were erased from public record with no government traces of arrests or charges against them.
• Many of the "disappeared" were believed to have been abducted by agents of the Argentine government during the years known as the Dirty War

THE DISAPPEARED

• The "disappeared" were often found to have been tortured and killed before their bodies were disposed of in unmarked graves
• During the “death flights”, the abducted were drugged, stripped, and flung into the sea.
• The military has admitted that over 9,000 of those abducted are still unaccounted for, but the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo say that the number of missing is closer to 30,000. Most are presumed dead.

THE DISAPPEARED

• There was a lot of people who were Jewish that were part of the "disappeared" as the military was anti-Semitic
• Estimated 500 of the missing are the children who were born in concentration camps or prison to pregnant 'disappeared' women of which many of these babies were illegally adopted to military families and others associated with the regime
• For years following this dictatorship, residents who lived along the Río de la Plata have found human remains of the people who were abducted

THE END