Marching with Las Madres in Bueno Aires

In December 1999, I fly to Buenos Aires to meet my husband Bill who is working in South America. I beat him there by a whole day and arrive to find the streets of the city blockaded by banks of police and their motorcycles. Helicopters stutter overhead. The taxi driver tells me it is inauguration day and Argentina's new president, Fernando de la Rua, is moving in ceremonial cavalcade toward to Plaza de Mayo. To get me to the hotel, the driver  has to convince the police that we have authorization to enter. I sit very tall and try to look important as he nervously talks us through. 

 I'd like to tell you that I immediately dash into the crowds to watch the inauguration. I'd like to boast that my Spanish is fluent enough to allow me to understand the speech de la Rua makes from the balcony at the Casa Rosada. But the reality is that I hesitate.

I'm fearful of going into the city alone. Then reason kicks in. I'm going to be here for 10 days and Bill will be working most of that time. It's either head into the crowd or spend my vacation at the hotel swimming pool. I choose the crowd.

By the time I find my way to Plaza de Mayo, all that remains of the festive crowds are metal barricades and a ground littered with celebratory paper and political leaflets. I bend down to pick one up and notice that it lies on what appears to be the outline of a human body painted on the paving stones. Inside this outline are a name and a date. These painted figures are everywhere. When I straighten up, I bump into a woman standing near me. I want to ask her what these figures symbolize, but my Spanish is limited. I've spent the past two weeks studying phrases like the one that discusses the peculiarities of keeping an elephant in one's house . . . not exactly the words I need now.

I excuse myself for bumping her and begin to walk away, but she smiles. Encouraged by the warmth of her smile, I decide to use my fractured Spanish to ask her what the symbols mean.

 "Ah," she replies, "they are 'los desaparecidos.'"  The disappeared! I shudder.  She then takes me by the hand and leads me toward the Plaza obelisk where there are other symbols – she tells me that the doves are actually kerchiefs. The "panuelos blancos" that symbolize the mothers of  "the disappeared." Since the mid 70s they have gathered every Thursday in Plaza de Mayo to protest the disappearance of their children.

We sit on the grass to talk because Esther has phlebitis and though she has been warned by her doctor to stay at home with her leg raised, this retired history professor refuses to miss this "important event." She has traveled several hours by bus since early morning from the mountain town where she lives.

Ester and I spend the afternoon together. We wander through historic sites and chat and the barriers imposed by differences in language crumble. We use our hands a lot. I mix Italian with Spanish with English and bless the spirit that urged me away from the hotel toward the square which has enabled me to do what I love best -- to see a place through the eyes of the people who live there

The following Thursday, December 16, 1999, I return to the Plaza to march with Las Madres, the mothers. The heat is daunting. I've begun the day by walking through the environmental park at the far end of the city and by the time I reach the Plaza I am sunburned and thirsty.

I buy some bottled water from a vendor and sit down on the grass to observe what is happening. A large blond woman wearing a simple black sheath and carrying an enormous handbag walks among the mothers. Her arms are laden with gardenias. She flows from one mother to the other, giving them kisses, handing them flowers, and talking. I can smell the gardenias from where I sit -- their heady sweetness filling the hot space where the crowd gathers.

I want to speak with one of those bereaved mothers but feel so awed by their bravery that I must struggle again to overcome my reticence. These women have been marching since the early 70s, risking their lives to march in protest against the regimes that have taken their children. I approach the woman with the gardenias because she looks like an American who knows her way around. I am right. She tells me she is from Miami and that she marches with Las Madres throughout Latin and South America every chance she gets--having viewed first hand the courageous women in the Philippines who marched in protest against the Marcos regime -- the mothers and babies in the front lines, the wheelchairs next, then the nuns. She is on her way to Santiago in Chile when Las Madres march for the Millennium. She introduces me to Juanita Pargament whose doctor son José was seized in 1976.

Pargament speaks English fluently and tells me that these disappearances are still happening in 1999 because those who perpetrated them, the police and the military, have gone unpunished. She nods her head toward the soldiers standing along the barricades. A small mustachioed man stands in front of the barricades facing the crowds. He wears a pin-striped suit and were it not for his smile, he would appear almost comical. His smile sends chills up my back.

We are still talking when the muffled beat of drums interrupts us. Juanita excuses herself and joins the other mothers to unfurl a large white banner of protest. Each mother takes hold of part of the banner as they begin to march around the Plaza. I join the crowd that follows them. We march in silence with only the solemn beat of the drums for accompaniment. As we pass in front of the barricades, behind which stand the soldiers and the government house, I wonder if the President is inside working, and if he plans to do anything to make reparation for these crimes, to bring the perpetrators to justice.

We march like this for half-an-hour, then, as if on cue, the crowd gathers around the monument in the middle of the square and faces the government house. Suddenly, a bearded man in a blue shirt raises his fist and begins to chant. It sounds something like "Ole, Ola, la pena a los asesinos." The crowd takes it up and I join in. As our voices rise, the crowd continues to swell.

The men rousing the crowd seem menacing. They move through the crowd, shaking their fists at the militia posted in front of the Casa Rosada. Who are these men? Are they brothers and fathers and uncles of the disappeared? Disturbed by the possibility of violence, I none-the-less continue to chant with the crowd. I too am a mother and what has happened to these mothers' children terrifies me.

Beryl is the author of The Scent of God and was named "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors" by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The Scent of God was a Booksense notable for April 2006 and has been nominated for a Midwest Booksellers Book Award.