National Holiday to Honor the Disappeared

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Dale left on Sunday, March 23, Easter Sunday. I was sad to see him leave, but we had a wonderful month traveling together.

On Monday, March 24, it was a Día Feriado, a national holiday in Argentina to honor the Disappeared. This is what the Madres in the Plaza de Mayo are commemorating every Thursday afternoon. Just a little history for my readers
(source is http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/~dstone/dis_background.html)

There was a military coup in Argentina in 1975 and a repressive military dictatorship for the next 8 years. During that time, around 30,000 people (in a population of 30 million, more or less) vanished -- imprisoned, tortured and eventually murdered for political reasons. People who protested, or spoke out against these human rights abuses were murdered themselves, creating a climate of fear. An estimated 220 children were taken from women who were imprisoned and given to other families to raise. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, mothers and grandmothers whose children disappeared during this period of time, are very famous for having stood up to the dictatorship. In 1977, they began marching to protest the human rights abuses and to bring attention to the situation. Although many of the mothers were themselves abducted and killed by the military, more mothers joined the protest and eventually they were part of the reason that the dictatorship ended and that efforts have been made to account for what happened and to reunite children with their rightful families. In 1983, as the country returned to civilian rule, Raul Alfonsin became president and created a commission to investigate what happened. More recently there have been laws passed making it easier for adopted children to find out what happened to their birth parents.

Here is a human rights website that provides an online memorial to the victims:
http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/eng.html

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Comments

[Carol Roach]

So Powerful
It's urgent that we--all over the world--remember and honor the victims of these atrocities! What the Madres are doing in Argentina proves the power of persistence, even among folks generally considered to be without power. Thanks for devoting an entry to this, Catherine.