Video: The Unpublished Interview of Madres at May Square in 1978 – ElSol.com.ar – Diario de Mendoza, Argentina

Frits Jelle Barend is a Dutch journalist sent by Vrij Nederlandal magazine to cover the 1978 World Cup, in the midst of a military dictatorship. In an interview with the website "Papelitos, 78 reports on a World Cup under dictatorship", he recounted how an unpublished interview was made to a group of Mothers from the Plaza de Mayo, the same day as the day before. opening of the tournament.

Here are some excerpts from this note:

"We could write that there was really a dictatorship in Argentina, a fascist dictatorship, we could feel it, we talked to people and I thought these people what they do." said, "I trusted those who told me that they had disappeared," he said several years later.

The denunciations that alerted about the human rights violations that the security forces were developing in the country had begun to cross borders and spread slowly but firmly across Europe. Several media outlets from the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Great Britain also sought to take advantage of their trip to Argentina to interview mothers in the Plaza de Mayo during their demonstrations in front of Casa Rosada.

Frits chose the day of the opening of the Football World Cup 78 to visit the "crazy mothers". Coincidentally, it was Thursday. He always feels that the experience was "pretty impressive". The opening ceremony of the championship coincided with the moment when the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo gathered around the pyramid.

"I was at the cinema near the square until 15:30 and then I went to the square, you could not believe it, it was totally empty, I felt a little uncertain, I I walked up to 15:50, they began to arrive, from different corners of the I introduced myself: "I am a Dutch journalist, I would like to talk to you." And they told me that the # One of them had lost two children, another against a girl and another against her husband, they gave flowers, "he said.

Frits remembers that a few minutes later, the Plaza de Mayo began to regain the normal traffic of pedestrians and vehicles that surrounded it. He also remembers that at the end of his interview with the "crazy mothers", men in plain clothes approached him and started insulting them by telling him not to believe in those women who had asked information about their missing children.

"They did not let me continue talking to them, they pushed me a little bit, luckily, a team of French cameras arrived," he said.