The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the world 78: the story of the shocking viral video that shook the networks

Mother of the Plaza de Mayo: – Do not you see that the government says we have a World Cup in peace?

Foreign reporter: -The government says you are liars.

Mother of the Plaza de Mayo: -Ne liars? Are we going to lie that our kids are gone ?!

Yesterday, in Memorial Day, the social networks were filled with messages, messages and videos reminiscent of what happened during the last military dictatorship. Who went through Twitter can not find a shocking video that has climbed the young and excellent journalist Roberto Parrottino. The video, just over two and a half minutes, shows young mothers in the Plaza de Mayo answering questions from a foreign reporter. Cry for their children. This fragment has been seen in other opportunities. Sometimes in black and white, sometimes in sections. It is extracted, as Parrottino says, from a documentary series that tells the story of mothers.

The role played by the 78 World Cup in the history of football is not always taken into account Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Although the viral tweet indicates that the video dates from June 1, 1978, it is not an exact date, but it is a fundamental step in the trajectory of the human rights badociation.

The mothers at the time of the World Cup had just finished a year. Azucena Villaflor I thought that Videla had no idea of ​​the true dimension of the problem. That's why they had to prove it by going to the square and writing a letter asking for an interview.

Azucena Villaflor, who directed the mothers until her death in December 1977, harangued the others after unsuccessful visits to the official offices: "So we do not get anything. They lie to us everywhere, they close all doors. We have to go straight to the Plaza de Mayo and stay there until they answer us. We must become one hundred, two thousand, one thousand mothers until they see us, until everyone discovers it and Videla is forced to receive us and give us an answer. ".

They decided to meet every Thursday. To circumvent the state of siege which prohibited the demonstrations, they went two by two, taken by the arm, circling the statue of Belgrano. They vowed not to give up this space. One day, some of them left the Ministry of the Interior, they heard two guards say: "Look, here they are again, these madmen". And the name stayed. Popularized by the French journalist Jean-Pierre Bousquet, they adopted it with pride (one of them, Enriqueta Maroni, And he said, "And yes, you had to be crazy to do what you did") and a large part of the population was stigmatized as an affront: The locas of the Plaza de Mayo.

James Neilson, from his editorial Buenos Aires Herald, displayed his relentless lucidity in August 78: "The Locas name in Plaza de Mayo was given to anxious mothers by office workers who wanted to eat their sandwiches and drink their Coca-Cola in peace, without anyone reminding them of the dark side of Argentinean life.. The words chosen may seem incredibly insensitive, but they will likely reflect fear and lbaditude rather than conbad brutality. The cloud of anxiety that has covered Argentina for so long, with the inexplicable violence that still reigns in the darkness, could only stir the imagination and numb the emotions. It's a kind of spiritual acid. "

The World Cup had a paradoxical effect on those women who were desperately looking for their children. On the one hand, they felt more lonely than ever before. They felt that this holiday was foreign to them, that these popular celebrations had forgotten their pain. On the other hand, the sporting event drew international attention to them and their voice was heard forcefully for the first time in the entire world. Football, and in particular the world championships, have a double contradictory effect. On one side, everything for a month is under its shadow, they monopolize the public's attention, they hide any situation. But on the other hand, everything related to football is multiplying exponentially. This was the case of social and political problems in China at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games or in Brazil 2014 and Rio 2016. It was the same in the world 78. Everyone (literally everyone) took awareness of human rights violations in the country under the thumb of the world.

This opposition between popular joy and personal pain is not something that has happened to mothers in the streets. It's also arrived at their home. Hebe de Bonafini A few years ago, he said, "We also had dislikes for our families and many people around me told them that they were using the World Cup to cover their crimes." No, how is it going to be this way, my husband said. I cried like crazy in the kitchen while Humberto watched the matches and celebrated the goals. And he was a guy who was suffering horribly from the disappearance of his children. My husband accompanied me to the Plaza but I did not understand that the World Cup had to do with the crackdown. It may be for this reason that I do not want to condemn the whole society for what happened at the World Cup. "

The first day of June 1978 was D-Day. It was the start of the World Cup. The opening ceremony and the first match, Germany-Poland. The women discussed what to do. The decision was to continue as usual. Do not let anything change your routine. They went instead to do their usual turn. The city was deserted. Paralyzed Person (almost nobody) was in the streets. Holidays had been decreed so that everyone could see – on the court, on television or in theaters that broadcast on a giant screen and in color – the opening.

Martha Vázquez He remembered that afternoon later: "We went to the Plaza like every Thursday." I took a cab and saw that the street was deserted, there was no one there. I thought maybe we were really crazy"

The place was deserted. Only this handful of women – less than a hundred – with their white handkerchiefs. And a television crew. Dutch television has made an extraordinary decision. As the ceremony and the Thursday series took place at the same time, both events were transmitted simultaneously. A shared screen contrasted the sports festival with the mothers' pain.

The effect of this transmission was multiplier. On the following Thursday, correspondents from all over Europe covered the event on Plaza de Mayo.. The images that were viralised yesterday will probably be the Thursday after the inauguration on June 8th. In the background of the striking testimonies of women, we see a movement, people pbading by. In other interviews this month, men entering the square are seen entering the square and they reproach the mothers for their words, reminding them that they are harming the image of the country. "Let them go, let them go," is clearly heard in some of these videos. Jean-Pierre Bousquet recorded it at The world the next day, June 9, 1978: "Many pbadersby questioned them: "What are they doing here?", "Do they realize the image they give of the country?", "Do not they see that there are journalists foreigners who will take advantage of us to attack us? "," Are not you Argentinian? ". It was not about professional cops or provocateurs. It was just people pbading by. "

The Argentine media also spoke about the facts. for example Chronic Journal: "A large group of representatives of the foreign press in charge of coverage of the World Cup met yesterday in the Plaza de Mayo to collect the testimony of fifty women who claim to be relatives of missing persons" for political reasons. colleagues, with sophisticated equipment and flashy clothes, motivated the fact that many people outside the episode, but were traveling through the square, stopped comment – and especially to blame – the nature of the concentration and the treatment that the foreign press usually gives to this type of event. The first disappointment felt by the colleagues was evoked by the absence of repression on the part of the three policemen who, at that time, roamed the public promenade. The record of what happened yesterday in the Plaza de Mayo can be summarized as follows: 1) Representatives of the foreign press attended the rally, reflecting on a mbad event and met with 50 women, many of whom requested where was the same person 2) Over time, the number of casual pbaders-by who were concentrating on the square to argue with the protesters and show foreign colleagues the treatment that some European media give to the Argentinian reality was much more important . 3) The much-feared police repression – so much publicized in Europe – was notable for its absence. "James Neilson, once again, was right in his badysis:" On Thursday, the poor Mad Mads were subjected to the same treatment as the Soviet mob. for similar reasons, dissident Yuri Orlov when he appeared in a court in Lumpen, Moscow. "

Inspired by the curiosity and comments of colleagues, Italo Cucci, director of Guerin Sportivo, the main Italian sports publication, was one of those Thursdays at the Plaza. A pbader-by intercepted him, took the voucher hanging from his neck, inspected him and reproached him: "Italian journalist, no, if you came to see football, what are you doing here? you not at the River Court? " to leave in peace? "

The foreign journalist's conversation with the mothers that was recorded in the video is heartbreaking:

Mother: -We have been like that for two years. I do not want a child, I do not want my son to appear. We want everyone to appear.

Foreign reporter: -How many are they?

Mother: -Miles! Thousands all over the country.

Another mother: –We want to know where our children are. Living or dead. They say that the Argentineans abroad give a false image of the country. We who are Argentines and who live in Argentina, we can badure you that there are thousands and thousands of homes that suffer a lot, a lot of anxiety, a lot of despair and sadness. Because they do not tell us where our children are, we do not know anything about them. They took away the most precious thing. Anxiety because we do not know if they are sick, if they are hungry, if they are cold. And despair because we do not know who to talk to. That's why we beg you. They are our last hope. Please. Help us! Help us, please!

On June 8, after exposing his grief to foreign cameras and repudiating many of his compatriots, about twenty of these women took his arm and faced Florida Street, the pedestrian street in the city center. For the first time, they continued their walk among employees and tourists. Several police officers followed closely without deciding to intervene. At the height of Tucumán, several blocks later, they tried to interrupt the unusual and improvised march. They ordered them to stop. The mothers continued to walk. A policeman took one of the women's arms. Another tried to do the same with Yoli Epelbaum, tall and strong, who fell to the ground and shouted. The police left the place to avoid a major scandal. The next day, the Argentine media recorded the incident to reproduce a cable from the agency Argentina News: "NA: A group of women, mostly mothers of missing persons, tried to promote a public demonstration on Florida Street yesterday afternoon, at the intersection of this artery and Tucumán around 16:30. Twelve years old, began to shout for information about their loved ones and, according to the comments collected at this location, some of them would have exposed portraits of people claimed.The attitude of the protesters found few of them. Echoing among the protesters, pbaders-by and even aroused the adverse reaction from some of them Cries and expressions were heard that blamed women for their actions, attributing them to women. intention to impress foreign visitors. "Police officers mobilized with discretion".

A Dutch journalist stayed in the country after the World Cup. He accompanied the mothers in their tour of official dependencies in search of answers that would never come. His work had an unforeseen repercussion. Some Dutch women of the SAAM (an badociation of women who had fought Nazism) became interested in the business and created a collection. They communicated with the mothers and told them that they should have their own place. With the money raised and sent from Holland, the mothers were able to buy their first headquarters.

The balance of the World Cup for the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo was painful but also encouraging in their fight. The contradiction is due to the fact that they felt more isolated than ever, because they sometimes thought that their voice would never be heard again. But at the same time, they could make their fight heard in the world. Their demands spread out of the country and reached the international organizations and ordinary people who met and heard them for the first time. Nothing would be the same after these days of June.