In 1976, Argentina was on the precipice of a military dictatorship that would result in mass disappearances, murders and violence across the nation.
Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla was the man at the helm of this tyranny. He took power following a coup d’état that toppled then-President Isabel Perón.
In Latin America, these types of coups — and resulting dictatorships — were common in the latter half of the 20th century. From Nicaragua to Chile to Brazil, the region was no stranger to violence perpetrated by the hands of a fascist state. The U.S. government had a hand in many of these militaristic rises to power.
But with fascist rule comes social revolution and rebellion, and Argentina’s story is one Americans can learn from today.
On Nov. 30, 1976, a man named Nestór and his girlfriend, Raquel Mangin, went missing in southern Buenos Aires. They reportedly had been arrested without cause, a common occurrence throughout Videla’s rule. While there is no eye-witness account and no cellphone footage of their abduction, documents from the time period all tell a similar story: A Ford Falcon pulled to the curb and in one swift motion, armed, plainclothes officers exited the vehicle and pulled the civilians inside. And then, they were gone.
That night, Nestór and Raquel Mangin became part of a growing group: los desaparecidos, the disappeared.
They did not disappear; they were disappeared, a linguistic slight of hand that became a lasting legacy of this period of Latin American dictatorships. Their disappearance was not a choice. An anonymous, amorphous government body caused it.
While Nestór’s disappearance was just one of 30,000 similar stories from 1976 to 1983, there was one person who refused to let him become part of this nameless, disappeared mass: his mother, Azucena Villaflor de Vincenti.
After searching for months and learning nothing about her son’s abduction, Azucena took to the streets. On April 30, 1977, she marched — along with a dozen other mothers of los desaparecidos — to the Plaza de Mayo, a square in front of the presidential office building. There they protested.
They linked arms in groups of two (there was a ban on gatherings of more than three people at the time) and walked circles around the plaza, white cloth diapers on their heads to symbolize their lost children.
While the mothers’ protest was “peaceful,” their very presence was an act of rebellion, a revolutionary rejection of the fascism that was spreading violence and silence. They marched there in clear violation of laws against assembly and protest in order to hold the government accountable and demand answers.
At 3:30 p.m. every Thursday, to this very day, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo march. Seeking answers, seeking justice.
The events in Portland these past weeks bear an eerie resemblance of what transpired around Nestór’s disappearance, amid the Dirty War in Argentina.
Rather than a military coup, we see the sitting U.S. president use federal force to occupy and violently quell legal demonstrations. Rather than Ford Falcons, we see gray unmarked minivans, scooping up protesters with no cause, no warrant and no reason. We see protesters go missing, arrested without being read their rights. We see journalists attacked, an unabashed attempt to silence the press. And, we see indiscriminate violence enacted by these federal militants, terrifyingly mirroring the playbook of every military dictatorship throughout history.
But, there’s another resonance here: the political act of motherhood.
Just as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Las Madres) march every week to protect their children from the silencing of the government, the Wall of Moms in Portland marches every day to protect the bodies of BIPOC who are still ruthlessly brutalized by the police and the government.
The moms describe themselves as “a PDX-based network of womxn and non-binary mother-identifying folx dedicated to supporting the current civil rights movement to end police brutality by defending and supporting BLM protesters on the front line and online.”
Unlike Las Madres, these modern-day moms are not necessarily the actual mothers of political dissidents and protesters who have been abducted off the street or arrested. They are moms in the collective sense, embodiments of the ideal of motherhood, which symbolizes sacrifice, resilience, strength and protection.
Their performance of motherhood takes these ideals not as mere ideas but as commandments; they encircle their BIPOC community members in an act of utter selflessness, in the most mom-like embrace any kid could hope for.
It’s likely that over the next days and weeks we’ll see Walls of Moms form in major cities throughout the U.S., symbolically and literally acting as a border wall of protection, undermining and reclaiming the notion of building a wall.
It’s also possible we’ll see critiques in the coming days, noting the inequitable media attention that this group of mostly white women has received. Let’s not forget that Black mothers have been at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement from the very beginning. Even here in Portland, Black mothers, such as Letha Winston, whose son was killed by the Portland police, have led marches and been key figures in the movement, though the coverage has been pitiful compared with what the Wall of Moms has already received.
While the reception and lauding of this group by the media deserves public scrutiny, it doesn’t detract from the power of positioning motherhood at the center of political dissent.
Whether wearing diapers as headscarves or yellow shirts with “Summoned Mama” emblazoned across the front, we see mothers repurposing the traditional symbols and language of motherhood to demand political action.
Motherhood becomes imbued with a power that is traditionally invisible to the public eye.
But lest we commit the cardinal sin of repeating the mistakes we made in the past, we need to turn back to the story of Azucena and Las Madres to learn how to move forward.
On Dec. 10, 1977, seven months after she began marching in the Plaza de Mayo, Azucena was abducted from her home, was sent to a concentration camp, and was eventually taken on a “death flight,” a practice at the time that involved prisoners’ being taken up on flights and pushed into the ocean.
Azucena was only one of the many Madres who were disappeared because of their involvement in the movement.
While death flights and concentration camps may feel an unlikely progression of the violence we are seeing today in Portland, the reality is that the abuses documented thus far are not so different. The government is intentionally breaching our rights, silencing dissenters and violently oppressing anyone who speaks up.
It’s been 44 years since Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo began their march. When will Las Madres de Portland get to lay down their gas masks and go home?
Anna Pedersen is a freelance writer and editor based in Portland. She holds degrees in comparative literature and Spanish and has focused much of her academic work on the Latin American Boom, the period of literary renaissance that resulted from decades of military dictatorships throughout the continent in the latter half of the 20th century. Aside from writing about and studying Latin American language and culture, she also writes on issues related to immigration, migrant labor and housing insecurity. She is the founder and editorial director of Headway Quarterly, a literary magazine about the writing process, and is the managing editor for Go Overseas, a community reviews travel site.