Statement of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo –
Linea Fundadora, Buenos Aires Argentina,
to the Global Women’s Strike, 8 March 2002

International Women's Day.  Why is there a need to establish a Women's Day? Maybe because our gender has become characterized by the discrimination endured over many years; maybe because we have at last found our place thanks to a critical vision of a centuries-old search.

In March 1857, the female workers of a textile plant in New York held the first ever strike led by women.  They demanded a reduction in their 16-hour workday, and an increase in their miserly salaries.  The factory bosses, in reply to these fair demands, set the factory alight, and all the women perished in the fire.  Today we commemorate the date in honour of women's struggles throughout America, and many European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

We, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Linea Fundadora, come from Argentina, which is currently in the midst of the most severe crisis of its history.  Today, 8 March, we join together with all our sisters in all the demands of the "Global Women's Strike".

We send you our message, which describes our movement, which will be 25 years old on the 30 April.  These have been years of struggle, of searching, of demanding justice, intimately connected to our 30,000 people detained and "disappeared", which is why we say:

25 years. 30,000 reasons to carry on fighting.

Our organisation came out of our struggle as women who are-mothers, going out onto the streets to fight for the lives and return of our children, against impunity and oblivion, driven mad because what was dearest to our heart was torn from us.

Reality forced us to organize a resistance movement of our own.  Our identity worked itself out through the responses and actions we had to take.  We learnt as we fought.  Far from paralysing us, our grief mobilised us and gave us courage to start on the road that we would travel over many years and that we are still travelling.  The Plaza de Mayo [government square in Buenos Aires] became our meeting point (here we would like to remember Azucena, who was crucial in the creation of our movement), and we started our struggle, our confrontation against the dictatorship.  We set out on our road without considering the power we had; our love for our children was stronger than their whole repressive apparatus.

The union of the Madres went beyond individuals, gaining strength as a collective movement capable of confronting military terrorism.  Our historical slogans began to emerge, which were repeated at the end of each turn around the square and mobilisation: "They took them alive, we want them back alive", "Reappearance alive"…

We, the Madres, have marched together, convinced of the justice of our cause. As in all movements, there were differences of opinion that deepened until our founding principles were distorted, and our organisation finally split in 1986.

During all our years of struggle, our call for Remembering, Truth and Justice and our demand for punishment continued and continues today.  Moral sanction is not enough: in our country, there was a reign of terror, a sinister world to which our detained-disappeared people were subjected.  To speak of the disappeared is to speak of a whole generation of people who were engaged with the history of their time and the people of their country, it is to speak of each and every one of our children by their first and last name and so to name, one by one, all of the 30,000 who disappeared.

Today, we, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, are deeply concerned about the distressing current social situation, and believe this concern to be part of the aims of our organisation. Without abandoning what is specific to us as mothers of the detained and disappeared people, we are open to and are aware of all inequalities, poverty, exclusion, and discrimination of any form.

We search for a more just social structure. As a Human Rights entity, we say no to violence, but with equal energy we say “no to resignation”.  Our movement is and will be one of active resistance, based on respect for human dignity together with the people, together with the great sectors of the grassroots.

In the past, our grief gave us the strength to denounce and fight for an explanation for the sinister politics of disappearance.  Our grief today drives us to affirm that we will not remain silent in this difficult road to prevent both impunity and the savage repression which is being used against our people.

We reject any governmental structure which betrays the will of the people.  We wish for true peace with justice and equity, which recognizes human dignity and respects the economic, social and cultural rights of the individual and the peoples.

Our hope lies in the different generations which followed that of our children, in the militant survivors of the 70s, in the Children of our Children* and in all young people who are aware of the pain of the past and of the seriousness of the situation our people are going through and who want to commit themselves to active involvement and solidarity with others.

We recognize that this is a new age.  The love for all our children, those who are missing, those who are by our side, our grandchildren, and the conviction of our aims give us the strength to continue our struggle.

We wish to pay homage and remember with affection our women colleagues who preceded us in the final farewell. We were together in this uncompromising struggle and today they are still by our side with their example and courage. 

7 March 2002

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