Nurturing Democracy in Armed Conflicts through Political Motherhood: A Comparative Study of Women’s Political Participation in Argentina and Sri Lanka
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science of the College of Arts and Sciences by
Crystal Whetstone
M.A. Wright State University August 2020
Committee Chair: Dr. Rina Verma Williams, PhD Abstract:
This project examines women peace activists mobilized through political motherhood, a gendered form of political participation in which women represent themselves as mothers. I ask: What impacts the legacies of political motherhood movements in terms of duration, visibility and remembrance? By duration, I mean the length of time an organization remains active. Visibility refers to how “seen” a civic group is. Remembrance implies whether an organization’s work is remembered or forgotten. I argue that it is the perceptions of other social movement organizations (especially of feminist and human rights organizations) that contribute to either upward or downward spirals of duration, visibility and remembrance that in turn impact the legacies of political motherhood movements. When social movement actors perceive the duration, visibility and remembrance of a political motherhood movement positively, this upward spiral promotes the legacy of that movement. Conversely, when perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance are viewed negatively, this downward spiral deadens the legacy of that political motherhood movement. This study compares
Argentina’s Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres) and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front using visual analysis, feminist re-reading and counterfactuals. The Madres have been active for four decades, are visible domestically and internationally and widely remembered. Conversely, the
Mothers’ Front organized for roughly seven years. While at one time highly visible domestically, the group was never “seen” internationally. Today the Mothers’ Front has been overlooked in terms of popular culture and memorialization, apparently forgotten even domestically. This project concludes that the legacies of political motherhood movements for peace and/or justice are impacted by the perceptions of other social movement actors, which in turn color
i understandings of women’s political participation and their struggles for peace and/or justice.
Legacy-making holds critical implications for understanding women’s political participation for we cannot explore what is forgotten. In such an exploration, however, we can find that political motherhood struggles for peace and/or justice reveal that the problem is not with the use of political motherhood as a strategy but rather in the political limitations movements face in challenging state and non-state violence. Moreover, we can also find how nonfeminist political motherhood struggles can morph into more maternal feminist ones with more expansive and transnationally connected agendas for peace and justice. Thus, such movements deserve political and feminist attention for what they can tell us about the barriers to and prospects for cultivating women’s political movements for peace and justice, including the majority of those that have been initially motivated by motherhood, now and in the future.
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Dedicated to the disappeared everywhere and to those who keep the disappeared alive in their memories and in their politics
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Acknowledgements
I wish to show my deepest gratitude to my dissertation chair, Dr. Rina Verma Williams. Rina has been an outstanding mentor and role model to me. I appreciate all her feedback over the years, which sharpened my analytical abilities and made me a more effective writer. Rina gave me the space, guidance and resources to develop as a feminist, interpretive scholar of comparative and international politics and pushed me to develop a deeper understanding of ontology, epistemology and methodology. I still recall our weekly coffee meetups over Fall 2014 when I entered the PhD program. Thank you for everything, Rina!
I also wish to express appreciation for my entire dissertation committee, including Dr. Laura
Dudley Jenkins, Dr. Amy Lind and especially Dr. Anne Sisson Runyan. Anne’s work ethic and modeling of what it means to be a feminist researcher has had a major impact on me. I’m grateful for the mentoring she’s given me from the time of my independent study with her on
Feminist IR. Thank you, Anne! Laura, I have learned from you how to project calm despite the chaos of balancing research, teaching, service and a full personal life. I always appreciate the opportunities you send my way. Thank you. Rina, Anne and Laura, I’m grateful for all the letter writing you’ve done for me! Amy, I thank you for your insights into Latin American and queer politics and for a copy of your book Gendered Paradoxes. I’m indebted to the exemplary scholars on my committee who are conducting critical research that has inspired my development professionally and personally.
I would also like to pay my regards to Dr. Richard Harknett, chair of the University of
Cincinnati’s Department of Political Science, the two graduate directors I’ve known, Dr. Stephen
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Mockabee and Laura, and to all of the faculty for creating a department that values graduate students. I appreciated the three years of financial support and professionalization through my
Graduate Assistantship. Attending Syracuse University’s Institute for Qualitative and Multi-
Method Research (IQMR) through the department’s institutional membership was an incredible experience where I made connections and gained feedback on my dissertation proposal.
Likewise, the department’s workshop “Methodological Pluralism & Political Science: Exploring and Extending Bayesian and Critical Methods” facilitated by Dr. Mary Hawkesworth and Dr.
Ryan Bakker was an excellent opportunity for me to develop deeper understandings of methodologies and to gain feedback on my dissertation from one of the leading scholars in comparative politics of gender. Finally, visits by Dr. Amrita Basu and Dr. Ann Tickner were pivotal to my professionalization as a researcher working in feminist comparative and international politics.
No one deserves acknowledgement more than Ms. Pamela Latham, the light in our department and a stanch advocate of graduate students. Pam has regularly gone out of her way for me.
Before my first semester, I dropped by the department and Pam arranged an impromptu meeting with the graduate students and made sure we were well fed with Adriatico’s pizza.
Pam has always made sure I had everything necessary to successfully conduct my fieldwork and write my dissertation. I’ve relished our many conversations over the years and deeply value our friendship. Thank you, Pam!
I wish to express my deep gratitude for generous financial support and dissertation and fieldwork planning guidance from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS) through their Dissertation Planning Grant, which enabled me to conduct fieldwork in Colombo, Sri Lanka
vi over fall 2017. I’m indebted to Dr. John Rogers and Dr. Vagisha Gunasekara of AISLS for their advice and guidance throughout my time in the field. Through AISLS, I got to know a number of
Sri Lankan scholars, activists and research librarians at incredible organizations including the
Women’s Education and Research Centre (WERC), the Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR) and the Women and Media Collective (WMC). I’m particularly grateful to Ms. Shiranee Mills and
Ms. Fathima Mubarak at WERC who opened their research library to me and showed me such kindness. Likewise, Ms. Savithri Hirimuthugoda of CENWOR was incredibly welcoming to me and regularly held aside journals, articles and books that she knew would be of use to me. I’m especially indebted to Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran, Ms. Kumudini Samuel and Dr. Malathi de Alwis for sharing their knowledge, insights and memories of the Mothers’ Front.
I’m grateful to Dr. de Alwis for connecting me with Ms. Visaka Dharmadasa of the Association of
War Affected Women and Parents of Servicemen Missing in Action. I thank Ms. Dharmadasa for sharing with me her insights on the impact of the civil war on women and women’s civic engagement in the postwar period. I also wish to give my sincere thanks to Aruni Jayakody, whom I got to know at IQMR, for sharing with me her extensive list of contacts working in NGOs in Sri Lanka. I’m also grateful to Geethika Dharmasinghe who helped me make connections while in Colombo. I extend my deepest thanks to Dr. Gamini Kulatunga and his family for their hospitality while a renter in their flat. I owe much to Gamini for connecting me with scholars, journalists and other important figures in Colombo who provided me with a wide understanding of the many political perspectives that exist in Sri Lanka.
My fieldwork in Colombo was also supported by a Taft Research grant and the Taft Dissertation
Fellowship from the Taft Research Center. The Dissertation Workshop conducted by Dr. Laura
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Micciche I took as a fellow was a game changer. I’m grateful to Laura for the writing strategies she shared! I’m also appreciative for the Taft Research Center’s support to conduct fieldwork in
Buenos Aires, Argentina in spring 2019. I wish to extend my special thanks to Dr. Gregory
Saxton for his advice and guidance while I was in Buenos Aires. He helped me to locate critical sources for my research as well as provided me with informational interview material based on his own research of legislative Argentine politics.
I also extend my thanks to Dr. Krista Sigler, the chair of the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash’s
Department of History, Philosophy and Political Science, for mentoring me in teaching and faculty life. Her wise words that “Nothing has to get done today” came in handy while doing this dissertation, which felt like a never-ending project. I would also like to acknowledge Dr.
Ionas Rus at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash’s Department of History, Philosophy and
Political Science for sharing many resources and advice with me. I appreciate his mentorship.
I thank Dr. Rebecca Sanders, Dr. Kim Conger, Dr. Greg Winger, Dr. Ivan Ivonov, Dr. Brian
Calfano, Dr. Jack Mewhirter and Dr. Will Umphries for providing me with additional professionalization through our conversations over the years. I’m also grateful to Megan
Tischner at the Grad School who has been enormously helpful and kind. I appreciate the work that she does on behalf of graduate students at UC! I’m further grateful to Anna Donnell, the faculty advisor for the Graduate Association for Teaching Enhancement (GATE), who taught me how to backwards plan syllabi. This came in handy to plan my dissertation.
I’m also grateful to the 9to5 film team, including Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar, as well as Liz
Yong Lowe, Aubrey Keith, Jaime Schlenck and Melissa Godoy who supported my academic
viii efforts. Learning about working women in 9to5 during the 1970s and 1980s expanded my understanding of activism and US women’s movements. Julia has been a role model for me in how to live a feminist life. Thank you to the entire 9to5 team!
I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the work undertaken in my MA thesis at Wright State University’s International and Comparative Politics program. Thanks to my committee chair Dr. December Green, along with my committee members Dr. Awad Halabi and Dr. Laura Luehrmann, I had a solid foundation on which to explore women’s political participation. I’m grateful to them for their guidance that set me up for success at the
University of Cincinnati. I’m further indebted to Dr. Paulette Olson, who introduced to me to feminist economics, Dr. Frank Eguaroje, who guided my understanding of African studies and to
Dr. Kelli Zaytoun, who introduced me to feminist scholarship.
No dissertation is completed without friends and colleagues. I want to acknowledge my cohort, including Leah Dean, Justin Wolterman, Stu Warren, Igor Kovac, and especially Tina Teater and
Huseyin Cakal. Brunches with Leah, Jelena Vicic, Dani Mclaughlin, Alexis Straka, Laura Wulker and Sayam Moktan kept me going, as did dinners and shopping trips with Viv Hoklet, Sayam and E. Chandler. I’m grateful for regular conversations with Col. Al Klein, Ayesha Anwar, Ariel
Barat, Fran Gottardi, Bekir Ilhan, Mustafa Sagir and Peter Stiver. Having Jelena as an officemate in my last year and forming a writing group with her and Murat Yilmaz kept me on target to achieve my dissertation goals.
I could never have finished my dissertation without the friendships I made through GATE, especially with Ben Merritt, Sheva Guy, Alicia Boards, PJ Van Camp and Smruti Deoghare. It was
ix a privilege to co-facilitate the Girls Action Team with Alicia for three years. I’m thankful to Dr.
Lisa Vaughn who suggested this work with Alicia. Lisa has been an inspiration to me for her incredible work in community-based participatory research. I admire Alicia, who opened my eyes up to the importance of praxis and girls’ political participation. I’m further indebted to my friend Anwar Mhajne whose intelligence and kindness inspires me. Likewise, I’m grateful for my friendship with other alums including Jenn Dye and Erika Garcia Gonzalez. I’ve relished regular coffee meetups with Jenn. I’ve also appreciated the support of Winnie Kaur, Ayesha Casie
Chetty and Mohan Pillai, my friends from other disciplines.
Finally, I write to thank my partner Murat, my sister Juli Whetstone and my parents, Mark and
Susan Whetstone, for their support over the years, especially Murat. My parents gave me my love of reading and history. My sister gives me a listening ear and keeps me connected to the
DYT. I also thank my aunt, Paula Whetstone, and cousins Jaime and Mark Moreno, Lauren
Meintel, Monica DeFazzio, Richie Rich Maxwell, Jonathan DeFazzio and Kate Bowman for cheering me on. I’m thankful for Kat and Sharon Sparrow, Nat and Greg Tyree, Christina
Bradmeyer (PSM), the SnS Crew, all my Maxxinistas and many others! While I lost her recently,
Lillian Beatrice made sure I woke up early every day to do my dissertation writing. I couldn’t have done this without Lily!
To all, thank you.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Introduction: Purpose of the project ...... 1 Possibilities and limitations of political motherhood ...... 8 Defining terms and concepts ...... 11 Research design ...... 23 Methods ...... 25 Expectations ...... 33 Contributions ...... 35 Chapter summaries ...... 40 Conclusion ...... 43
Chapter 2: Political Motherhood Movements and Women’s Political Participation
Introduction ...... 45 Problems and possibilities of political motherhood ...... 47 Political participation ...... 52 Women’s political participation ...... 54 Public and private spaces ...... 60 Social movements and the state...... 65 Approaches to social movements ...... 68 Framing ...... 74 Connections with the state ...... 78 Transnationalism and social movements ...... 86 The politics of memory and its connections to transitional justice and the visual ...... 89 The visual in memory-making ...... 94 Conclusion ...... 98
Chapter 3: Two Political Motherhood Movements
Introduction ...... 100 Argentina ...... 102 Argentina’s period of state terrorism (1976-1983) ...... 106
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The crimes against humanity by the military dictatorship ...... 108 Transitional justice ...... 111 Sri Lanka ...... 116 Sri Lanka’s Civil War (1983-2009) ...... 120 Summary of the civil war ...... 123 1325 in Sri Lanka’s civil war ...... 128 Transitional justice ...... 130 The similar outcome of political motherhood movements ...... 134 Women’s involvement in Argentina’s period of state terrorism ...... 135 Women’s involvement in Sri Lanka’s civil war ...... 136 Political cover that mitigated some backlash ...... 138 Accessibility ...... 148 Framing ...... 150 Conclusion ...... 153
Chapter 4: Remembrance
Introduction ...... 154 Madres (1977-present) ...... 156 A unified organization (1977-1986) ...... 157 The Línea Fundadora (1986-present) ...... 159 The Asociación (1986-present) ...... 161 The Madres today ...... 163 Mothers’ Front (1984-1987; 1990-1994) ...... 163 The Northern Mothers’ Front (1984-1987) ...... 164 The Southern Mothers’ Front (1990-1994) ...... 170 Remembering the Madres ...... 178 Human rights movement ...... 179 Women’s movements ...... 184 General public ...... 189 International human rights organizations ...... 192 Forgetting the Mothers’ Front ...... 193
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Human rights movement ...... 194 Women’s movements ...... 196 General public ...... 202 International human rights organizations ...... 203 Conclusion ...... 205
Chapter 5: Duration
Introduction ...... 206 Political opportunity structures ...... 208 Armed conflict ...... 208 Regime type ...... 212 The timing of achieving political demands ...... 215 Organizational structures and choices ...... 220 Autonomy and alliances in organizing ...... 221 Framing ...... 228 Transnational support ...... 240 Accounting for variance in organizational duration ...... 251 Conclusion ...... 259
Chapter 6: Visibility
Introduction ...... 261 Differences in transnational political opportunity structures ...... 264 Visual analysis as a method ...... 276 Christianity’s resonance and creating emotions in human rights ...... 278 Visual analysis of the Madres and Mothers’ Front ...... 282 The Mothers’ Front ...... 284 The role of domestic feminists ...... 290 The Madres...... 292 Discussion...... 312 Conclusion ...... 314
Chapter 7: Recalling the Southern Mothers’ Front
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Introduction ...... 316 Examples of former SMF women moving into other kinds of political participation ...... 320 Feminist re-reading ...... 324 Debating collective and private actions in social movements ...... 332 Contextualizing the Public-Private Divide ...... 334 Reflections on political motherhood from Latin American gender scholars ...... 338 Individual resistance: Speaking (private) truth to power ...... 343 The importance of conversations ...... 347 Evidence ...... 349 Analysis ...... 360 Conclusion ...... 364
Chapter 8: Political Motherhood and Feminism
Introduction ...... 367 Method ...... 375 Feminist views of the Madres and Mothers’ Front ...... 376 Counterfactuals in naming, UNSCR 1325 and peace talks ...... 385 Counterfactual 1: Naming ...... 386 Counterfactual 2: UNSCR 1325 ...... 391 Counterfactual 3: Peace talks...... 403 Counterfactual wrap up ...... 406 Women and Caring ...... 407 Intersectional, anti-imperialist, antiracist and decolonial political motherhood ...... 408 Conservative gender norms ...... 413 Mutual engagements ...... 423 Conclusion ...... 425
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Introduction ...... 427 Major arguments ...... 429 The political motherhood movements today ...... 441
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The Politics of Memory in Argentina ...... 446 The Politics of Forgetting in Sri Lanka ...... 453 Looking forward: Supporting political motherhood movements ...... 460 Works Cited ...... 466
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Mills’ method of most similarity ...... 27
Figure 2: Mill’s method of difference ...... 30
Figure 3: Map of Argentina ...... 104
Figure 4: Map of Sri Lanka ...... 117
Figure 5: Map Showing the Vanni region ...... 125
Figure 6: Disjunctures in duration, visibility, remembrance and legacy of the Madres and
Mothers’ Front ...... 432
List of Photos
Photo 1: Crowds in Buenos Aires, 24 March 2019, near the Plaza de Mayo (photo by the author)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………181
Photo 2: Marker near the Plaza de Mayo (March 21, 2019, Buenos Aires (photo by the author)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….190
Photo 3: March on Jaffna………………………………………………………………………………………………………285
Photo 4: The SMF…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..287
Photo 5: Typical image of the Madres……………………………………………………………………………………294
Photo 6: Feminist green pañuelo……………………………………………………………………………………………297
Photo 7: Use of pañuelos as both a political and fashion statement………………………………………298
Photo 8: Madres’s pañuelos painted around the Plaza de Mayo……………………………………………298
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Photo 9: Pañuelo taggings in Palmero……………………………………………………………………………………299
Photo 10: Madres dolls………………………………………………………………………………………………………….303
Photo 11: Ecuadorian stamp………………………………………………………………………………………………….305
Photo 12: Film poster…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….306
Photo 13: Full mural in La Boca………………………………………………………………………………………………309
Photo 14: Close-up of the mother’s face and torso……………………………………………………………….310
Photo 15: Close-up of the mother’s fist…………………………………………………………………………………311
Photo 16: “Madres” by Marta Badano. Undated. …………………………………………………………………449
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Introduction: Purpose of the project
Political motherhood is a form of women’s political participation in which women represent themselves as mothers (Orleck 1997). This dissertation seeks to answer the primary research question: What impacts the legacies of political motherhood movements during and after internal armed conflict in terms of duration, visibility and remembrance? By duration, I mean the staying power of a civic organization using political motherhood, specifically the length of time it remains active. Visibility refers to how “seen” a civic group is, both at the domestic and international levels in terms of their visual resonance, especially as picked up by domestic and international media. Remembrance implies whether an organization’s work is remembered or forgotten at the domestic and international levels as part of the politics of memory.1 I look at specific actors who do the seeing and remembering: domestic human rights movements, domestic women’s movements, the general public and international human rights organizations. I argue that it is the perceptions of other social movement organizations
(especially of feminist and human rights organizations) that contribute to either upward or downward spirals of duration, visibility and remembrance that in turn impact the legacies of political motherhood movements. Duration, visibility and remembrance operate in conjunction so that each reinforces the other. When social movement actors perceive the duration, visibility
1 The politics of memory refers to memory-making by collectives and individuals, which impact understandings of identity (Lambeck & Antze, 1996; Neumann & Thompson, 2015). Memory-making is an inherently political process where sense-making of memories are continually contested (Sturken, 1997).
1 and remembrance of a political motherhood movement positively, the upward spiral promotes the legacy of that particular movement. Conversely, when perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance are viewed negatively, this downward spiral deadens the legacy of that political motherhood movement.
The relationship between actual and perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance are linked. I discuss in Chapter 5 what likely contributed to the differences in duration among the political motherhood movements in this study, which was linked to the kinds of visibility that these movements experienced at the domestic and international levels.
Likewise, visibility played an important role in remembrance, with greater visibility leading to greater heights of remembrance. However, I am most interested in how the perceptions of these political motherhood movements’ duration, visibility and remembrance have impacted their respective legacies.
Unpacking the legacy-making of political motherhood movements holds critical implications for how women’s political participation is viewed by the general public and among social movement actors and scholars. Uncovering, re-covering and preserving the legacies of political motherhood movements is the first step to understanding some women’s political empowerment through the lens of participation. The only way to assess and learn from past experiences of women’s political participation is to preserve this history. A major concern of this project is addressing the debate among mainly feminists, over whether political motherhood offers a useful means to increase women’s political participation or whether the price of purchase may be too high, a debate which I explore in depth below. It is critical to consider the extent to which political motherhood makes mothering “a prerequisite for political
2 participation” for women, which limits some women’s ability to participate (Witteborn, 2011, p.
280).
This dissertation was sparked by the recognition that gender norms are frequently transformed in periods of armed conflict, providing some opportunities for women to embrace new social and political roles, but often only temporarily (Kumar, 2001, pp. 13-25; Meintjes,
Pillay, & Turshen, 2002; Kampwirth, 2002; Tripp A. M., 2015; Baron, 2005; Thompson, 2000).
Previous research in this area has focused on women who take up arms or join guerrilla movements, enter the workforce or engage as peace activists during armed conflicts
(Kampwirth, 2002; Liddington, 1991; Swerdlow, 1993; Wu, 2013; Alonso, 1993; Herath, 2012;
Skidmore & Lawrence, 2007; Kampwirth, 2004). Armed conflicts provide the toughest test to assess political motherhood movements’ impact on women’s organizing since the pressure to return to prewar gender norms is high after fighting ends.
This project differs from previous studies through an examination of women peace activists mobilized through political motherhood, with a focus on women’s conflict and postconflict political participation. In the case of political motherhood for peace, I mean women who deploy political motherhood on behalf of ending armed conflicts and their injustices through nonviolent means, although such nonviolent movements can entail rowdy activism in terms vociferous protest. There is also political motherhood used for violence in which case women deploy political motherhood on behalf of promoting armed conflict and other forms of violence and who may commit political violence themselves as armed combatants or in support of them. Violent political motherhood includes women who support or engage in political
3 violence as a means to peace and greater justice as well as those who support or engage in political violence for repressive purposes.
Due to political motherhood’s emphasis on women’s private maternal identities, political motherhood has been criticized by some, mainly feminists, for easily pushing women back to the domestic sphere when the war is over and normalcy, including pre-war gender norms, returns (or even gets worse), as well as due to its links to militaristic nationalism, xenophobia, religious fundamentalism as well as gender essentialism, heteronormativity and transphobia (El-Bushra, 2007; Otto, 2006; Charlesworth, 2008; Firestone, 1970; Peterson, 1999;
Enloe, 2000; DiQuinzio, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 1997).
This study is limited to an exploration of peaceful political motherhood rather than violent motherhood and specifically looks at internal conflicts as opposed to interstate conflicts.
I leave the question of violent political motherhood and interstate conflicts to future research.
Women engaged in violent political motherhood draw extensive backlash for violating femininity expectations, although maternal activists in general face such criticism, which is only in part mitigated through peaceful political motherhood and its attendant politics of respectability.2 Regardless, violent political motherhood functions differently from peaceful political motherhood, discursively portraying violent women as “monstrous” and outside the bounds of womanhood (Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Åhäll, 2015). Likewise, the types of conflicts under which women’s groups engage in peace activism may influence the abilities of these
2 Respectability politics refers to “presenting a carefully cultivated image to defy negative stereotypes” (Frederick, 2017, p. 135). It is associated with middle class sensibilities and in the case of women, linked with socially conservative womanhood, “sexual purity,” sacrificial motherhood and heteronormativity (Higginbotham, 1993; DiQuinzio, 1999; Currans, 2018).
4 groups to organize. There is a possibility that interstate conflict may not necessarily put as much patriotic/national pressure on activists to support the government against an enemy state compared to a civil war.3 However, the two internal conflicts in this project both saw the denouncement of “the enemy” as terrorists and subversives, even as the enemy were fellow citizens (Navarro, 2001; Sheinin, 2012; Hashim, 2013). Sri Lanka’s civil war, in which a minority group sought secession, was undergirded with intense hyper ethnonationalism and militarization that discursively portrayed Tamils as the enemy (Tambiah, 1986; de Mel, 2007).
Peace activism in any conflict will generate controversy.
To explore the research question, this study compares two political motherhood movements: 1) the Madres, who catalysed in 1977 and remain active today, although as two separate lines, the Asociación (Association) and Línea Fundadora (Founding Line) branches, and
2) the Mothers’ Front, which from the beginning operated as two distinct branches, the
Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), and ran consecutively over 1984-1987 and 1990-1994. The women with the Madres and Mothers’ Front both responded to state-enforced disappearances4 in Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri
Lanka’s civil war through political motherhood as mothers of the disappeared. The Madres and the NMF were founded by their respective members whereas the SMF was founded by two
(male) politicians from the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), a major party in Sri Lanka. While
3 For example, during the Cold War, the US antiwar group Women Strike for Peace received widespread criticism for their work, accused of abetting an outside enemy, the Soviet Union, and being “un-American” due to their peace work (Swerdlow, 1993). This suggests that interstate conflicts make peace activism difficult due to accusations of (lack of) patriotism. 4 Enforced disappearance is: “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law” (ICPPED, 2018, p. Article 2).
5 the SMF represented itself as part of civil society, its linkages with the SLFP mark it as a corporatist group, meaning that it was part of state institutions, in this case a political party
(Basu, 2003). Despite being founded by the SLFP, members of the SMF appeared to view themselves as part of the human rights movement as they regularly denied their interest (or apparent participation) in party politics (de Alwis, 2004). Furthermore, as discussed by
Kumudini Samuel (2006), the SMF were a critical part of the human rights movement in the south in the early 1990s, the one aspect of the human rights movement with the most manoeuvrability in the politically constrained environment of the south that began in 1987 with the reign of terror. While I recognize the corporatist nature of the SMF, I will refer to the group as a political motherhood movement as this is how they perceived themselves and because they constituted a critical part of Sri Lanka’s human rights movement in the early 19990s.
The Madres have been active for four decades. The group was highly visible throughout the war and postconflict period both domestically and internally and are remembered through a cultural institutionalization by Argentina’s human rights and women’s movements, general public and international human rights organizations (Munoz & Portillo, 1985; Bouvard, 1994;
Werth, 2010; Conn, 2018; Pineda, 2018; Taylor, 1997).5 Conversely, Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front organized for roughly seven years. While highly visible during the war domestically, the group was not recognized internationally. Today the Mothers’ Front has largely been forgotten at the domestic level in terms of popular culture or memorialization, although some feminists and human rights activists recall the work performed by the activists during the civil war and there
5 Since 1986, the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo have operated as two lines, which function as distinct organizations known as Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association) and Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora (Founding Line Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) (Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2006).
6 is scholarship speaking to their peace activism (Mothers' Padayatra, 1984; de Mel, 2001; de
Alwis, 2004).
I engage with the differences between the groups at the sites of duration, visibility and remembrance to understand how these three reinforcing qualities have impacted the respective legacies of these political motherhood movements. Ultimately, this study is concerned with understanding women’s political empowerment, especially how to sustain women’s civic organizing in postconflict societies, so that social movement actors and scholars can learn from the work of those who have organized before us, to make ongoing movement work more effective. By understanding the outcomes of previous social movements, we can better assess what contributes to women’s political empowerment. This project further seeks to promote the legacies of both the Madres and Mothers’ Front as critical histories of women’s political participation through political motherhood.
Additionally, this project engages with the United Nation Security Council’s Resolution
1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which in part promotes women’s mobilization into peace activism, often through political motherhood (S/RES/1325, 2000; Anderlini S. , 2011;
GNWP, 2019). To understand perceptions of political motherhood, I use counterfactuals of the
Madres and the Mothers’ Front, both of which catalysed before UNSCR 1325, which launched in 2000. By exploring the “what-ifs?” of UNSCR 1325, considering if it had been implemented at the time of either group’s launch, this project draws lessons as to how UNSCR 1325 might better support women’s long-term political mobilization.
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Possibilities and limitations of political motherhood
Political motherhood offers both possibilities as well as drawbacks in terms of women’s political empowerment through participation. Many women have used political motherhood to increase their political participation in elected office and civil society (Chaney, 1979; Orleck,
1997; Carreon & Moghadam, 2015). However, this does not always provide women with long- term access to the political public sphere; examples include women’s use of political motherhood during Greater Syria and Egypt’s anti-colonial period (Thompson, 2000; Baron,
2005). In the postconflict period, political motherhood can box women into a place where their peacefulness is perceived as weakness and/or their presence is viewed as more critical to the domestic sphere than the public political sphere (El-Bushra, 2007). As Margaret E. Burchianti
(2004) puts it, there may be only “conditional usefulness of employing motherhood as a strategy of protest” (p. 141). Many scholars have suggested that while political motherhood buys women temporary access to the public sphere by sanctioning their actions as socially acceptable, it may make it easy for women to be forced back to the domestic sphere since mothers and wives’ “proper place” is the home. Relatedly, it may limit the issues women are perceived as legitimately having a say on, to those revolving around caring duties or peace issues (Otto, 2006; El-Bushra, 2007; Charlesworth, 2008; Pratt & Richter-Devroe, 2011;
Shepherd, 2010).
Moreover, troubling connections can be made to political motherhood, including militaristic nationalism, ethnonationalism and/or religious fundamentalisms, as well as heteronormativity—referring to the privileging of heterosexuality—and transphobia. This is largely due to the “mother of the nation” trope, which constructs women as the reproducers of
8 the community, both literally and through their caring labor (Peterson, 1999; Firestone, 1970;
Enloe, 2000; DiQuinzio, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 1997; de Mel, 1996). The “mother of the nation” trope emphasizes women’s roles in biological and social reproduction and how women are constructed to embody the community’s identity. This construction embraces binary understandings of two sexes and induces obligations for women to engage in heterosexual relationships to bear and raise children for the national or ethnic community (Yuval-Davis,
1997; Peterson, 1999; Samarasinghe, 2012; Hallgren, 2012). This trope may also increase the likelihood that conflict will remain ongoing, albeit without weapons, or may encourage future armed fighting because it is linked to insider/outsider group dynamics that promote “us versus them” thinking (de Mel, 1996; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Samarasinghe, 2012).
While political motherhood allows women to easily increase their voice in the public sphere in the short-term, there is a clear tradeoff since such a strategy makes it easier to “send women back home” because political motherhood tacitly, and often explicitly, promotes socially conservative gender norms that emphasize the domestic sphere as “women’s place.” I narrow my scope to examine women’s peaceful use of political motherhood in armed conflicts and postconflict environments, wherein in some instances political motherhood has helped women to advance their positioning within the political public sphere. I suggest that some of the concern regarding political motherhood’s impact on women’s political organizing is linked with the perceptions of feminist and human rights movement actors of pollical motherhood movements’ duration, visibility and remembrance. When these perceptions are negative, it obscures the legacy of political motherhood groups by pushing perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance in a downward spiral. I seek to preserve the legacy of political
9 motherhood movements so that scholars can continue to build lessons from these histories to construct effective organizing. Regardless of the duration of a motherhood movement, or its visibility inside or outside the country, understanding a movement’s efforts, achievements and failures should be a priority, both to acknowledge to work of women activists and to gain insights based on their experiences that will be of use to current and future activists. While duration, visibility and remembrance are linked, I suggest that social movement work, even if activists engaged for a short duration, failed to find widespread traction in terms of visibility or even if unsuccessful in fully or partially achieving their political aims, can be remembered in social movement scholarship and more broadly in popular culture, such as museums—in terms of both critiques and contributions—so that lessons can be drawn from past movements for the use of current and future activists.
On this basis, I argue further that concerns around the essentialisms of political motherhood are not always problematic for women’s long-term organizing. Rather, political motherhood offered significant bases for women’s peace activism and political participation in both the short and long-term to challenge violence and injustice in the case of the Madres
(both lines) and for the short-term, the NMF and SMF. For this reason, political motherhood and political motherhood’s most related strand of feminism, maternal feminism, which highlights women as caring and nurturing in ways that connect women to peace politics, continue to deserve scholarly attention (Reardon 1993; 1996; Ruddick 1995). This study will show that it is the limitations of political violence, actors, structures and injustices that are placed on women that determine their strategic resort to political motherhood, particularly given its political maneuverability domestically and (in some cases) internationally. In particular,
10 political motherhood and maternal feminisms that promote peace activism provide space for political evolution in ways that may become increasingly progressive although not necessarily feminist, as well as lead to at least some political outcomes that support peace and transitional justice.
Defining terms and concepts
In this section, I sketch my uses of the terms and concepts at the core of this study.
These are by no means definitive and/or comprehensive views. Rather, I interrogate them briefly since these understandings form the theoretical basis of this dissertation. I begin with my definitions of women’s political empowerment, women’s political participation and social movements. Following this, I engage in a discussion of political motherhood, including where this form of political participation sits in relation to violence, peace and justice, as well as where political motherhood overlaps and diverges from maternal feminism. The theoretical framings in this section set the stage for later chapters.
I adopt a definition of women’s political empowerment as: “[t]he enhancement of assets, capabilities, and achievements of women to gain equality to men in influencing and exercising political authority worldwide” (Alexander, Bolzendahl, & Jalalzai, 2016, p. 433). I look beyond a binary approach to gender in terms of women and men, understanding that this approach reduces gender equality to women’s equality with men because men still hold most of the political power and authority globally. I recognize that some men (and women) have greater power and authority compared to other men (and women) due to hegemonic identities of class, race, ethnicity, caste, cis/trans status and other signifiers (Weerawardhana, 2018). For
11 example, cismen hold most power than transmen. Cis refers to those who identify with their sex assigned as birth while trans is an identity for those who do not relate to their sex assigned at birth (Sjoberg, 2012). My view of women’s political empowerment also includes attention to increasing women’s political efficacy through an on-going process that works to allocate
“power evenly” among all people regardless of gender identity and seeks to upend “patriarchal social structures” (Alexander, Bolzendahl, & Jalalzai, 2018, p. 6). Due to gendered barriers that exist globally, women as a diverse social group lack access to formal and informal political channels at the same rates as men. This inequality warrants both understanding and intervention by scholars, activists and practitioners to further inclusivity within democracy
(Alexander, Bolzendahl, & Jalalzai, 2018). This project will examine women’s political empowerment through the specific lens of political participation in social movement activism.
I understand women’s political participation to refer broadly to: voting in elections, joining political parties, supporting political campaigns, running for and winning legislative and other elected positions, serving in the state bureaucracy, and engaging in civil society organizing as well as women’s ability to lobby those in government, influence state actors and make political contributions (Verba & Nie, 1972; Parry, Moyser, & Day, 1992; Verba, Schlozman,
& Brady, 1995; Basu, 2003; Kitschelt & Rehm, 2014). This is project is interested in women’s engagement in civil society movements. Social movements are collective efforts that work from the point of civil society, although they can—and often do—engage with the state to achieve their aims (Basu, 2003). The study of social movements was highly Eurocentric. Scholars such as
Amrita Basu (1995) and Sonia Alvarez (1990) have broadened social movement studies into the
12 global South.6 As Sonia Alvarez and Arturo Escobar ([1992] 2018) do in their volume The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, I understand a struggle for power to enact social change to be at the center of movement work, as well as the presence of collective identities (p. 4). The collective identities in my study are mothers of the disappeared impacted by an array of other identities related to gender, ethnic, national, racial and religious identities, who chose to rely on political motherhood.
Political motherhood has been deployed both peacefully and violently on behalf of a wide range of causes. This has included environmentalism, subsistence struggles, antimilitarism, anticolonialism, and ethno, religious, racist and fascist nationalisms (Orleck,
1997; Stavrianos, 2014; Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Williams, Manscript in progress). My conceptualization of political motherhood derives from Michelle Carreon and Valentine
Moghadam’s (2015) typology that categorizes the contexts under which political motherhood operates—top-down or bottom-up—as well as whether political motherhood serves patriarchal or emancipatory ends. Bottom-up political motherhood, meaning where it is deployed by women themselves, can be a strategic move on the part of activists, providing women with authority and political opportunities, and allowing them to exercise their political efficacy. In contrast, when the state pushes women to adopt political motherhood in a top-down form, it often, although not always, limits women's ability to participate politically because it tends to stress women's roles in the home. Carreon and Moghadam analyzed four arenas where political motherhood has been used: violent contexts, revolutions, transnational contexts and
6 Basu and Alvarez are South Asian and Latin American area studies experts respectively, and both feminists and political scientists.
13 environments of inequality. By violent contexts, they refer to any environment in which violence abounds, such as the drug-cartel dominated Ciudad Juárez, México. In reference to revolutions, they include the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which was a series of civil protests.
Carreon and Moghadam do not specifically consider armed conflicts, which have been shown to operate in unique ways and may influence the form that political motherhood takes, including in the postconflict period. Armed conflicts can disrupt gender dynamics that inadvertently widens the political opportunity structure to allow women activists (greater) access to the public political sphere and further allow room for the spread of international gender norms, thereby providing many of the necessary conditions to alter gender relations (Tripp A. M.,
2015).
The political motherhood movements of the Madres, NMF and SMF all focused initially on the disappearances of their children in wartime, with the Madres and NMF engaged in a bottom-up political motherhood and the SMF tied to a top-down political motherhood due to their status as a corporatist group of the SLFP. As the following chapters will reveal, those movements that were bottom-up can—although not necessarily—endure longer than top- down maternal activists, as well as lead to broader political meaning and participation. The key to long duration as an organization is increasingly expansive and transnationally resonant demands that are not fully or unevenly met by state, as with the Madres. It also requires that movements are not boxed in by armed non-state and state actors that make their continuing struggles for peace and transitional justice impossible, the latter of which was ultimately the undoing of the NMF. Top-down-created political motherhood movements risk the loss of their political momentum when state actors who formed them follow through on more narrow
14 demands as was the case with the SMF. While the SMF was successful in achieving the majority of their political demands, disbanding as an organization was also easier under such conditions.
This deflated continuing informal and formal political participation, although some engaged in continued private resistance in the face of insufficient peace and transitional justice.
As noted, political motherhood may serve peaceful or violent ends. Moreover, political motherhood itself may be deployed peacefully or violently. Peace was historically understood as the absence of war. This is known as negative peace. However, Johan Galtung (1964; 1969) developed the notion of positive peace, which refers to the absence of structural (avoidable) violences. Feminists, especially those working in feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist peace studies (FPS) have built upon Galtung’s definition to connect postconflict peace and human development, which seeks economic, social and political equality as part of the terms of peace. For feminists, violence entails all forms of harm, not only direct violence (Ní Aoláin,
Haynes, & Cahn, 2011; Alexander R. , 2019; True & Tanyag, 2019). This research complicates the notion of peace as the absence of war, bringing in the understanding of peace as the absence of all forms of structural violence based in gendered, racialized, heteronormative and other forms of violence.
Additionally, insights from social movement scholars have complicated the notion of nonviolence as inherently tied to peace. Violence carried out by the marginalized for their liberation supports peaceful ends, although violence at the hands of the oppressor does not
(Meckfessel, 2016). This is the kind of violence that Anne Sisson Runyan and Marysia Zalewski
(2019) mean when they describe feminism as a force that can “challenge hegemonic knowledges and practices” through disruptions (p. 106). While liberal political philosophy
15 promotes peace and violence (or more traditionally, peace and war) as discreet phenomenon, this project understands peace and violence overlapping in some instances. Furthermore, peace has been liked with passivity due to a gendering of passivity that ties women discursively to peace and passivity in the context of war and women’s roles in society. This is based on the misconception that women have historically minded the home front while men fought in wars, therein rendering women (exclusively) victims of war and men war’s combatants. Such discourse constructs women’s violence as unnatural and unfeminine (Elshtain, 1995; Gentry &
Sjoberg, 2015; Åhäll, 2015).
I provide some examples of violent and peaceful political motherhood carried behalf of either peace or violence. An example of peaceful political motherhood done on behalf of peace is the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which formed in the context of World War I (1914-1918). It relied on nonviolent political motherhood to protest war, including the Viet Nam War (1955-1975), in which the women staked their antiwar activism on the sanctity of heteronormative motherhood and wifehood (Wu, 2013; Tickner &
True, 2018; Confortini, 2010). Violent political motherhood for peace can be seen in combative mothers. In wars of liberation or national independence movements, women have joined in fighting, some fighting as combative mothers who take up arms to better care for their children. Combative mothers argue that effective mothering cannot occur until the country has achieved liberation from colonizers (Berkman, 1990; Turpin, 1998). In the revolutionary Latin
American guerilla movements of the 1980s and 1990s, women formed a significant portion of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the Farabundo Martì National Liberation
(FMLN) and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Nicaragua, El Salvador and
16
Chiapas (México) (Kampwirth, 2002). Those women who did so through motherhood relied on a violent political motherhood for peaceful ends since it entailed taking up arms, yet the women sought a peaceful society free of colonizers and built on greater inequality.
Violent political motherhood for violent ends is linked with nationalism, religious fundamentalism and heteronormativity. “Patriotic mothering” describes a violent political motherhood in which women encourage their sons to fight based on the gendered ideal that it is a man’s duty to defend the motherland, or nation/nation-state, and to honor his mother by upholding masculine ideals of a warrior (Elshtain, 1995; Enloe, 2000; Hallgren, 2012; Sehgal,
2012). Such discourses, which tend to be rendered in heteronormative and transphobic terms, imply that failure to take up arms is unmasculine and socially unacceptable (Lancaster, 1992;
Enloe, 2000). Anti-immigrant, classist and racist discourses also permeate violent motherhood.
Some US women in World War I demanded that the US government institute a draft, believing that newer generations of immigrants from areas outside of Britain were “slackers” who would not willingly serve in the military. These mothers feared that only the “good” Anglo-Saxon men would join the war effort, many of whom might lose their lives. This would leave only “bad” immigrant men, mainly from the working class, as the remaining male citizens. These mothers berated working class and immigrant men for their lack of patriotism, urging them to join the military, and called upon women to send their sons to war with the argument that mothers were failures if they tried to prevent their sons from serving (Hallgren, 2012).
There is no meaningful way to use peaceful means on behalf of violence as even non- action or peaceful protest would necessitate complicity on behalf of violence, meaning that the action—or non-action—would be rendered violent. This is similar to the notion that bystanders
17 who do nothing to prevent violence are complicit in the violence by their inaction. However, as
Women in Black suggest, non-action, done intentionally, such as in silence, is not complicity when it is used as a protest. Women in Black is an organization that began in Israel during the
First Intifada (1987-1993), which uses silent vigils to protest the Occupation of Palestine
(Cockburn, 2007).
To categorize the cases in this study, the Madres as a unified group (1977-1986) constituted peaceful political motherhood for peace. As I outline in Chapters 3 and 4, once the
Madres became two distinct lines, one, the Línea Fundadora, engaged in peaceful political motherhood for peace, while the other, the Asociación, became increasingly open to using violent political motherhood on behalf of peace (Agosín, 1990; Bouvard, 1994). By 2011, there is no disputing that the Asociación branch had fully embraced violent methods as their leader—
Hebe de Bonafini—has since made regular threats against those she disagrees with and the
Asociación line has been implicated in fraudulent actions that if true, entail skimming money intended to help the socioeconomically disadvantaged (Bio, Court Indicts Hebe De Bonafini On
Charges Of Defrauding The State, 2017; Bio, Hebe de Bonafini And Estela De Carlotto Spar Over
Relationship With The Government, 2017; Kelly, 2011). The latter action—taking money from those who needed financial help—was for violent ends. However, the Asociación denies any participation in the theft (Bio, Court Indicts Hebe De Bonafini On Charges Of Defrauding The
State, 2017).
The NMF was from the start engaged in peaceful—although certainly not passive or silent—political motherhood in the effort for peace. While the Madres evolved toward the notion of a fully constituted positive peace that promotes economic equality, democracy and
18 women’s rights, the NMF from its start understood peace to be a positive peace, with equal rights for all citizens regardless of ethnicity and gender. Finally, the SMF engaged in both peaceful and violent political motherhoods for negative peace and may be construed as having sought violence. While seeking the end of enforced disappearances and the end of conflict, the
SMF engaged in violence in two ways. One was by seeking violence against the perpetrators of enforced disappearance but also in how they ignored (at least collectively) the issues of minority women, which sought the end of conflict, not equality for Sri Lanka’s marginalized communities (de Alwis, 2001; 2004). It is the lack of concern—due mainly to ties of nationalism in the form of Sinhala-Buddhism hegemony—for those outside of the Sinhalese community that represents violent ends. I discuss this extensively in Chapter 8.
In terms of my understanding of justice in relation to political motherhood movements for peace, I see it as part of positive peace. This follows the principle of gender centralizing, which was developed by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn (2011), that considers social, political and economic equality as necessary in postconflict justice for peace to exist. Gender centralizing brings in intersectional understandings of identity to understand how each person experiences the world differently to in turn fully dismantle all structural harms. My view incorporates—but certainly does not stop with—the United Nation’s recommendations for transitional justice in the aftermath of armed conflicts and other atrocities. This comes from the General Assembly’s Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. Among other recommendations, the document urges 1) accountability for gross human rights violations, ensuring that such
19 violations are investigated in full and prosecuted where there is sufficient evidence, 2) reparations for victims of atrocity, which includes public apology and public commemorations as well as economic payments for suffering, 3) judicial remedy for any violations endured and 4) that information regarding both violations and remedies for these violations are made widely available (UNGA, 2005; Neumann & Thompson, 2015).
When it comes to remembering the past in a way that honors transitional justice, the question of silence is a complicated one. I agree with Jane Parpart and Swati Parashar (2019) that silence does not necessarily constitute disempowerment on behalf of those who are silent or a covering up of the past. Women and Black is a case in point, with their major protest activity silence, a characteristic often associated with femininity and typically viewed as a sign of weakness. Yet for the Women in Black, this silence is their strength and “speaks volumes” as well as highlights injustices rather than covers them up (Cockburn, 2007). However, I do not agree with the collective amnesia approach to past horrors that is supported by some, wherein past injustices are figuratively brushed under the rug, to be forgotten so that societies can
“move on” (Malamud-Goti, 1996; Dyzenhaus, 1998; Douglass & Vogler, 2003; Mendeloff, 2004;
Gates-Madsen, 2016). While I do not support such whitewashing of history, nor do I support the idea that all history must be “honored.” We can remember the past without praising all that took place. In trying to enact justice that will transition toward justice, I support accountability, reparations and remembering as well as finding ways to rectify ongoing injustices that relate to social, economic and political inequalities in a society.
Questions of justice relate to feminism, which is a diverse area of scholarship and activism, yet one united by a commitment to justice (Dhamoon, 2013). Understanding links
20 between political motherhood and maternal feminism is one part of this project. Political motherhood shares some similarities with maternal feminism in the sense that both can promote women’s political empowerment, and both have received criticism from (non- maternal) feminists. When I speak of maternal feminism, I do not refer the maternal feminism associated with the white settler colonial projects of the British Empire that “became the hallmark of Anglo-Saxon feminism and the basis of white feminists’ claims to social and political power” (Devereux, 1999, p. 178). Instead, I refer to difference—also called radical—feminism associated with feminist standpoint theory that was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s
(Sylvester, 1994; Dhamoon, 2013). Feminist standpoint theory emphasizes “women’s perspectives” that are assumed to give women with a “different” point of view or way of thinking compared to men. Such views are rooted in the understanding that women are oppressed by hierarchal gender relations and so from where they stand, they see the world differently from men (Sylvester, 1994).
Two important maternal feminist texts that relate to this project’s understanding of maternal feminism include Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking: Towards A Politics of Peace
(1995) and Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born (1976). Rich suggests that while the social institution of motherhood is patriarchal, the experience of mothering can be made part of feminist praxis, such that mothers can raise feminist children by instilling feminist values.
Ruddick makes a similar argument about feminist praxis, although specifically about promoting a feminist politics of peace. Ruddick suggests that through their daily mothering, mothers come to form a special connection to peace that can be extended from their private homes to the wider world. Ruddick suggests that mothers are concerned with nurturance, something that the
21 world as a whole needs, and that mothers’ daily practice in maternal thinking, which for example, seeks ways to end conflicts among children, suggests that mothers can become excellent promoters of a feminist politics of peace given their experiences. Since at least 1868, which saw the founding of the first women’s peace society in Geneva, Switzerland, there has been a presumption by some that link women with peace, including some who follow maternal feminism (Runyan, 1988; Reardon, 1993; 1996; Aharoni, 2017).
While maternal feminism enjoyed popularity in the 1970s and 1980s—particularly in connection to peace organizing—by the late 1980s, there was a shift in feminist thinking due to new understandings of gender as performative, which gave way to increasing concerns around essentializing gender (Butler, [1990] 1999; Dhamoon, 2013). Works such as Ruddick’s were criticized for suggesting that peace is a women’s issue since it reinforced the notion that women are inherently nurturing or morally upstanding. This was deemed antithetical to the pursuit of gender equality since these are stereotypes about women (Swerdlow, 1990).
Feminist work turned to critique the conflations made among women, motherhood and peace, which inaccurately tethers all women to motherhood and denies the evidence that many mothers are violent (Elshtain, 1995; Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Åhäll, 2015). Maternal feminism remains marginalized among contemporary feminisms. I suggest that there is a room in contemporary feminist movements for a renewed maternal feminism, albeit one that avoids essentialisms, heteronormativity and nationalism and religious fundamentalism, which I discuss in Chapter 8.
I agree with Janice Nathanson (2008) who has argued that political motherhood and feminism converge around the understanding that by mobilizing collectively, social change can
22 be sought through people power. While women using political motherhood often unintentionally and/or slowly unsettle gender expectations, both political motherhood and feminism disrupt socially conservative understandings of gender. What differentiates political motherhood and maternal feminism is whether individuals self-identify as feminists. However, some feminists suggest that even self-identification may not be necessary if we consider women engaging in their own empowerment to be de facto feminism. Carreon and Moghdam
(2015) have argued that political motherhood movements from the bottom-up are de facto feminist because they politically empower maternal activists. Similarly, the “I’m not a feminist, but…” phenomenon, which Penny Griffin (2015) argues supports feminism in all but self- identification, is another kind of de facto feminism.
Research design
Having set out the major terms and concepts in this study, I turn to the research design.
Relying on a unique cross-regional comparison of Argentina’s Madres and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’
Front highlights how both groups evolved under repressive, human rights-abusing governments that relied on the tactic of enforced disappearances in highly divided societies. That mothers of the disappeared arose in two vastly divergent countries—differing geographically, religiously, ethnically and historically—speaks to the broad appeal and strategic expediency of political motherhood in politically challenging environments.
This project follows an interpretive methodology, seeking understanding in how meaning is constructed, and it engages feminist critical methodologies. Interpretive methodology is oriented toward “specific, situated meanings and meaning-making practices of
23 actors in a given context” (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012, p. 1). It seeks to explicate
“constitutive causality,” which refers to understanding processes of sense-making (p. 52).
Unlike positivist work, there are no variables or hypotheses in this project. Rather, I was drawn to an initial puzzle of why—if political motherhood is supposedly antithetical to women’s long- term political participation—were the Madres one of the longest-running human rights groups in Latin America? I became further intrigued when I learned of the Mothers’ Front, which operated under some similar conditions as the Madres—that of internal armed conflicts defined by governments using state terrorism against citizens—yet disbanded sooner than the
Argentine group. Using abductive reasoning, I began to work through what might account for the similar outcome of two women’s groups challenging the state on human rights violations through political motherhood in divergent contexts, but which resulted in different long-term outcomes, with the Madres active now for four decades and the Mothers’ Front lasting “only” about seven years. This was an on-going, back and forth process of abduction that lasted throughout the research process.
My orientation in feminist critical methodologies follows the principles of reflection, critical thinking and attention to power dynamics in structures and relationships. It is rooted in an understanding of feminist scholarship as taking a “critical perspective on social and political life” that seeks to transform social injustices (Ackerly & True, 2010, p. 1). Throughout this project, I have engaged in reflexive thinking, to consider as much as I can my implicit biases, which are linked to my status as an outsider to both Argentina and Sri Lanka.
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Methods
Specific methods used in this dissertation include the comparative case study method triangulated with fieldwork, visual analysis, feminist re-reading and counterfactual methods.
This project is rooted in comparative gender politics, wherein the comparative case method is a critical aspect of the sub-field. Systematic comparisons of similarities and differences allow for analysis of meaning-making by highlighting disjunctures at the points of duration, visibility and remembrance. This project makes two nested comparisons that explore aspects of Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war and the Madres and Mothers’ Front through the classic comparative politics method of Mill’s methods of most similar and most different cases. Mill’s methods seek to isolate causal variables through comparisons that highlight what they have in common—whether that is on the basis of shared or different dependent variables—to pinpoint the independent, or causal, variable (Van Evera, 1997). Because this is an interpretive project, these comparisons are not outlining independent, dependent or compounding variables. Rather I make use of Mill’s method of similarity and difference as a conceptual framework to highlight the armed conflicts and political motherhood movements’ differences from, and similarities to, one another.
The first comparison is based on Mill’s method of most similarity. It compares two internal conflicts that resulted in different outcomes, that of a long-lasting political motherhood movement and the other a political motherhood movement of a shorter duration. Both the
Argentine and Sri Lankan conflicts were internal civil wars in which the state targeted perceived
“enemy” individuals, deemed “subversives” and “terrorists,” and deployed enforced disappearances to terrorize citizens, with some of the highest rates of enforced disappearances
25 in the world in both countries. The regimes that ran the respective states during these conflicts were decidedly nondemocratic. Political activities were curtailed in both contexts, which made civic organizing both difficult and dangerous (Taylor, 1997; Samuel, 2006; Kailasapathy, 2012;
Malik, Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009; SAHR, 2018).
In terms of women’s peace movements, the political motherhood movements preceded the launch of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 and its subsequent WPS agenda (S/RES/1325, 2000; Kirby &
Shepherd, 2016). The WPS agenda has led to a transnational network of intergovernmental, international human rights and feminist organizations that promote women’s peace activism through UNSCR 1325 (NGO Working Group on Women, 2019). These networks promote women’s roles in peacebuilding, peacekeeping and postconflict reconstruction in a manner that emphasizes, and arguably exaggerates, women as peacebuilders, often through maternal language (Otto, 2006; S/RES/1325, 2000; Kirby & Shepherd, 2016). Argentina’s period of state terrorism ended in 1983, well before UNSCR 1325 became commonly used in armed conflicts and postconflict development programs. Although the Sri Lankan Civil War concluded in 2009 and principles from the WPS agenda were introduced, the Mothers’ Front ended in 1994, before the launch of UNSCR 1325 (Dharamdasa, 2017). That both groups pre-date UNSCR 1325 is significant since the transnational networks that now exist could have promoted the women’s organizing at the international level and offered support.
The resulting outcomes between these two armed conflicts that share similarities in terms of the type of war, basic regime type and the international context for women’s organizing, resulted in different outcomes for the respective political motherhood movements: the Madres, who still exist today, and the Mothers’ Front, which operated over 1984-1987 and
26
1990-1994. Furthermore, while both the Madres and Mothers’ Front were visible domestically, only the Madres were visible internationally. Finally, in terms of remembrance, the Madres have been culturally institutionalized within Argentina’s human rights and women’s movements, general public and at the international level among international human rights organizations. Conversely, there has been no popular cultural integration or memorialization through public works of the Mothers’ Front in Sri Lanka and knowledge of the group is confined to a segment of feminist and human rights scholars and activists. See Figure 1.
Argentina’s period of Sri Lanka’s civil war
terrorism
Type of conflict Civil war Civil war
Regime Type Nondemocratic Nondemocratic
International context Predates UNSCR 1325 Predates UNSCR 1325
Different outcomes Madres of the Plaza de Mothers’ Front 1984-1987;
Mayo active 1977-present 1990-1994
Long duration (40+ years) Shorter duration (~ 7 years)
Visible domestically and Visible domestically only
internationally
Remembered Forgotten
Figure 1: Mills’ method of most similarity
27
The second comparison explores the cases from a different vantage by making use of
Mill’s method of difference. The type of internal conflict, ideological or ethnic, specific regime type, authoritarian or illiberal democracy, and diversity level, more or less heterogenous, indicate that the period of state of terrorism in Argentina and Sri Lanka’s civil war differ in significant ways. In terms of the type of conflict, Argentina’s period of state terrorism was an ideological and class conflict that pitted the political right and middle and upper classes against the political left and working classes (Taylor, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003). In contrast, Sri
Lanka’s civil war was an ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority carried out by the Sinhalese-dominated state (Thiranagama, 2011).
Additionally, the specific type of regime carrying out the internal wars differed. In
Argentina, the military dictatorship was authoritarian for the duration of the period of state terrorism while in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese-dominated government was nominally democratic.
Given the extensive repression of the Tamil community’s political and civil rights, it could be argued that the Sri Lankan government was authoritarian (Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; ICG,
2007; Malik, Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009; Thiranagama, 2011). Even in the south, where the majority Sinhalese community resides, there were times when political and civil rights were highly curtailed, most notably under the reign of terror, which catalyzed one branch of the Mothers’ Front. Minimally, Sri Lanka’s regime during the civil war was illiberally democratic (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001). Finally, the two countries differ in levels of diversity.
Argentina is more homogenous compared to Sri Lanka in terms of racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic identities, although this in no way suggests that there is not a strong (albeit small) indigenous and Afrodescendant presence in Argentina (discussed in Chapters 3 and 6) (Kohut,
28
Vilella, & Julian, 2003; IWGIA, 2011; Lewis, 2015; Anderson J. M., 2015). Alternatively, Sri Lanka is one of the most ethnically divided countries in the world, with few instances of cross-cutting cleavages in terms of ethnic, religious and linguistic identities (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur,
2014; Thiranagama, 2011).
Despite these differences in the type of civil war, specific regime type and level of diversity, both internal conflicts resulted in the shared outcome of political motherhood movements, which were uniquely situated to challenge the state’s human rights abuses when most other civil society groups were hampered. The Madres and the Mothers’ Front employed political motherhood to create space for their organizing in the oppressive political opportunity structures of Argentina and Sri Lanka during these conflicts. The women’s organizing was rooted in discourses that emphasized mothers’ social and religious roles. Relying on these discourses allowed the mothers of the disappeared to appear socially conservative and apolitical, or simply status-quo in terms of gender norms, which limited the states’ ability to overtly suppress the women’s protests since motherhood was promoted under both governments as part of nationalism. After women lost their children to government forces, both groups stressed their identities as mothers to make demands on the state for the return of their children. Each groups’ goals also included demands for an end to the fighting through a peaceful political solution (Fisher, 1989; de Mel, 1996; Taylor, 1997; Samuel, 2006; de Alwis,
1998). See Figure 2.
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Argentina’s period of Sri Lanka’s civil war
terrorism
Type of civil war Ideological/class Ethnic
Specific regime type Military dictatorship Illiberal democracy
Level of societal diversity Less heterogenous Heterogenous, few cross-
cutting cleavages
Similar outcomes Political motherhood Political motherhood
movement movement
Figure 2: Mill’s method of difference
To sum up, I suggest that these nested comparisons from different vantage points highlight the similarities and differences among these conflicts and political motherhood movements, making for an excellent comparison. First, the comparison points to the similar outcomes of women’s groups protesting state-led enforced disappearances through political motherhood in divergent contexts. Second, it provides a striking look at the different durations of these groups, as well as differences in their visibility and remembrance. Several studies have previously noted similarities between Argentina’s Madres and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front, although none to date have systematically compared the two (Vickers, 1993, p. 124; Hensman,
1996; Zubytska, 2015, p. 268; Bouvard, 1996, p. 298). This will be the first major comparative treatment of the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
Preliminary work included surveying secondary sources on the political and historical backgrounds of Argentina and Sri Lanka and the period of state terrorism in Argentina and Sri
Lanka’s civil war. For the Madres and the Mothers’ Front, I also relied in part on interviews with
30 scholars. I am especially grateful to interviews with Dr. Malathi de Alwis, Dr. Silvy Thiruchandrin and Dr. Kumudini Samuel, whose insight on the Mothers’ Front was invaluable. Fieldwork entailed two months in Colombo, Sri Lanka over fall 2017 and ten days in Buenos Aires,
Argentina in spring 2019. In Colombo, I visited archives and research libraries, including those located at the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, the Centre for Women’s Research, the
Women’s Education and Research Centre and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies.
Additionally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with three major scholars on the Mothers’
Front, as well as figures from civil society, a journalist and a scholar of Sri Lankan politics. In
Buenos Aires, I engaged in participant observation of one of the Madres’ weekly marches, which they have performed weekly since 1977, as well as the events surrounding the National
Day of Remembrance, March 24th, which in 1976 marked the start of Argentina’s period of state terrorism. This included public speeches and rallies by political parties and civic organizations in downtown Buenos Aires, around the Plaza de Mayo. While in Buenos Aires, I gathered visual evidence and images that attest to the living collective memories of the Madres by Argentina’s general public and human rights and feminist movements. Finally, I conducted informational interviews with a scholar of Argentine politics.
Alongside the comparative case method and fieldwork, I further relied on visual analysis, feminist re-reading and counterfactual methods. Visual analysis explores how images resonate within their given contexts, to provide a full accounting of reading the visual world
(Howells & Negreiros, 2012). My feminist re-reading follows Sasha Roseneil’s Common Women,
Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham (2000), which reinterpreted the anti- nuclear organizing of women peace activists at Greenham Common, to shine a light on the
31 transgressions the women performed alongside their use of peaceful political motherhood. The method of counterfactual allows thinking through “what ifs” of the past, to imagine what might have been, which provides space for understanding the consequences of certain actions or events (Levy, 2008). Each of these methods provides the basis for three substantive chapters. I use visual analysis to understand the resonance of the respective representations of the
Madres and Mothers’ Front both domestically and internationally. The feminist re-reading allowed me to deconstruct binaries related to the public and private spheres and collective action and private resistance to highlight the private resistance of former members of the SMF.
Finally, counterfactuals provided space to think through the use of political motherhood and what the existence of the UNSCR 1325 regime on WPS could have meant in terms of these cases had it been implemented at the time of both women’s groups.
This project foregrounds the dramatic differences between the legacies of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. The Madres became highly visible within and outside of Argentina, while the Mothers’ Front remained largely invisible on the international stage, although they certainly made a mark within Sri Lanka. The widespread visibility of the Madres has led to a strong collective memory of the organization, which is recalled both domestically and internationally.
In the case of the Mothers’ Front, the group is not well remembered in Sri Lanka outside of some feminist scholars and some involved in human rights organizing. Few outside of the country know the Mothers’ Front, especially outside South Asian area studies. By unpacking these differences, this project will speak to deeper understandings of the legacies of political motherhood movements.
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Expectations
In undertaking this study, I had expectations regarding both the Mothers’ Front and
Madres. I had two expectations about my future findings of the Mothers’ Front, which were based on my understanding of the literature on political motherhood and women’s political participation, including work done in my master’s thesis, which examined women’s use of political motherhood in civil wars in Lebanon and Liberia (Whetstone, 2013). First, I had expected that the Mothers’ Front would be as well-known in Sri Lanka as the Madres are in
Argentina. However, this was not the case. While in Colombo doing my fieldwork, I anticipated coming across collections of writings and primary documents related to the Mothers’ Front in the research libraries and archives located within the Centre for Women’s Research, the
Women and Media Collective and the Women’s Education and Research Centre, and perhaps even the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. I was surprised that at these sites, no such collections existed. Most people I spoke with at these locations had not heard of the Mothers’
Front, including the extraordinarily well-informed archivist at Centre for Women’s Research.
Having read studies by Sri Lankan feminists on the Mothers’ Front, which had emphasized the mass mobilization of the SMF, which at its height boasted 25,000 members, marking it the largest grassroots effort in modern Sri Lanka, I expected to “see” this history in books, archives, monuments, art and every day encounters. My host in Colombo, well informed and politically engaged, mentioned that he vaguely recalled the Mothers’ Front but could not remember any specifics. This became a pattern in my encounters with many civically engaged Sri Lankans and speaks to the forgetting of the group, despite its political successes.
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My second expectation about the Mothers’ Front had been that the women in this group had never attempted to make transnational connections with feminist and other human rights networks globally. I assumed that if they had done so, human rights advocates and feminists would have readily supported the group, even if only rhetorically, if not in terms of resources. I was surprised and disappointed that both branches of the Mothers’ Front had worked to obtain connections abroad and were ignored. I found this problematic in terms of the feminist and human rights movements’ responsibility to those who call upon it for support in their human rights efforts.
From the beginning, I was curious about what accounted for the staying power of the
Madres, particularly when there have been concerns that political motherhood may more easily push women back to the home. After consulting Fernando Bosco’s extensive work on the group done over the decade of the 2000s, I assumed that it was as he suggested, due to emotions.
Emotional bonds were cemented among the women week after week as they circled the Plaza de Mayo over decades, tied to the relationships that they had developed with one another based on the shared experiences of losing a loved one (Bosco, 2001; 2006; 2007). These ideas echoed the findings of earlier ethnographic work on the group that suggested the members bonded fiercely with one another (Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994). Yet as I continued my research,
I began to question if this could entirely account for the longevity of the Madres. I began to consider the different political contexts of Argentina and Sri Lanka during the formation of both groups. It became clear that the lack of ethnic differences in Argentina may have contributed to prolonging the Madres, whereas the environment was much more fraught in Sri Lanka due to the ethnic conflict.
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After conducting my fieldwork in Buenos Aires, I developed my third expectation regarding the Madres. I suspected that the tremendous public support that the Madres receive further accounts for their longevity. Certainly, the women have been accused of political naiveté, of being anti-patriotic and unduly influenced by foreign and outsider interests, indicating that they are not universally adored (Bouvard, 1994). However, there was a palpable and deep appreciation for the women I felt emanating from the crowd that gathered to watch them march or to march with them, around the Plaza de Mayo during one of their weekly protests when I was conducting fieldwork. I felt this love again during the March 24th remembrance rallies and events, which mark the anniversary of the start of the 1976 dictatorship. I witnessed a significant number of people sporting a Madres t-shirt, pin or other fashion statements, as well as the many whimsical images of the Madres scattered around
Buenos Aires that spoke to a visual popular cultural memorialization of the group.
These expectations of both the Mothers’ Front or Madres came through the abductive research process as I engaged with the literatures on social movements, civil society and government connections, activism in armed conflicts and women’s political participation and as a part of the process of carrying out my fieldwork.
Contributions
This dissertation contributes to the understanding of women’s political empowerment through the lens of political participation by examining how to further women’s political participation both during armed conflicts and in postconflict societies and among women drawn to political motherhood. This project makes several contributions to the fields of political
35 science and gender studies and its findings are intended for scholars, practitioners and policymakers working in women’s political empowerment and social movement organizing.
First, while there is extensive scholarship on women organizing for peace, the role of motherhood in armed conflict and women’s armed participation in conflicts, the role that political motherhood for peace can play in advancing women’s political participation in armed conflicts and post-conflict societies has been neglected. 7 Previous studies on women’s maternal peace activism have focused mainly on how or why women organize within civil society via maternal mobilization. If such studies examine women’s rights and/or feminist politics, it is only as a secondary consideration (Thompson, 2000; Baron, 2005; Tickner & True,
2018; Swerdlow, 1993; Anderlini S. N., 2007; Alonso, 1993).
Moreover, considering women’s long-term political mobilization through political motherhood not only during the armed conflict but in the postconflict period is an important contribution. I am particularly interested in how both the Madres and Mothers’ Front contributed to transitional justice processes. Transitional justice is a process that seeks to bring healing to a society that has undergone collective trauma, such as an armed conflict (Barahona de Brito, 2010). Typically, transitional justice is thought to take place in the postconflict period.
However, transitional justice’s links to the politics of memory—which explores contested truths—suggests that movement toward transitional justice begins even during the armed conflict. I show how the Mothers’ Front, despite ending before the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war,
7 For a sampling of the extensive literature on women and peace activism and women’s connections to peace see: Liddington, 1991; Swerdlow, 1993; Alonso, 1993; Reardon, 1993; Confortini, 2010; Cockburn, 2007; 2012. Major studies on violent motherhood and war are few and mostly recent: Elshtain, 1995; Åhäll, 2015; Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015. There is a greater literature on women’s armed participation in conflicts and postconflict societies, which include: Bloom, 2011; Parashar, 2014; Henshaw, 2017; Wahidin, 2016; Darden, Henshaw, & Szekely, 2019; Viterna, 2013; Sjoberg, 2017; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2011; Sjoberg, Gender, War, and Conflict , 2014.
36 contributed to the politics of memory that seeks to preserve history and to uphold accountability for injustice.
Second, this project uniquely explores the politics of memory of social movements, which has only recently entered the field of political science, having arisen in history, anthropology and sociology.8 Most of the literature on the politics of memory is focused at the national or subnational community levels.9 In contrast, I explore the politics of memory of human rights and feminist movements. I suggest that these communities’ recognition and remembrance, or lack thereof, of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front, have influenced perceptions of political motherhood. Third, this dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach rooted in political science linked with insights from gender studies, history and sociology, and an intradisciplinary status at the intersection of the fields of comparative and international politics by bridging feminist comparative politics/comparative politics of gender with feminist international relations.
Fourth, feminist comparative politics literature has been criticized by those working within this area for failing to engage with the broader field of comparative politics (Tripp A. M.,
2006; Schwindt-Bayer, 2010). I address this by situating my study in the comparative literatures of political participation and political parties. Additionally, while much of the feminist international relations (IR) literature tends to focus on short-term examples of women’s political participation in armed conflicts and their resolutions, I take a long-term approach by
8 Political scientists are moving into the area of politics of memory (Eisner, 2018; Sylvester, 2019; Barahona de Brito, González‐Enríquez, & Aguilar, Introduction, 2001). 9 For a sample of critical works in the politics of memory see: (Sturken, 1997; Thelan, 1989; Lambeck & Antze, 1996; Huyssen, 2003; Bergson, 1978).
37 looking at cases in which the conflicts are officially over, to unpack women’s participation in post-conflict societies.
The fifth contribution of this dissertation is its focus on women’s groups in the global
South from different global regions, which furthers comparative gender studies, a literature that has been mainly limited to regional comparisons, and which broadens international relations’ insights that have been overly focused on the global North.10 Feminist comparative politics scholars have argued that this subfield should broaden beyond regional comparisons
(Tripp A. M., 2006; Schwindt-Bayer, 2010). My cases, situated in South America’s Southern
Cone and South Asia, means that my research design is doing this work to move beyond regional comparisons. Additionally, within the discipline of political science, gender studies and feminist scholarship has been neglected despite the importance of gender to politics
(Hawkesworth, 2005; Tickner, 1992). My project foregrounds the effects of gender on political participation. Likewise, this project contributes to the legacy of the Madres in the English- speaking world, where many do not know that the Madres remain active. I also seek to promote the legacy of the Mothers’ Front widely, so that its contributions to human rights, peace activism and women’s political empowerment are better known.
A fifth contribution of this study is introducing two new political motherhood framings, which furthers the area of social movement literature that explores framing—or how social movement actors represent themselves to best achieve their political aims—as well as expands the literature on political motherhood. These frames are the maternal authority frame and the
10 Feminist IR is a notable exception, which has drawn attention to the global South (Tickner, 1992; Weber, 1999; Runyan, 2019).
38 maternal emotionality frame. The maternal authority frame is linked to a moral or sacred element that emphasizes women’s roles as matriarchs, while the maternal emotionality frame emphasizes women’s “irrationality” and emotions, both sorrow and anger (Mann, 2000; Taylor,
1997; Deckman, 2016).
Sixth, this study contributes to the revived field of feminist peace studies (FPS), which has developed in the wake of greater scholarly focus on women’s political violence in feminist security studies (FSS) that has since given way to a shift of some within FSS to refocus on FPS
(Wibben, et al. 2019). Although not all the actions of the Madres (both as a unified group and later as the two branches Línea Fundadora and Asociación), NMF and SMF can be construed as promoting positive peace and postconflict and transitional justice, each group did contribute in important ways to peace—even if only in the negative sense of peace in the case of the SMF— as well as to transitional justice, at minimum of which can be seen in their efforts to preserve the memories of their disappeared loved ones. The NMF in particular deserves recognition for its efforts that sought Tamil rights outside of a framework governed by ethnonationalist militants who sought to constrain women’s rights in terms of forced respectability and forced motherhood (see Chapters 3 and 4 for full discussion). The NMF’s vision for peace and transitional justice was comprehensive. The Madres, starting as a unified organization, and later as the two branches of the Línea Fundadora and Asociación evolved into activists that promoted a positive peace that supports democracy, economic and social equality, transitional justice and women’s rights. There is room for critique of the essentialisms of political motherhood, yet this study demonstrates the importance of welcoming broader forms of activism into feminism since such efforts contribute to greater peace and justice.
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Finally, the conceptual framework offered in this study to understand social movement legacies, which includes duration, visibility and remembrance, will be useful to assess social movement actors beyond those relying on political motherhood. It will make a useful contribution to social movement studies literature. Further, the focus on political motherhood in this study is meant to emphasize that the debate over political motherhood’s contribution to women’s political participation is more complex than it has been portrayed by both its proponents and critics. This project moves the debate beyond this dichotomy to indicate that contextual factors, including other social movements’ perceptions, contribute to our understanding of motherhood and its value for study. Complicating this debate and making the case that political motherhood movements geared towards peace and/or justice are important sources for expanding women’s political participation and the development of more feminist understandings of the kinds of violence that stand in the way of a just peace is a major contribution to gender and political studies.
Chapter summaries
The first part of the dissertation introduces the divergent contexts of Argentina and Sri
Lanka and explores the internal conflicts of the period of state terrorism and the Sri Lankan Civil
War. In Chapter 2, I review previous studies on political motherhood, with an emphasis on political motherhood’s possibilities and limitations. I synthesize the major literatures of political participation, social movements, political parties, and the politics of memory and transitional justice, relating them to the cases under study, Argentina’s period of state terrorism, Sri Lanka’s civil war and the Madres and Mothers’ Front. I suggest that on balance, the potential benefits
40 of political motherhood outweigh its drawbacks and that many negative aspects can be mitigated through progressive interventions by other social movements actors. I also introduce an important contribution of this study, which expands framings of political motherhood, with two political motherhood frames: maternal authority and maternal emotionality.
Chapter 3 contextualizes Argentina and Sri Lanka and the two conflicts that catalysed the Madres and the Mothers’ Front to suggest why the same outcome of political motherhood arose to mobilize against the state’s human rights abuses in these very different contexts. I argue that three factors led to the similar outcome of political motherhood, including how political motherhood: (a) provided cover to women activists operating in politically hostile environments, which mitigated some of the societal and state backlash to women’s organizing,
(b) offered an accessible political participation, which appealed to many women and (c) provided a framing device that found broad resonance among many in both Argentine and Sri
Lankan society, and for the Madres, resonated internationally.
Chapter 4 summarizes the history of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front and the politics of memory around each of them, highlighting how the Madres have been both visible and remembered domestically and internationally and the Mothers’ Front has been largely invisible internationally and forgotten domestically. While visibility/invisibility and remembering/forgetting are mutually constitutive of one another, this chapter highlights the dramatic differences in the legacies of the two groups. While the memory of the Madres has been culturally institutionalized, in stark contrast, the Mothers’ Front has been obscured in memorialization. In Chapter 5, I overview what likely affected the divergent outcomes of the
Madres in terms of their respective periods of duration. I argue that the shorter durations of
41 the NMF and SMF compared to the Madres are linked with the different a) political opportunity structures available in Sri Lanka’s civil war as compared to Argentina’s period of state terrorism, b) to organizational structures and maternal frames of the groups and c) finally whether international human rights organizations lent support to the groups.
The second part of the dissertation engages with the sense-making around political motherhood. In Chapter 6, I use visual analysis to examine how the Madres became popular among international human rights organizations while the Mothers’ Front, despite their efforts to gain international support, were ignored. I argue that the visual representation of the
Madres found broader resonance globally than did that of the Mothers’ Front due to the former’s use of Christian (specifically Catholic) tropes. Chapter 7 performs a feminist re-reading of collective and private forms of resistance and the public-private to suggest that the Mothers’
Front was ignored domestically because of social movement activism’s preference for public collective action over individual resistance. Chapter 8 engages the feminist debate of whether to emphasize or undermine connections between women and caring labour by understanding constructions of the effectiveness of the Madres and Mothers’ Front’s political activism. I argue for the recognition of political motherhood’s accessibility and expedience and how it may be the jumping-off point for continued and evolving political participation. In the concluding chapter, I re-state the dissertation’s main arguments and offer a summation of the postconflict situations in Argentina and Sri Lanka. I point toward Sri Lanka’s current mothers of the disappeared, a contemporary example that speaks to the importance of solidarity and learning lessons from past political motherhood movements.
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Conclusion
To sum up, this dissertation will answer the main research question: What impacts the legacies of political motherhood movements during and after internal armed conflict in terms of duration, visibility and remembrance? Duration refers to the length of time the movement remains active. Visibility assesses how “seen” a civic group is, both domestically and internationally. Remembrance concerns whether an organization’s work is remembered or forgotten at the domestic and international levels. I suggest that it is the perceptions of other social movement organizations (especially of feminist and human rights organizations) that contribute to either upward or downward spirals of duration, visibility and remembrance, which in turn impact the legacies of political motherhood movements. Duration, visibility and remembrance operate together, each one reinforcing the other. When social movement actors perceive these qualities of a political motherhood movement positively, the upward spiral promotes the legacy of that particular movement. Conversely, when perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance are viewed negatively, this downward spiral deadens the legacy of that political motherhood movement.
The research question helps us to understand the process of legacy-making of political motherhood movements. Unpacking this process sheds light on how women’s political participation is viewed by the general public and among social movement actors and scholars.
Only by preserving the legacies of political motherhood movements can we learn from past experiences of women’s political participation. The findings of this project will address the debate over whether political motherhood offers a useful means to increase women’s political participation or whether the price of purchase is too high. Exploring this concern in
43 environments on armed conflict provides the toughest test to assess political motherhood movements’ impact on women’s organizing. While armed conflicts temporarily provide space for women’s new roles, the pressure to return to prewar gender norms is high after fighting ends. If political motherhood movements withstand this pressure, it indicates that this form of women’s political participation may not be as detrimental to women’s long-term organizing as suggested by some scholars. While the Madres speak to this, the earlier end of the Mothers’
Front suggests that there may be issues with political motherhood. However, by understanding that the perceptions of other social movements actors in terms of duration, visibility and remembrance impact the legacies of political motherhood movements, we can better understand that the Mothers’ Front had an important legacy that was driven down through the linking of duration, visibility and remembrance. I suggest that these three issues can be de- linked, so that that the history of social movements can be appreciated regardless of their duration and visibility.
This project likewise speaks to UNSCR 1325 on WPS. By using counterfactuals of the
Mothers’ Front, which catalysed before the launch of 1325 in the year 2000, this project draws lessons as to how UNSCR 1325 can better support women’s long-term political mobilization.
This is salient as currently, a political motherhood movement is organizing in Sri Lanka, the
Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. I hope to draw attention to this movement so that they may gain international support to put further pressure on the current Sri Lankan government, which is responsible for growing human rights abuses in the country.
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Chapter 2
Political Motherhood Movements and Women’s Political Participation
Introduction
This dissertation is focused on the legacies of political motherhood movements. In part, it explores how political motherhood may offer a way for women living in war and war’s aftermath to use feminine stereotypes to their advantage in a type of “strategic essentialism” by making use of newly opened spaces in the social disruptions caused by armed conflicts (Fuss,
1989; Bop, 2002). Yet political motherhood raises troubling issues for feminists who seek to ensure that women are not limited to only political motherhood to be politically engaged
(Enloe, 2000; Witteborn, 2011). While acknowledging these concerns, I argue that on balance, the potential benefits of political motherhood outweigh its drawbacks and that many negative aspects can be mitigated through progressive interventions by other social movements actors.
Organizing as mothers in conflict settings provides women with political experience, connects them with other political activists and exposes them to new norms and ideas concerning gender. It has also allowed many women to assert themselves in ways that they may have never previously imagined. These experiences have helped women to negotiate for greater public participation both during and after the war concludes (Bop, 2002; Meintjes,
Pillay, & Turshen, 2002; Tripp A. M., 2015). Political motherhood has allowed some women to easily enter the public political sphere, which has been constructed as masculine, and is noteworthy for mobilizing previously politically inactive women (Orleck, 1997; Hawkesworth,
2012; Mhajne & Whetstone, 2018). Political motherhood successfully sustains some women’s
45 political participation in the public political sphere, such as the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo
(Madres), active for four decades. However, there are cases such as that of the Mothers’ Front in which ended after “only” 7 years of organizing (Fisher, 1989; de Alwis, 2012; Thiruchandran,
2012). In this literature review, I synthesize findings from feminist comparative politics and feminist international relations as well as comparative politics literature and interdisciplinary literatures such as social movements and the politics of memory. I do so with a focus on my research question, which is how perceptions of political motherhood movements impact these movements’ legacies.
In the first section of this chapter, I explore the problems and possibilities of motherhood, weighing both ethical concerns and the strategic benefits of women’s mobilization through motherhood. The following section considers political science’s understanding of political participation, with a focus on the scholarship of women’s participation. In the third section, I explore the constructions of public and private spaces and how this impacts both feminism and political science’s understandings of political participation.
The fourth section engages with social movement literature, wherein I review political science’s approaches to movements and the social movement framing literature alongside debates of how movements work—or even whether to work—with the state, particularly political parties.
This section wraps up with a review of social movements at the transnational level. The final section synthesizes studies on the politics of memory and transitional justice, two areas of overlapping research.
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Problems and possibilities of political motherhood
Political motherhood raises ethical concerns through its connections to gender essentialism, heteronormativity, transphobia, xenophobia, militaristic nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Gender essentialism stems from political motherhood’s apparent exclusion of nonmothers and the embedded implication that motherhood is women’s biological and social destiny, often to the detriment of other life experiences, rooted in the conflation of mother and woman (DiQuinzio, 1993). This lends support to re-confining women to the domestic sphere by re-inscribing conservative gender norms that center around women’s responsibilities in the home (Thompson, 2000; Baron, 2005; El-Bushra, 2007; Stavrianos, 2014; Moreno, 2017).
Relatedly, the association of women’s domestic responsibilities with political motherhood can pressure women to “do it all,” meaning that they should balance domestic work with labor performed for wages or in the informal sector along with their political participation, placing a high burden on women to sustain a political legitimacy rooted in their “mythical roles” as mothers (MacGregor, 2006, p. 147; Moreno, 2017). Second, political motherhood may reinforce heteronormativity and transphobia by ignoring trans, queer and lesbian women, and those who identify as gender fluid or non-conforming by tacitly upholding gender binary-ism (Enloe, 2000;
Peterson, 2014). Because of its connections to gender essentialism and heteronormativity, political motherhood has been used by states to control women’s actions and to limit women’s choices through discourses that suggest women’s confinement to the private sphere and conservative gender norms are key to societal stability (El-Bushra, 2007; Shepherd, 2010;
Hawkesworth, 2012; 2019; Carreon & Moghadam, 2015).
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As mothers, women can make a case for their political inclusion by claiming that women are more peaceful than their male counterparts due to their connections to caring labor, thereby ensuring social stability by helping to keep the peace (El-Bushra, 2007). Yet the idea that the conditions of the public sphere can be improved through women’s caring presence is perceived by much of society as an aspect of women’s weakness, meaning that women using political motherhood may not be viewed as full political subjects, ultimately lessening their ability to remain politically involved in the long-term (El-Bushra, 2007; Stavrianos, 2014). This is aptly demonstrated in how women have been accepted into public spaces in times of crises such as armed conflicts and national movements for independence when armed factions and/or movements are desperate for support, but women find themselves pushed out of the public sphere when the crisis ends. This process occurs more easily when women themselves employ discourses framing themselves as wives and mothers (Thompson, 2000; Baron, 2005;
Stavrianos, 2014).
Feminists have also drawn attention to links between political motherhood and nationalist and religious fundamentalisms. Violent political motherhood is tied to racism, ethnocentrism, religious nationalism, classism and nativism (Enloe, 2000, p. 253; Hallgren,
2012; Sehgal, 2012). “Patriotic mothering” describes a violent political motherhood in which women encourage the men in their lives to engage in violence based on gendered ideas that it is a man’s duty to defend the nation and to uphold masculine ideals of a warrior that embody homophobic and/or gender essentialist messages (Elshtain, 1995; Enloe, 2000; Hallgren, 2012;
Sehgal, 2012). “Spartan Mothers,” those women who carry out patriotic mothering, embrace mothering as a part of nation-building and national defense, using securitized discourses to
48 raise their social status by moving mothering to the public sphere to enhance its legitimacy, at least as compared to when it is hidden in the private sphere (Elshtain, 1995; Hallgren, 2012, p.
118). Governments often encourage this since they need fighters in the military, with some governments in the past even providing women who offer their sons as fighters for the state special perks. During World War I, the Canadian government permitted the wives or mothers of men killed in the fighting the right to vote, while women who had not lost sons or husbands in the war remained disenfranchised (Enloe, 2000, pp. 11, 193, 247).
Despite ethical concerns of political motherhood’s ties to gender essentialism, heteronormativity, transphobia, and religious and nationalist fundamentalisms, political motherhood has proven useful to women’s political participation in many war-torn, authoritarian, illiberal and even democratic contexts (Noonan, 1995; Friedman E. J., 1998;
Mackie, 2003). Most societies have taboos against enacting violence against mothers due to the reverence bestowed on the institution of motherhood, which at least initially served both the
Madres and the Mothers’ Front through temporary protection from physical harm. As the
Argentine and Sri Lankan states became increasingly threatened by the mothers’ organizing, activists in both contexts were subjected to public shaming, threats, physical violence and in some cases death (Orleck, 1997; Fisher, 1989; Samuel, 2006; Taylor D. , 1997; Thiruchandran,
2012; Carreon & Moghadam, 2015). In some postconflict societies, political motherhood has become part of an alternative to “male-dominated, authoritarian, and war-prone leadership” by emphasizing women’s connections to peace, morality and “traditional values of female authority” implied through women’s assumed maternal connections to peace and carework (El-
Bushra, 2007; Steady, 2011, p. 1). This understandably appeals to many war-weary societies
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(Steady, 2011). Positive correlations derived from a stereotype, such as the idea of a nurturing mother or women’s perceived incorruptibility, is known as an affirmative essentialism (Fox,
2013, p. 37; Helmes, 2003, p. 182). Promoting an affirmative difference in an oppressed group has proven an effective consciousness-raising strategy (Forcey, 1991; Lloyd, 2005). Some women find strength in characteristics associated with women's roles as mothers, including peacefulness, nurturance, self-sacrifice, care and love (Plumez, 2002; Steady, 2011). In social movements, this concept is known as strategic essentialism, in which a movement purposefully adopts an essentialized identity that simplifies reality to better achieve the movement’s goals
(Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2013). Women have broken barriers using motherhood as a political tool by deploying it subversively, showing that motherhood can further women’s rights, even transforming mother movements into feminist movements, or by emphasizing political motherhood as a politically neutral practice that is above, or outside of, partisan politics (Schirmer, 1993, p. 60; Jaquette, 1994, pp. 225-226; Hasegawa, 2004; Anderlini, 2007;
Carreon & Moghadam, 2015; Karman, 2016).
Another benefit of political motherhood is how it can be unintentionally activated in the sense that by focusing on their roles as mothers, women may be inspired to participate in politics without ever having sought to engage in politics. In other words, in experiencing an issue that impacts their ability to mother, women may mobilize into politics, leading previously nonpolitical women into the political sphere based on their adherence to a maternal ideology
(Nathanson, 2008; Tungohan, 2013; Mhajne & Whetstone, 2018). Since sexism is endemic globally, political motherhood often provides women with greater political legitimacy than does organizing as women “imitating” men (Orleck, 1997, p. 4). Motherhood has also served to unite
50 disparate women across intersectional divides, particularly in class-based and ethnic-based societal and/or armed conflicts, but didn’t do so in Sri Lanka (Franceschet, 2004, pp. 517-518;
George, 2010, pp. 87-89; Anderson M. , 2016). Relevant to this project, feminism is sometimes depicted as a foreign and imperial force in the global South. In some cases, political motherhood has provided women a culturally legitimate space from which to organize to improve women’s lives (George, 2010).
Elissa Helmes (2003) has argued that if democratic forces do not make space for motherhood, then they effectively hand it over to religious and nationalist extremists.
Motherhood is an important part of many women’s lives and to discount women’s engagement with motherhood fails to acknowledge their agency (Helmes, 2003; O'Reilly, 2016). In some societies, motherhood is a respected institution, and it varies in what it asks of women. In
Filomina Chioma Steady’s (2011) study on women’s leadership in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone, she notes that motherhood in West Africa does not entail servitude the way that it often does in the West. Rather, motherhood emphasizes “an elevated and symbolic form of service through protection and collaboration” and women’s leadership is seen “as an extension of motherhood” due to the association of mothers as figures of authority (p. 8, 239). Adrienne
Rich (1976) has also made the point that mothering can be a part of feminist praxis, pointing out that motherhood as an institution is socially constructed. When feminists practice mothering according to their values, it is no longer an oppressive practice. Yet political motherhood undoubtedly raises troubling connections to socially conservative understandings of femininity. The contradictions of political motherhood make it a vital concept to explore concerning the duration, visibility and remembrance of political motherhood movements and
51 how perceptions of political motherhood by other social movement actors impact the legacies of political motherhood movements.
Political participation
Central to this project is unpacking political motherhood movements as a form of political participation. Social movements are based around a core group of organizers and expand over time to include a loose and informal membership. Movements, which use the media and hold community and street events to try to influence policymakers and the general public, are ultimately about political participation (Kitschelt & Rehm, 2014). In the 1940s through the 1960s, political scientists held that mass participation was a threat to democracy in terms of “stability” of the political system (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, [1944] 1968, p. 312;
Dahl, [1956] 2006, pp. 92, 102; Sartori, [1958] 1962; Pateman C. , 1970). Bernard Berelson, Paul
Lazarsfeld and William McPhee (1968) argued that the average voter lacks knowledge on political issues as well as rational thinking for informed voting. They suggest that a lack of participation is not problematic because “the working of the [democratic] system as a whole” could not function if “all the people were deeply involved in politics” (p. 312, 314 italics in original). Their concerns indicated a fear that mass participation would lead to extreme partisanship and threaten the political system’s ability to maintain itself. Carole Pateman’s
(1970) analysis of these scholars reveals that their views discounted mass participation as a normative aspiration and upheld a barebones definition of democracy based on procedure only, a proposition first articulated by Joseph Schumpeter ([1943] 2003). Schumpeter defined democracy as simply the existence of competitive elections and saw mass participation in
52 voting as harmful to democracies (p. 269-270, 259). For the political scientists who followed this construction of democracy as a method, democratic practice was best preserved through elites’ participation in politics, in what is known as “democratic elitism” (Wolfe J. , 1985, p. 373).
In contrast to those who view participation strictly in terms of elites and suggest that elections are all that is required of democracies, scholars of participatory democracy seek the participation of all sectors of society in decision-making over their lives (Davis L. , 1964;
Pateman C. , 1970; Wolfe J. , 1985). Participation is seen as developing participants’ appreciation for democratic processes, most notably shared decision-making and political efficacy, or the sense of agency associated with impacting political processes (Pateman C. ,
1970). I follow Pateman’s (1970) conception of what I call robust participation, which is participation in terms of making decisions that impact one’s life, part of creating inclusive democracy, which offers multiple accessible means for political participation. Social movements, which by definition seek by mass participation, fit well with participatory democracy understandings of political participation.
Political participation encompasses any activity that seeks to affect political outcomes, such as voting, donating money to political campaigns, volunteering in political campaigns, running for office, creating and signing petitions, participating in labor unions and other civic organizations, demonstrating, boycotting and holding illegal sit-ins, blockades and occupations
(Verba & Nie, 1972; Parry, Moyser, & Day, 1992; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995; Kitschelt &
Rehm, 2014). Studies on political participation have largely focused on the global North, particularly Anglo-American/Anglo contexts and focused on men’s experiences. An important contribution of this study is highlighting the participation of women in the global South, which
53 has been historically marginalized in the discipline of political science. Since political participation entails engagement in the public sphere, it has often been regarded as an activity best performed by men since women have been historically situated in the domestic sphere.
This has limited women’s ability to engage in public political life (Chaney, 1979; Hawkesworth,
2012).
There are three major modes of political participation, which include participation in social movements—already discussed—interest groups and political parties. Interest groups directly target those in the legislative and executive branches, and unlike social movements, have formalized membership and are centrally organized. Finally, political parties, which I delve into later, work to nominate and elect legislative candidates by helping those running for office to get their message out to voters (Kitschelt & Rehm, 2014). While most of the political science literature ignores how political participation is gendered, my study takes the gendered aspects of political participation as its starting point (Beckwith, 2010). Moreover, by exploring the
Madres and Mothers’ Front, I expand political science knowledge on political participation by investigating the neglected issue of political motherhood movements, which are vastly understudied in political science.
Women’s political participation
Women tend to participate at lower rates than men in political activities. Political scientists have offered both individual and structural explanations for this gap. The earliest political science literature ignored women as political subjects, assuming either a focus on men meant findings were universal, or simply did not consider women to be relevant to politics
54
(Randall, 1987; Carroll, 2008).11 Scholars who addressed women’s political participation noted it was substantially less than men’s participation, which was usually uncritically attributed to individual reasons, including that “men are better citizens” than women (Berelson, Lazarsfeld,
& McPhee, [1944] 1968, p. 48). There was some acknowledgment in this early literature that women were encouraged not to value politics, or that their only socially acceptable interest or participation in politics had to revolve around their familial roles (Duverger, 1955; Almond &
Verba, [1963] 2016). Such recognition hinted at structural causes for women’s lesser participation, but these were only explicitly put forward in the 1960s and 1970s, which coincided with more women’s entrance into the discipline (Carroll, 2008, pp. 25-26). These studies emphasized the male-dominated nature of political institutions as well as most women’s socialization as wives and mothers, which encouraged women to dismiss politics as unfeminine (Werner, 1968; Jennings & Thomas, 1968; Collier, 1974; Welch, 1977; Randall,
1987). Nonetheless, some studies in this period noted women’s increasing involvement in politics, attributable to women’s growing participation in the workforce and in anticolonial and independence movements (Andersen, 1975; Chaney, 1979; Jayawardena, 1986).
Scholars of women’s political participation attribute men’s greater participation in political life to the binary public/private construction and to the gendered state of political institutions. The construction of social and political life into separate private and public spheres
11 Examples that entirely or mainly neglect women as members of political parties, voters and members of civil society include classics such as Robert Michels’ (1959) Political Parties; A Sociological Study of the Oligarichal Tendencies of Modern Democracy and Samuel Huntington’s (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. One of the most well-known studies on American voting patterns, originally published in 1944, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, [1944] 1968) suggests through its very title that all voters are men. In an earlier classical study, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America mentions women but promoted maintenance of separate gendered spheres of social life, to delineate “proper” roles for men and women (Kerber, 1988, p. 10).
55 marks home life as associated with the feminine and outside the purview of the state, even as the state frequently makes interventions into “private” issues like marriage and divorce, reproduction, sexuality and what constitutes a family (Puri, 2006; Hawkesworth, 2012).
Distinctions between the private and public spheres and accompanying discourses on women’s proper place in the domestic sphere have harmed women’s political participation by suggesting that women should not hold office or participate in political decision-making so they can better concentrate on their tasks within the home (Hawkesworth, 2012). Despite women’s growing participation in the paid labor force, their historic association with the private sphere continues to promote narratives that it is primarily women who ought to provide household care and domestic work, which limits their political participation by leaving many women little free time to be involved in political life (Burns, Schlozman, & Verba, 2001).12 Differences in socialization between the sexes have been observed globally, which has manifested in a gendered division of labor into public/productive and private/reproductive (Acker, 1992; Hawkesworth, 2012).
Because societal discourses label politics men’s purview and the home women’s domain, women’s familial roles have often been a limiting factor in women’s interest and participation in politics (Burns, Schlozman, & Verba, 2001; Rai, 2017). However, some women have used their roles as wife and mother to enhance their access to the political sphere, such as the Madres and the Mothers’ Front. Deniz Kandiyoti (1988) calls this “bargaining with
12 Additionally, women’s roles in the private sphere have influenced their ability to participate in public life at similar rates to men due to gendered differences in the workplace. Because more men than women participate in the paid labor force and because in the workplace men tend to hold higher responsibilities than women, men have more opportunities to develop workplace skills that lend themselves to civic participation. For example, facilitating meetings and giving presentations are as useful in the workplace as in civil society organizing. Likewise, men are better paid than women and have higher levels of education, both of which are associated with increased political participation (Burns, Schlozman, & Verba, 2001).
56 patriarchy,” a term that describes women who negotiate enhanced power for themselves by embodying status quo feminine norms.
The second major structural reason to explain women’s typically lower political participation rate is the gendered nature of political institutions, such as the legislature, the state bureaucracy, legal systems, policymaking, political parties and the state. Within political institutions, norms signal socially acceptable behavior through the “logic of appropriateness,” which tends to reflect gendered socialization, defining certain behaviors and characteristics as acceptable for women and other sets of behaviors and characteristics as acceptable for men, to reinforce the gender status quo (Chappell, 2006). Most legislatures have been made to fit the average man’s needs, in which a full-time stay-at-home wife handles the household’s domestic and carework. There are frequent late evening or even nighttime meetings, which sometimes take place in bars. This puts women in the difficult position of either missing meetings due to their home responsibilities, in which they risk being perceived as not fully committed to their duties as legislators, or attending and being deemed “loose” for spending time with men at late meetings, then jeopardizing their chances of re-election (Franceschet & Piscopo, 2008; 2014).
Gender also operates to make women appear to excel at certain legislative tasks. For example, women’s roles as housewives and construction as moral are seen to equip them for government budgetary work due to perceived experience in creating household budgets and because they are seen as less likely than men to engage in financially corrupt practices.
Likewise, women legislators and government bureaucrats have been thought to have a natural inclination to develop and manage policies on the family, women and children, healthcare, education and other issues associated with women’s roles as wives and mothers (Chaney, 1979;
57
Steady, 2011). Such patterns hold for women legislators and other government officials in
Argentina and Sri Lanka (SLIDA, 1998; Franceschet & Piscopo, 2008; 2014; Mirror, 2010;
Franceschet, Piscopo, & Thomas, 2016).
Other studies on gendered institutions have highlighted the election process and political parties, which globally remain male-dominated (Friedman E. J., 1998; Hawkesworth,
2012). Some scholars view the state itself as gendered, emphasizing how law, policy and other aspects of the state have been designed to ensure men’s power over women in each of these arenas (MacKinnon, 1983; Kenney, 1996). Another major area of research is gender quotas in which political parties or national laws legislate or encourage a certain percentage of party candidate lists to include women (Krook & Zetterberg, 2016). In 1991, Argentina introduced gender quotas that mandated women compose at least 30% of all political parties’ candidate lists at the national legislative level, although parties remain male-dominated (Jones, 1996;
Schwindt-Bayer, 2010). In 2017, Argentina’s legislature was composed of 39.5 percent women, ranking 16th highest globally in terms of women’s representation, while in Sri Lanka, women parliamentarians made up 5.8 percent legislature, putting Sri Lanka 179th in the world ranking, out of 193 countries (IPU, 2017). Sri Lanka does not have a national gender quota but in 2016 implemented one at the local level, which went into effect in 2018 and mandates that 25 percent of party lists be composed of women. In 2018, women’s representation in local government moved from 82 women holding local office in 2011 to over 2,000 (Vogelstein,
2018).
As Farida Jalalzai (2013) points out, the executive glass ceiling has not been shattered, with only 79 women heads of state over the last five decades. Heads of state remain
58 overwhelmingly male-dominated. Argentina and Sri Lanka are unique since women reached the highest office, the head of government, early on. Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike, known as the “Mother of the People,” was the world’s first democratically elected woman prime minister, elected in 1960. In 1994, her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga became president and served until 2005. In 1974, then vice president Isabel Martínez de Perón became president of
Argentina following the death of President Juan Perón, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner served as Argentina’s second woman president from 2007 until 2015 (Skard, 2015).
A final major area of women’s political participation is involvement in civil society, which includes social movements. Women have a long history of civil society involvement, although much of it has been hidden, or downplayed, sometimes strategically, as part of women’s carework, particularly in environments where women’s involvement outside the home has not been socially acceptable (Baker, 1984). In Latin America, women have participated in class- based, revolutionary, indigenous and people of color movements in addition to feminist movements (Alvarez, 2010; 2014). Regional women’s conferences known as encuentros have operated since the early 1980s to bring activists from the Caribbean and Latin America together in transnational discussions around women’s issues (Lebon, 2012; Alvarez, 2014). South Asian women’s participation in civil society is notable for connections between women’s movements and nationalist, labor union and anti-violence movements, as well as the unique partnership between academics and activists in South Asian feminist movements (Roy, 2012; Loomba &
Lukose, 2012). The rise in religious fundamentalism across the region has had contradictory effects on women’s political activity, in some cases hindering many women’s ability to organize in less hospitable environments, yet increasing other women’s activities, most notably Hindu
59 nationalist women in India and women organizing in Kashmir with the Association of Parents of
Disappeared Persons, whose children are disappeared by the Indian state (Basu, 1998; Loomba
& Lukose, 2012; Zia, 2019; Williams, Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and
Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy, 1915-2015 (manuscript), In progress; Runyan,
Mhajne, Whetstone, & Williams, Forthcoming).
To sum up, I suggest that mainstream political participation studies have for too long focused on male experience and the western and developed countries (Almond & Verba, [1963]
2016; Verba & Nie, 1972; Parry, Moyser, & Day, 1992; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995;
Kitschelt & Rehm, 2014). In this study, I rely on insight from mainstream literature as well as the burgeoning literature on women’s political participation, concentrating on the public-private divide since women’s use of political motherhood entails the polarization of women’s familial or private roles of mother and wife.
Public and private spaces
Feminist scholarship on the public/private problematizes women’s positioning in both the public and private spheres, as well as unpacks the distinctions between the public and private. Contradictorily, even as most of feminist scholarship contests the constructed nature of the public and private, other feminists, such as critics of political motherhood, take the public/private distinction for granted, critiquing political motherhood for emphasizing women’s private roles. This study explores the public/private divide through constructions of social movement work. Too often, social movements are rendered mainly in terms of public collective action. This construction impacts perceptions of women’s political participation, including
60 political motherhood.! In Chapter 7, I suggest including women’s individual resistance in the form of oppositional political conversation as part of social movement work as a means of expanding our understandings of social movement activism, including how it can entail the politics of the every day. This requires an extended discussion around the public/private as social movements prioritize public protests (Taylor & Van Dyke, 2004).
Discursively, the public sphere has been linked with men and the private realm with women and rhetorically suggesting that the political lies solely in the public sphere, while the private sphere is nonpolitical (Pateman C. , 1988; 1989; Hawkesworth, 2012). Feminist scholarship has challenged both these notions since at least the 1960s through the well-known claim that “the personal is political,” arguing that the gendered public/private divide has excluded women from politics and downplayed political issues in the private sphere (Hanisch,
1969; 2006; Dietz, 1985; Pateman C. , 1989).13 Carole Pateman (1988; 1989) claims that the construction of a public/private division arose in Western liberal political thought during the
Enlightenment period, which came in tandem with new understandings of democracy, the creation of the nation-state and capitalism, as well as new conceptions of citizenship. In the same period, new ideas arose about women's labor and women's place in society, which was thought to be in the private sphere, where labor was unwaged (Pateman C. , 1989).14 Such
13 The US second wave feminist Carole Hanisch’s 1969 essay “The Personal is Political” made the case that women bringing their “so-called ‘personal problems’ into the public arena—especially ‘all those body issues’ like sex, appearance, and abortion” was about calling attention to these political issues (Hanisch 2006, 1). 14 In fact, European women were marginalized from political life only in the eighteenth century with the arrival of Enlightenment thinking (Pateman C. , 1988; Benhabib, 1992; Hawkesworth, 2012). The Enlightenment period instituted pseudo-scientific ideas that women were incapable of logical reasoning due to their roles in the birth process. This pushed European women out of political and public activities as intellectuals insisted that women were naturally ill suited for these tasks. Women’s only proper social roles were as wives and mothers and that a “civilized” society should ensure that women’s lives revolved around the home. The confining of women to the
61 views of women’s proper roles were forced onto other regions through Europe’s “civilizing mission” of colonization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which emphasized the absence of women in political life as one of the markers of an advanced society (Towns, 2009).
The construction of the binary public/private spheres led to the development of bourgeois womanhood that confined “women to the home and reframed her political work as mothering” (Hawkesworth, 2012, pp. 39-40). While the public/private divide continues to structure most societies globally, the gendering and separation of the public and private spheres has been queered by feminist scholarship (Gal, 2004). Mary Dietz (1985) argues that contrary to the political philosophy of liberalism associated with Enlightenment thinking, the institution of the family and the domestic sphere are not the opposite of the political. All decisions are inherently political, meaning that they are open to public debate. The very construction of the private sphere was at one time a political decision, made within the public sphere, as too is the construction of the public-private binary (Dietz, 1985; Pateman C. , 1989).
This relates to a point by Susan Burgess (2016) who suggests that “family and state power are mutually constituting,” noting that neither is the family natural, nor the state neutral, with the state having an interest in defining what constitutes a family (p. 141).
The hazy public/private split relates to feminist critiques of political motherhood. Critics of political motherhood argue that this form of political participation overemphasizes women’s private roles as mothers and wives, suggesting that even if political motherhood temporarily
domestic sphere became part of the definition of an advanced society starting around European Enlightenment (Landes, 1988; Laqueur, 1990; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Cody, 2005).
62 allows women some access to the political public sphere, it may ultimately push them out of the political public sphere and re-confine them to their homes since mothers and wives’
“proper place” is the domestic sphere (Otto, 2006; El-Bushra, 2007; Charlesworth, 2008; Pratt &
Richter-Devroe, 2011). Those concerned with this issue tend to understand the family as an oppressive institution over women, thought to essentialize women’s biological and social reproductive roles by “confin[ing] women…to housework; reproduction; nurture and care” work at the expense of other opportunities (Firestone, 1970; de Beauvoir, [1949] 2010;
Benhabib, 1992, p. 89). Yet other feminists have argued that the institution of the family and women’s often central role as the stabilizer of family life should serve as a metaphor for how society might operate more amicably (Elshtain, 1982; Ruddick, 1989). Scholars studying the global South, including Chandra Mohanty (1991), Judith Tucker (1993) and Tarini Bedi (2016), have also pointed out that the family and women’s roles within the family are dynamic and that the construction of the family is not universal, nor inherently oppressive, as some—mainly
Western—feminists have argued.
Mainstream political science has tended to prioritize the role of the state in its conceptual reading of the public/private divide, which comes through in both participatory and deliberative democracy, two major bodies of work on political participation. As discussed, participatory democracy encourages citizens to become engaged in civic organizations, the workplace and other spaces outside the home to engage in decision-making that will affect their lives (Pateman C. , 1970). Similarly, the scholarship on deliberative democracy emphasizes the nondomestic sphere. Deliberative democracy sees structured political discussion, typically conducted in public spaces, either state institutions or other public forums such as the media,
63 as helping citizens to clarify political issues (Fishkin, 1997; Searing, Solt, Conover, & Crewe,
2007, p. 589; Gastil, 2008). Most of the deliberative democracy literature emphasizes the public nature of political dialogue, noting that everyday conversation does not count as political discussion because it is thought to take place among those who share the same beliefs (Searing,
Solt, Conover, & Crewe, 2007, p. 590; Mutz, 2006; Klofstad, 2011). I explore this in Chapter 7 by looking at the political conversations of women formerly with the SMF, who elected to individually speak out about the memories of their disappeared children.15
There have been growing voices in deliberative democracy scholarship suggesting that
“deliberative conversation” and even non-deliberative conversation of the mundane is integral to a vital democracy (Mansbridge J. , 1999; Mutz, 2006; Gastil, 2008, p. 22; Klofstad, 2011). In this regard, that the family is the site in which politics is most often discussed becomes critical if everyday conversation matters (Muxel, 2015, p. 4). Lane Davis (1964) argues that there should be no “denigration of the realm of private activity,” noting that the private sphere of the family and private networks of friends are both spaces from which people can participate in shared decision-making, which is important in participatory democracy scholarship (p. 41).
While many mainstream scholars of political science—including in the participatory and deliberative democracy literatures—social movements and feminism emphasize the importance of public political participation, in this project I seek to push further understandings of political participation—notably in social movements—since the public/private is so hazy.
While I am concerned with women being pushed out of the public sphere, it is also important to
15 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
64 recognize the political spaces of the private sphere, which also shape political outcomes. I make the case for broadening social movement resistance to include women’s individual resistance— even if it takes place in the private sphere—so political science can capture all forms of political participation.
Social movements and the state
Despite recognition since at least the 1990s that social movement studies needs to move beyond the global North, social movement literature remains focused on North American and European contexts (Basu, 1995; McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 1996). My study will add to social movements literature by examining how the Madres and the Mothers’ Front, as global South women’s groups, functioned within social movements focused on human rights, including women’s rights, both domestically and internationally (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; 1998; McAdam,
Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; de Alwis, 2004; Samuel, 2006; Kriesi, Social Movements, 2014).
While political scientists once left the study of social movements to other social scientists, there is now recognition of the distinctive role that such movements play in the political process. Three major characteristics define social movements, with the first and most central characteristic being that a movement is a group that joins together because of a shared
“conflictual orientation” toward a particular opponent or opponents (Kriesi, 2014, p. 268).16
The second and third major characteristics of social movements are collective identity, defined by shared goals and/or beliefs, and collective action. Collective action has typically been non-
16 For this reason, many scholars refer to social movements as contentious politics since movement actors typically organize around opponents and carry out protest actions (McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tilly & Tarrow, 2015).
65 institutionalized as social movements are not usually able to directly influence government decision-makers. Often, movement actors work within the public sphere to make their demands known in the hopes of securing policy changes by influencing the mass public (Kriesi,
2014). The Madres and Mothers’ Front each identified the government as their opponent and used their shared identities as mothers of the disappeared as a starting point to engage in collective action, respectively, against the Argentine and Sri Lankan states.
There are significant differences among social movements and organizations like civic, or interest, groups or political parties. Social movements are neither formalized nor organizations in the way that interest groups and political parties are. However, interest groups and political parties can be, and often are, part of social movements. Since collective identity through shared beliefs and values leads to the informal networks that form social movements, such networks often develop through interest groups and political parties (Kriesi, 2014). Amrita
Basu (2015) demonstrates distinctions among movements, civil society organizations and parties through her analysis of Hindu nationalism as it functions at three levels. First, Basu explored Hindu nationalism at the level of government, as the mindset of the state when a particular party is in power, influencing how state institutions operate. The second way that
Hindu nationalism has operated is at the level of a political party and third as a social movement. Understanding the relationship between these three levels of state, political party and social movement reveals how the state at the institutional level sets the tone for the context in which dominant political ideologies and political oppositions operate. When a party connected to a social movement comes into power in the government, that social movement
66 and its ideologically related party can be emboldened, with sometimes devastating consequences as in the case of the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Basu’s study expands political scientists’ understanding of how party politics and social movements interact with one another when there is a confluence at the level of the state.
While activists in the Hindu nationalist movement were emboldened when the BJP came into power, the opposite happened in the case of the Mothers’ Front. The Sri Lankan Freedom Party
(SLFP) founded the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), yet right as the SLFP assumed power in government, the SMF folded as an organization (Pinto Jayawardena & Kodikara, 2002). The party-movement connection is a point of interest in this study on women’s political participation. As Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015) have argued, the role of a state institution, which includes political parties, in connection with political motherhood is not necessarily emancipatory, as it is when deployed by women from the bottom-up. Another aim of this study then is to understand why the SMF disbanded right as the SLFP came to power when in other cases, movements connected to parties flourish when those parties enter office
(Pinto Jayawardena & Kodikara, 2002; Basu, 2015). I believe that the role of the SLFP impacted the women of SMF’s political efficacy by preventing members from developing political efficacy since SLFP organizers conducted the majority of the group’s political activities (de Alwis, 2004).
Without having developed organizing skills or engaging in decision-making, most members of the SMF likely did not think their continued participation in the SMF was necessary to achieve their political goals since the SLFP was in power. The women likely disbanded because they assumed that the party would take care of their political aims, which happened. I explore this in detail in Chapter 5. I further explore the issue of movement and state connections below. First,
67 however, I overview the broad approaches to the study of social movements and the use of framing by social movement actors. Then I return to the issue of movement-state connections before turning to social movements at the transnational level.
Approaches to social movements
There are two main approaches within political science to social movements: political opportunity structures and resource mobilization theory. Within political opportunity structures, are two primary views (Giugni, 2011). The first focuses on the evolving nature of political opportunities as tied to ongoing changes in political institutions and alliance patterns among actors and the role of political elites. These changes present openings in political opportunity over time that lead actors to engage in movements and affect policy outcomes
(Tarrow, 1989; McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996; McAdam, 1996; [1982] 1999).17 A takeaway from this literature is that social movements have lifecycles, meaning most movements are not perpetual. Typically, once movements achieve some of their aims, most participants elect to leave the movement, leaving only a small core of activists (Offe, 1990, p. 235). This is critical to understanding why the SMF’s may have disbanded in 1994 after the SLFP came to power in government, which promised to enact all of the group’s demands.
The second view of political opportunity structures emphasizes the stable aspects of these structures, a view favored by scholars such as Herbert Kitschelt (1986) who argued that political opportunity depends on both the degree of centralization or the relationship between
17 Others have built on this work to show that when supportive elites are in power, movement actors typically seek to work with institutional actors through lobbying and consulting with government insiders. However, when elite allies are not in power in government, movement actors are more likely to engage in protest activities (Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1995; Chappell, 2002; Banasak, Beckwith, & Rucht, 2003).
68 the federal and local levels of government and the degree of separation of power among the branches of government in a country. Greater decentralization in a government means movement actors have more opportunities to work toward policy changes at the local, regional and national levels. Conversely, more separation of power allows for greater opportunity to bring about change since different government branches can easily partner and form coalitions with movement actors.
Domestic considerations—including the kind of internal armed conflict, regime type and the timing of achieving movements’ demands are three factors that I consider part of the political opportunity structures that the Madres and Mothers’ Front faced. The domestic political opportunities facing both groups differed significantly due to: a) the difference between an ideological/class conflict versus an ethnic conflict, b) organizing under an authoritarian versus a nominally democratic government and c) how long it took for the motherhood groups to achieve their respective demands. Moreover, international political opportunities among the two differed, with the Madres’s use of Christian tropes in their organizing more resonant at the international level compared to the Mothers’ Front’s use of
Hindu and Buddhist tropes.
As demonstrated by both the Madres and Mothers’ Front, traditionally feminine gender norms have benefited women’s ability to make use of gendered opportunities in the political structure. Instances such as these have been well-documented in authoritarian contexts, especially in Latin America where political opportunity structures were limited under the widespread military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s (Friedman E. J., 1998; Noonan, 1995).
The Madres and the Mothers’ Front used gender stereotypes to maneuver in the constrained
69 political environments of Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war. Political motherhood enabled the women to deflect—at least temporarily—the political nature of their organizing. Members of both groups initially insisted that they were concerned mothers in search of their children (Bouvard, 1994; Samuel, 2006). There is a body of work on gendered political opportunity structures that argues that like all institutions, the structures of political opportunity are gendered, meaning that gender norms define both opportunities and limitations that individuals, groups and movements face in attempting to create political change
(Kutz-Flamenbaum, 2012).
Part of the reason for women’s success in constrained environments has been because women are not considered political actors or because women are perceived to need protection.
This gives women more maneuverability than men, even under repressive regimes. Elisabeth
Friedman (1998) notes that in Venezuela’s 10-year dictatorship from 1948 to 1958, women were integral to keeping the political opposition afloat through political activities sustained by women’s secretive organizing. Women did not draw the government’s suspicion because women were not assumed to be political. This was also the case for the Madres in the beginning. The women were brushed off by the military dictatorship as silly housewives since senior women were not viewed as politically capable. Gendered stereotypes enabled the
Madres to gain the moral upper hand over the regime. Even after being recognized as a political threat, the dictatorship felt foolish for physically harming senior women due to stereotypes that women, particularly elderly women, are weak (Bouvard, 1994). Similarly, in Sri Lanka, political motherhood gave both branches of the Mothers’ Front the ability to organize against the state. When the government criticized the women, the group gained sympathy from the
70 public since they were perceived as concerned mothers, justifiably upset over the loss of their children (Samuel, 2006).
However, the same gendered political opportunities that allow women to come to the fore in politics under autocratic regimes can also push them out in the transition to democracy, such as in Argentina’s transition to democracy when the Madres experienced tremendous difficulty in the mid-1980s (Feijoo, 1994; Jaquette, 1994; Waylen, 1996; 1994; Friedman E. J.,
1998). As documented in the literature on women and armed conflicts, when “normalcy” returns after the end of a conflict, there is a push to return to pre-conflict gender norms (Bop,
2002; Kumar, 2001). During the transition to democracy in Argentina in late 1983, male- dominated political party organizing returned in force and the Madres found themselves pushed aside (Bouvard, 1994; Feijoo, 1994). In Sri Lanka, which remained illiberally democratic throughout the war, the use of political motherhood was attributed to both the success of the
Mothers’ Front, as well as its ultimate cooptation by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and
SLFP, the former of which absorbed the NMF and the latter the SMF (Samuel, 2006).
I suggest that the lack of resources played a major role in the SMF’s decision to disband in 1994 as they lost support from the SLFP when the party came to power under Chandrika
Kumaratunga. Significantly, in 1994, after the SLFP came into office, the SMF’s two founders, members of the SLFP, moved into the new government’s cabinet and the SLFP stopped funding the national chapter of the SMF (de Mel, 2001; Basu, 2005). This may have contributed to the dissolution of the SLFP. While political opportunity structures has been a dominant approach to social movement studies, another approach is known as resource mobilization theory. John D.
McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (1977) suggested that material resources, such as financial
71 support or locations for meetings, and other resources like time and labor, also matter to movement actors’ ability to mobilize and sustain political activities. This includes tactical choices made by actors over the resources and external support, their connections with other movement actors and their responses to moves by the state to coopt their activities. The resource mobilization approach is tied to analyzing movement actors’ strategies and tactics used to win over members, political elites and public opinion to their cause. Since winning over elites may turnoff public opinion, or vice versa, movements are faced with consequential choices, which are further complicated by the organizational structures of movements themselves. These choices create opportunities for both cooperation and competition among members in the same movement.
More recently, cultural and symbolic benefits have been recognized as part of resource mobilization (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004). A key resource is the “affective ties that bind and preserve…[social] networks” among activists, which are causally significant in mobilizing and sustaining movements (Snow, Zurcher, & Ekland-Olson, 1980; Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta,
2001, p. 8; Bayard de Volo, 2004; Edwards & McCarthy, 2004; Bosco, 2006; Gould, 2009; Jasper
J. M., 2011). One factor I explore is anger over the politics of ignoring, which happens when a regime dismisses a social movement’s efforts and can inspire movement actors to sustain their efforts, infuriated that they are deemed harmless (Bishara, 2015). I believe that the politics of ignoring is relevant to understanding the duration of the Madres. Much of social movement literature assumes that movement work is sustained by meeting political aims. Yet many organizations and movements continue to organize even when they struggle to meet their aims
(Gamson, 1990; Amenta & Caren, 2004; Bosco, 2006; Kriesi, 2014). It may be the emotional
72 connections among activists that significantly contribute to the persistence of movements
(Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Gould, 2009). Social movements have often relied on ethical outrage because it “fuels powerful emotions…such as hatred, fear, anger, suspicion, and indignation,” which can sustain a movement (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001, p. 17). While this also points to the troubling side of emotions, which can be mobilized for ethnonationalist, racist, homophobic, fascist and other anti-democratic purposes, emotions have an undeniable role in social movements, including in the demise of movements, such as when disappointment and hopelessness arise (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001).
Part of meaning-making is the solidarity and shared beliefs among movement actors, which are causes of mobilization and sustained organizing in movement efforts. There has been a lack of recognition in much of the literature on how solidarity relies on the emotional, such as when actors engage in collective, affective performances. The emotions that arise from these moments can bind activists together and encourage activists to remain committed to the cause, which is one of the factors attributed to the Madres’s longevity (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta,
2001; Bosco, 2006). Of particular relevance to this study is that due to patriarchal stereotypes, political activities carried out by women may be described as emotional outbursts devoid of political substance, yet at the same time, women activists’ use of emotions can be strategic, both mobilizing others to political causes, and sustaining women’s enthusiasm to organize
(Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001). This paradox is at the heart of this study where women’s use of emotions has bolstered social movement work based on essentialist assumptions about women and emotional labor (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Jasper J. M., 2011; Hochschild,
2012).
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Framing
This study is focused on civil society’s use of political motherhood, or what could also be called maternal framing. To bring attention to their cause(s), social movements engage with protest politics and information politics. Protest politics, such as through public actions, are meant to gain attention while information politics works to inform both those within and outside the movement of goings-on in the movement (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kriesi, 2014). To establish their legitimacy as a movement, social movement actors rely on standing and framing
(Kriesi, 2014). Standing refers to a social movement’s presence and voice in the media, where movements seek to promote their political messaging (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht,
2002). Framing, a literature that took off in the 1980s, explores how movement actors work to persuade the general public and government officials of their movement aims and to bolster their standing (Benford, 1997; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002;
Stavrianos, 2014). This can be done on both the domestic and international levels, where actors seek transnational support (Bob, 2001; 2002). Framing makes up a substantial part of social movement literature, particularly in interpretive studies such as this (Benford, 1997).
Some studies have looked at maternal framing, with most scholars identifying a single maternal frame (Noonan, 1995; Bayard de Volo, 2004; Franceschet, 2004; Goss & Heaney,
2010; Tripp A. M., 2010). However, Cynthia Stavrianos (2014) recognizes two forms of maternal frames. The first is a “stealth agency” frame that uses political motherhood to hide or cover up the fact that any political actions are taking place (p. 5). This frame tries to protect activists from criticism (or harm) by portraying women’s actions as an extension of their mothering. The second major maternal frame considers political motherhood an empowering way to help more
74 women become political actors and achieve gender emancipation, often by promoting so-called feminine virtues that emphasize women’s differences from men. Susan Franceschet, Jennifer
Piscopo and Gwynn Thomas (2016) identify three maternal frames. The first is the traditional supermadre (super mother) frame, which portrays women as having skills based on their maternal duties, which help them to be effective in politics, like being good at budgeting based on their experiences of managing a home. The second is the technocratic frame that promotes gender equality through maternal thinking by playing up gender differences in which women are deemed experts on children’s welfare, health care and education. Women’s “unique” leadership skills are viewed as based on a maternal ethic of care, which enables women to be on different but equal footing with men’s supposed natural strengths. The third frame, the macho minimizer, works to minimize women’s perceived assertiveness. While necessary in politics, assertiveness is seen as masculine. Women using this frame attempt to soften their image by discussing their children or grandchildren as a way to be more appealing to the electorate.
I suggest that these previous frames do not fully capture the political motherhood groups under study. I instead advance the maternal authority frame, which is associated with a moral or sacred element and emphasizes women’s roles as matriarchs (Mann, 2000). Some women heads of state or in the legislature have portrayed themselves as providing for their constituents, just as mothers provide for their children (Chaney, 1979; Steady, 2011). Liberia’s
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected woman head of state, won through the image of an “Iron Lady” known as “Ma Ellen,” a clear example of maternal authority
(Moran, 2012). This frame highlights women’s ability to provide for others in terms of material
75 goods or protection, especially in the case of women seeking office, and promotes women’s strength. In civil society, the maternal authority frame is used by activists to portray their status as competent participants in the political process. Women exert their power through a maternal role, often by shaming their political opponents.
Likewise, I introduce the maternal emotionality frame, which is rooted in the
“irrational” nature of women, as well as women’s special caring and/or emotional nature. This frame is may be associated with the sorrowful mother image. Because women in most societies have been tasked with caring for children, the image of mater dolorosas (sorrowful mothers) may gain some public sympathy (Kline, 1995; Taylor D. , 1997; Bejarano, 2003). However, actors using this frame need not emphasize sorrow or caring at all. Maternal emotionality might also be used to exhibit maternal anger, even vengeance linked with motherhood by the “mama grizzly bear” who becomes wrathful if her children are harmed or threatened. This frame may justify women’s use of violence by simultaneously appealing to socially conservative gender norms that emphasize femininity (Deckman, 2016). Many women who exhibit anger or vengeance are labeled as “monstrous” and face societal backlash (Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015;
Åhäll, 2015). However, for women from the hegemonic majority, anger does not necessarily reduce their perceived femininity (Deckman, 2016). This was the case for the SMF in terms of their vengeful maternal emotionality frame. Notably, women of the SMF are from the hegemonic majority in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese. This gave them tremendous privilege in using anger during their organizing, which was excused by the Sinhalese general public (de Alwis,
2001).
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In Chapter 5, I explore how the Mothers’ Front and the Madres engage with the maternal authority and emotionality frames. I suggest that a maternal authority frame bolsters the women who deploy it by representing them as competent political actors, which works against perceptions of mothers as apolitical or politically naive. While a maternal emotionality portrays women who use it as irrational, it simultaneously is a key frame to garnering support, presenting a strategic conundrum. I explore how the NMF relied on both maternal authority and maternal emotionality frames of political motherhood from the start of their organizing, while the Madres began with only the maternal emotionality frame but later adopted the maternal authority frame. In contrast to both the NMF and Madres, the SMF engaged solely with the maternal emotionality frame. I suggest that this further contributed to the SMF’s disbandment in 1994. While framing is critical to social movements success, it is clear from the case of the NFM that it is not the only factor that matters since politically repressive environments, such as northern Sri Lanka at the time of the NMF, can inhibit movement work that is popular among the public, particularly when said public is a minority community under attack by the majority-dominated state.
In part, frames depend on the long-term goal of movement actors. For those who hope to gain adherents to a mass movement, embracing at least some mainstream social norms allows the movement to more easily gain adherents (Ferree & Mueller, 2004; Hewitt &
McCammon, 2004; Kutz-Flamenbaum, 2007). However, social movements do not want to simply mobilize individuals. Their ultimate aim is to impact political processes, much of which depends on the political opportunity structure available to them (Kriesi, 2014). Mona Tajali
(2015) has pointed out that due to the gendered nature of political opportunity structures,
77 women’s groups make strategic choices when they adopt their framing, taking up discourses that they may not support but that will resonate domestically to help their causes gain wider support. Because political motherhood resonates with many mainstream societal understandings of respectable womanhood, it may be to women’s benefit to use motherhood.
Connections with the state
This section overviews women’s movements and party politics. My study explores the interaction of political parties with women’s movements since domestic feminists in Sri Lanka collectively withheld their support for the SMF due to the group’s affiliation with the SLFP (de
Alwis, 2004). Such support might have popularized the SMF’s cause transnationally and gained them further material and emotional support to continue organizing. Moreover, the Madres’s autonomy from parties, which were banned under the military regime at the time of the group’s formation, appears to have helped the group sustain itself for the long-term, while the
SMF’s link to the SLFP , in which it functioned almost as an auxiliary to the party, appears to have contributed to the group’s dissolution in the mid-1990s (Fisher, 1989; de Alwis, 2004;
2012). That the Madres were autonomous from party politics, while the SMF was linked to the
SLFP provides a contrast ripe for an exploration of the impacts that party support, or lack thereof, had on both groups’ ability to sustain women’s political participation and understandings of political motherhood’s effectiveness (Fisher, 1989; de Alwis, 2012). Chapter 5 will explore the overlap of parties and movements in the context of the Madres and the
Mothers’ Front.
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Women’s increased inclusion in parties began in tandem with increased feminist activism of the 1960s and 1970s, although globally parties remain male-dominated (Young L. ,
2000, p. 3; Wiliarty, 2010, p. 4). However, feminists have been divided over working with the state and political parties (Basu, 2003; Franceschet, 2004; Kantola, 2006). Some argue that only women’s movements operating outside the state can maintain the ideological radicalism of a feminist or women’s rights agenda, taking the state itself and its accompanying institutions, such as political parties, to be irredeemably oppressive to women. This view prioritizes civil society organizing to prevent party politics from dividing the women’s movement and to preempt the cooptation of the feminist agenda by parties and the state. It additionally stands against the hierarchy of party structures and state bureaucracy, defining hierarchy as the antithesis of feminism (Mansbridge J. J., 1986; Alvarez, 1994; Waylen, 1996; Kantola, 2006;
Freeman, 2013 [1970]). This approach is supported by non-feminist work, including Robert
Michels (1959) who argues that regardless of ideological orientation, political parties and other organizations tend toward “the iron law of oligarchy,” in which party elites, no matter how committed to a cause, see their priorities evolve into greater concern for the preservation of the group over the group’s ideological aims. Inevitably, organizational structures become hierarchical due both to the bureaucratic structure necessary for large institutions to function optimally, which leads to a division of labor of leaders and followers, and to the conservative nature of power itself. Others support this argument, claiming that state interaction undermines social movements’ ability to advance more radical policy outcomes or that cooperation with the state results in purely symbolic—or coopted—representation of movement causes by state structures (Piven & Cloward, 1977; Saward, 1992; Dryzek, 1996).
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The opposing feminist approach to political parties and women’s civil society organizing seeks to work with parties and other state institutions, arguing that the state is inescapable and that women must ensure that they can convey their voices and exercise power in these structures, especially in contexts outside of liberal democracy where civil society typically has less of a voice (Franzway, Court, & Connell, 1989; Randall, 1987; Chappell, 2002).18 This approach seeks to use women’s movements to pressure parties and other state institutions to be more inclusive of women (Banasak, Beckwith, & Rucht, 2003; Wiliarty, 2010, p. 4). Jane
Mansbridge (1986) suggests that hierarchy may be necessary to hold movements and organizations together. She cites efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US
Constitution in the 1970s and 1980s, arguing this failed because the ERA movement was decentralized, which led to divisions among women and a non-cohesive movement.
Mansbridge concluded that social movements will veer into a decision-making structure even there is a desire to be non-hierarchical since decisions are always made hierarchically. The lack of transparency blocks certain points of view because it becomes difficult to see how decisions are made. In contrast, organizational hierarchy provides transparency in decision-making
(Freeman, 2013 [1970]). In such a case, a party structure may be preferred. Notably, the level and kind of involvement desired by women’s movements in party politics vary. Some women’s movements count work with a political party as part of their core activities while other women’s groups treat working with a party as peripheral. Likewise, women’s movements
18 Also known as the femocrat strategy, this has been an important avenue for feminists in some democracies, including Australia, Canada and the UK. For this approach to work, political opportunity structures must be open to feminist activities, which happens mainly when political parties open to considering a feminist agenda enter government, along with the presence of an autonomous women’s movement that can pressure political actors in formal institutions to pursue feminist policies (Chappell, 2002; Franceschet, 2004; Weldon, 2011; Weldon & Htun, 2013).
80 engaging in party politics may be partisan or multipartisan, either working exclusively with one party, or any political party open to a relationship (Young L. , 2000). The Madres, while initially autonomous, began to interact with parties in the transition period (Agosín, 1990). I explore this in Chapter 4 and go into detail about the SMF’s connection to the SLFP in Chapter 5.
The benefits of movement alliance or incorporation with parties and other state institutions are evidenced in material and symbolic support for movement groups. There is prestige for groups given official status, which in some cases allows them to be the exclusive representative for their issue or cause within state institutions. It also provides groups ready access to state decisionmakers whom they work to influence (Offe, 1990; Saward, 1992; Basu,
2003). Parties offer dues-paying members and, in some countries, parties are supported materially by the state, which is a material incentive for movements to ally, or incorporate, with the state (Offe, 1990). Critically, state connections can prevent a cause from dying out (Offe,
1990; Basu, 2015). Social movement scholars note “the transitory nature of movement politics,” since typically following the end to a crisis that instigated actors to mobilize, movements easily go dormant, leaving only a niche group of people willing to continue to organize (Offe, 1990, p. 235). Through incorporation into the state, movement causes persist since the state or party bureaucracy takes up the cause (Offe, 1990; Basu, 2015).
One drawback to state alliances, however, is elitism. Since the 1990s, social movement actors have become professionalized or “NGO-ized” in the sense that movement work increasingly consists of paid labor in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector and movement actors work closely with the state, such as with national women’s machineries and
81 political parties.19 Some feminists have argued that this professionalization has lessened the radical nature of social movements, and advocate more autonomy for women’s movements, particularly in the global South where outside donors often dictate the agenda, rather than local needs. Professionalization and donor agendas have placed limits on ordinary people’s ability to participate in movements (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998, p. 4; Lebon, 2012; de Alwis, 2012;
Sawyer & Merrindahl, 2015; Rousseau & Hudon, 2017). However, most scholars believe that working with the state and political parties has become inevitable, if not productive (Basu,
2003; Banaszak, 2003; Banasak, Beckwith, & Rucht, 2003; Franceschet, 2004). Yet as Susan
Franceschet (2004) makes clear, women’s movements that align with parties must consider long-term consequences. While parties provide resources, they are focused on gaining votes.
For this reason, divisive issues such as abortion rights may be left off party platforms in the effort to promote party unity by avoiding controversy. Similarly, Lorraine Bayard de Volo (2001) found that in Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) coopted the women’s movement, gaining its support to uphold the FSLN’s hold on the government and its continuation as a party, rather than ensure gender equality.
To combat de-radicalization, scholars such as Franceschet (2004) and Amrita Basu
(2003) have recommended strong and autonomous women’s movements to lobby state institutions in addition to having feminists involved in state institutions and parties, who remain tied to movements, in what is called “double militancy” (Franceschet, 2004, p. 502). This middle
19 National women’s machineries advocate for pro-women policies on issues that affect women, including gender- based violence, the feminization of poverty, women’s health and reproductive rights, and family laws on women’s rights in marriage, women’s access to divorce as well as rights to child custody and inheritance (Stetson & Mazur, 1995; Hawkesworth, 2012).
82 path suggests the need for political insiders and outsiders to promote women’s opportunities.
Examples from state-directed political motherhood sometimes result in greater opportunities for women but can also lead to reductions in women’s political participation. In Nicaragua, even as FSLN coopted the women’s movement to further its hold on power, it nevertheless enacted policies that promoted women’s access to education and gave women the same right to divorce as men. In contrast, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 led to a state-directed political motherhood that pushed women out of the public sphere (Carreon & Moghadam, 2015).
In the global South, women’s movements have experiences of both working inside and outside institutional politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, much of Latin America transitioned to democracy with either the return to—or the introduction of—competitive elections. In transitioning countries, some political parties sought to control women's movements by incorporating them into party structures. Particularly in Latin America where corporatism—a form of political organization in which the state supports and manages different segments of society—has meant that women’s groups have struggled to access state resources while maintaining their agendas. The centralization that comes with corporatism often means that women are viewed as a single group by the state, assumed to share the same concerns and needs (Alvarez, 1990; Jaquette, 1994, pp. 231-232; Waylen, 1996). There is a substantial body of comparative literature that examines transitions to democracy in the regions of Latin
America and Eastern Europe, which democratized around the same time, and which points out how women had a major role in Latin America’s transitions, while women had far less influence in transitions in Eastern Europe. Women’s rights and feminist discourse became part of the human rights movement and the struggle for democracy in Latin America. Conversely, in
83
Eastern Europe, feminism was seen as both an imposed foreign concept and connected to the
Communist Party rule (Waylen, 1994; Molyneux, 1996; Baldez, 2003; Basu, 2003). The connections between the human rights and women’s rights movements in the case of the
Madres are apparent, wherein younger generations of Argentine feminists appreciate the
Madres. Since the 2018 push for abortion access, the feminist movement has adopted a green handkerchief, or pañuelo, to represent the struggle for full reproductive rights, as an homage to the white pañuelo worn by the Madres (Conn, 2018).
South Asia’s experience has been similar to Eastern Europe, where feminism is seen largely as foreign (de Alwis, 2004; Narayan, 1997, p. 25). Sri Lanka’s women’s movement is dominated by elites and has not attracted many grassroots women (Wickremagamage, 1999).
Yasmin Tambiah (2002) notes that a pattern of relying on women in crisis but pushing them out of public sphere after normalcy returns resonates in South Asia where many women were highly active in anti-colonial movements but following independence, women were encouraged to return to the home, with the state defining women first and foremost as reproducers—or potential reproducers—and only secondarily as citizens.20 In South Asia, political parties often work in tandem with social movements. Notably, South Asia has high rates of electing women heads of state. However, women heads of state have not generally supported policies that benefit ordinary women (Basu, 2005). Sri Lankan political parties remain male-dominated, with
20 Amrita Basu (2005) notes that women’s participation in India’s nationalist movement is particularly noteworthy since it was such a protracted effort. This is distinctive from Sri Lanka’s independence, which was negotiated between elite Sri Lankan men and British colonial agents. Yet women have played important roles, including symbolically, in post-independence nationalist movements in Sri Lanka, including in the LTTE and People’s Liberation Front (JVP), the former which organized Tamil nationalists and the latter organized by Sinhala nationalists (de Mel, 2003).
84 party leaders controlling most of the decision-making. Where many women are involved in parties, it is typically in the lowest levels of the party structure or sidelined in women’s wings
(Lanka, 2005; Kodikara, 2014; Basu, 2005). Sri Lankan women did make it into the upper echelons of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but this did not translate into mass women’s political participation (de Mel, 2003; Basu, 2005). Even as feminism is often seen as a foreign influence in Sri Lanka, most parties invoke rhetorical support for women’s rights, although this is not often put into practice (Pinto Jayawardena & Kodikara, 2002; Lanka, 2005;
Basu, 2005). Sri Lankan women have high levels of education, access to healthcare and have made strides in the workforce. Yet they continue to lag in party and legislative representation
(Kodikara, 2014).
In many contexts of the global South, including Argentina and Sri Lanka, women’s numbers have been traditionally small in political parties, even at the grassroots level (Lanka,
2005; Franceschet & Piscopo, 2008; 2014). When women have been present, they have tended to be placed in women’s auxiliaries, marginalizing their voices and access to decision-making.
Many ruling political parties coopt autonomous women’s groups and bring them under party control to mobilize women’s organizing to serve the regime rather than advance women’s rights or representation (Staudt, 1986; Waylen, 1996; Bayard de Volo, 2001). Political parties everywhere have historically used women’s labor without giving women voice or power in party structures. Parties traditionally employed women in low-status work, such as canvassing on behalf of party candidates and preparing coffee for meetings and rallies, with little influence in decision-making (Freeman, 2000). When women have taken on important roles in parties, it
85 has often been in a crisis period and as soon as the crisis dissipates, women find themselves pushed out of higher-level party activity (Friedman E. J., 1998).21
Unpacking what furthered the respective durations of the Madres and the Mothers’
Front can shed insight on party-movement connections in the respective regions of Latin
America and South Asia. That the Madres were initially autonomous and over time developed connections and alliances with the state is of interest in how this has contributed to their duration, visibility and remembrance (Agosín, 1990; Bouvard, 1994; Sutton, 2010). Critically, understanding how the connection with the SLFP was both beneficial and detrimental to the
SMF in terms of the duration of their organization is important for future women’s peace groups that may consider an alliance with a state institution.
Transnationalism and social movements
The Madres and Mothers’ Front each sought support from human rights defenders and feminists abroad, yet only the Madres found transnational support (Bouvard, 1994; de Alwis,
2001; Thiruchandran, 2012). This is puzzling because it appears that the sympathetic image of mothers of the disappeared is what gained the Madres international support, which began as early as the late 1970s (Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994). Since the Mothers’ Front came after the
Madres, starting in the mid-1980s, it is a likely assumption that those who follow human rights
21 Parties, as a male-dominated institution, have been blamed for the widespread lack of women candidates since they are the gatekeepers to political representation in most political systems. Parties tend to be run by male party elites who prefer candidates who are more like themselves, meaning male (Kunovich & Paxton, 2005; Niven, 1998). This demand problem notes that parties are not actively looking to recruit female candidates (Tadros, 2014). Others blame women’s lack of representation as women choosing not to run or participate in party activities, a supply issue, and/or blaming voters for not voting for women (Krook & Schwindt-Bayer, Electoral Institutions, 2013; Tadros, 2014).
86 and feminist issues would be “primed” to support a similar group of mothers of the disappeared. Yet this was not the case. I consider how transnational feminist movements have influenced domestic feminisms in the global South as a means to parse out how support from abroad may bolster domestic organizing. The Madres has developed into a widely respected group not just in Argentina, but throughout Latin America and globally. In part, this is due to a shared history in Latin American countries as former colonies of mainly Spain and Portugal. This has created shared regional religious and linguistic identities and led to americanismo, or Pan
Americanism, which has given rise to dense transnational human and women’s rights connections throughout the region (Atkins, 1999; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Stites Mor, 2013). One of the most important aspects of transnational feminism in Latin America is the regional women’s conferences known as encuentros, which have occurred regularly since the early
1980s and bring together activists from across Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss women’s issues (Lebon, 2012; Alvarez, 2014).
In contrast, South Asia has one of the least densely connected regions in terms of human and women’s rights movements, in part because of a multitude of regional differences across—not to mention within—countries, although there are notably shared histories and other social practices to qualify South Asia as a region (Roy, 2012; Basnet, 2014). One important note is that domestic women’s movements in South Asia find themselves responding to different structural issues, including neoliberalization, militarization, sexual violence and ethnic conflict, with the emphasis differing depending on the country (Kurian, Jha, & Sonora, 2017, pp.
2-5). The density of women’s networks in Latin America versus their lesser robustness in South
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Asia may account for the visibility and remembrance of the Madres and the opposite in the case of the Mothers’ Front.
Additionally, from the 1960s through some of the 1980s, transnational feminism was focused on solidarity, with feminists supporting activists on the ground in anti-colonial liberation movements (Jayawardena, 1986; Bunch, 2001; Wu, 2013). It was during this period that the Madres catalyzed. Starting in the 1980s and by the 1990s, when the Mothers’ Front was organizing, transnational feminism had shifted tactics, looking to make moves institutionally within the United Nations and other intergovernmental institutions (Bunch, 2001;
Walby, 2011). Within civil society, Nandini Deo and Duncan McDuie-Ra (2011) have argued that domestic-international connections have been integral to social movement processes, whether women’s movements or not, in the global South. The effects of transnationalism are complex, revealing fundamental power inequalities among actors that privilege those in the global North, most often through donor-driven funding and agenda-setting, which frequently ignore local preferences (Rajagopal, 2006; Autesserre, 2014). Yet transnational support can sustain local movement work by providing resources and operating through what Margaret Keck and
Kathryn Sikkink (1998) have called the boomerang effect, in which domestic actors reach out to international allies. Together domestic actors and allies abroad work to influence the international community to pressure autocratic governments to enact positive changes that cannot be achieved through domestic channels.
Furthermore, Clifford Bob (2001) highlights the hyper-competitive aspects of the transnational sphere in which civil society groups vie with one another to gain global attention to their causes. It is not an equitable space in which access to international support is available
88 to all who seek it. This has ramifications for the frames used by social movements since those that may resonate domestically may be ill-suited for the international level. In part, the
Madres’s use of Christian tropes may have resonated among those working in international human rights organizations, which remain dominated by those from the global North, many of whom are familiar with Christianity (Orsi, 2001; Katz, 2001; Warner, 2013; Hopgood, 2013). In contrast, the Buddhist and Hindu tropes used by the Mothers’ Front, which worked effectively within Sri Lanka, failed to resonate with those in international human rights organizations due to their unfamiliarity with these religions. I explore this at length in Chapter 6.
To sum up, exploring the Madres and the Mothers’ Front will contribute to highlighting women’s activism in the global South. Women’s movements in the global South have largely been ignored in the literature on social movements, rooted in a long-standing assumption that women’s movements are a result of modernization and development processes and tied to the spread of feminism from the global North. However, the origins of most feminist and women’s movements are local (Basu, 1995). My study also provides ripe opportunities to explore multiple types of maternal framing—authority versus emotionality—as well as connections with the state and how different domestic groups resonate within global civil society, especially among those in international human rights organizations.
The politics of memory and its connections to transitional justice and the visual
The final major aspect of this project is interrogating transitional justice, which relates to the politics of memory, an inter-disciplinary literature rooted in cultural studies, anthropology, sociology and history. The politics of memory literature explores how collective and individual
89 memories are constructed through processes of remembering and forgetting. These studies investigate how memory construction affects both individual and collective identity, as well as how micro and macro memories are inherently entangled with one another (Sturken, 1997;
Boyarin, 1994; Lambeck & Antze, 1996; Neumann & Thompson, 2015). The politics of memory refers to politicized discourses regarding how to interpret past events that are continually contested, part of on-going political negotiations of how to understand the present through the lens of the past (Sturken, 1997; Hodgkin & Radstone, 2003). There is a growing genre of political science works on the politics of memory, often in connection with postconflict transitional justice, which understands how competing perceptions of the past create political cultures and can help or hinder postconflict democracies’ respect for human rights (Barahona de Brito,
González‐Enríquez, & Aguilar, 2001; Eisner, 2018; Sylvester, 2019; Jelin, 2010; Friedman R. ,
2017; Sturken, 1997).
This study will consider the contestations taking place in both Argentina and Sri Lanka over the politics of memory of the respective conflicts under study, the period of state terrorism in Argentina and Sri Lanka’s civil war, and how the Madres and Mothers’ Front have respectively played a role in these contestations. Latin America has a consolidated history of transitional justice given its experiences in the period of the Cold War due to the US-Soviet geopolitical conflicts, and Argentina has been at the fore of much of this (Werth, 2010; Gates-
Madsen, 2016; Jelin, 2010). Sri Lanka’s transitional justice period began almost immediately following the conflict’s end when in 2010, the government set up the Lessons Learned and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). However, the LLRC sought to deflect international criticism in how the government ended the war—which included the massacring of an estimated 40,000
90 civilians—rather than provide accountability (Ratner, 2012; Höglund, 2019). A general view in
Sri Lanka’s immediate post-war period suggested that accountability for crimes against humanity constituted acts of “vengeance,” although beginning in 2015 there was a slow shift towards transitional justice (Höglund, 2019, p. 375). With the recent election of the “wartime heroes” Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a military officer and former minister of defense, now president of Sri Lanka, and Mahinda Rajapaksa, former president and now prime minister (and a co- founder of the SMF), transitional justice is reversing (Ramachandran, 2019).22
Most politics of memory studies focus on the national level (Hobsbawm, 1983; Sturken,
1997; Huyssen, 2003; Smith A. , 2004). Memory discourses often provide a narrative for why
“we,” whoever the we might be, exist where and as we are, in terms of geography, status and other identity issues (Lambeck & Antze, 1996). This has been a major theme in understanding modern states. Benedict Anderson (1983) stresses that how a nation-state sees its past influences how it views both its present and future and provides citizens a sense of what it means to be a member of the nation-state. This process occurs at other levels of community, such as within racial or ethnic communities (Boyarin, 1994; Lambeck & Antze, 1996; Hamilton,
2003). I suggest that like national and ethnic communities, social movements also engage in the politics of memory. I explore the international human rights and feminist movements as well as domestic feminist movements in Argentina and Sri Lanka, to understand how each of these movements has remembered and/or forgotten the Madres and the Mothers’ Front. Strikingly, the Madres has been widely remembered both domestically and internationally, while the
22 The Sinhalese-dominated state defeated in the LTTE in May 2009, with the Rajapaksas the masterminds behind the failure to protect civilians and ignoring a surrender by the LTTE, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands (Ratner, 2012; Ramachandran, 2019).
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Mothers’ Front has been largely forgotten domestically and never made inroads at the international level.
Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González‐Enríquez and Paloma Aguilar (2001) have provided a useful definition of the politics of memory in postconflict societies such as
Argentina and Sri Lanka, the foci of this study. Echoing understandings of the politics of memory as contested discourses regarding the past, the politics of memory may also be conceived as policies claiming “truth” in the official, or state, narrative of a conflict, as well as policies that lead to particular constructions of postconflict justice, which is known as transitional justice. How societies construct their collective past as oriented towards future matters in terms of “healing” societies after conflict (p. 37-38). This is a fraught, ongoing process in which consensus is rarely achieved (Huyssen, 2003; Jelin, 2010). There are two main approaches in the politics of memory, collective amnesia and transitional justice, which stand in stark contrast to one another. A collective amnesia approach seeks to forget the past to “move on” from collective horrors (Malamud-Goti, 1996; Dyzenhaus, 1998; Douglass & Vogler, 2003;
Mendeloff, 2004; Gates-Madsen, 2016). A transitional justice approach works to hold accountable those involved in human rights abuses by remembering the past (Barahona de
Brito, González‐Enríquez, & Aguilar, 2001; Teitel, 2003; Barahona de Brito, 2010; Ramsbotham,
Woodhouse, & Miall, 2016). Advocates of each perspective argue that their approach best provides for healing societies following armed conflicts and other atrocities.
Transitional justice includes a range of mechanisms employed in the aftermath of armed conflicts at the national and international levels, which includes truth commissions, court trials
92 and policies of reparations, amnesty and purging (Barahona de Brito, 2010, p. 10).23 Although promoted by international soft law and international organizations, and sometimes carried out within international institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), transitional justice is conducted on behalf of the national community (Jelin, 2010). However, as pointed out by Mark Neocleous (2005), reconciliation, a concept frequently at the heart of many transitional justice processes, is a philosophically conservative approach to understanding injustice, which emphasizes the need for those harmed to forgive those who wronged them and to make peace with the events of the past, no matter how unjust. A perceived tension between the past and present is lingering anger about the past in the present that may jeopardize both present and future politics, even leading to a return of physical violence
(Barkan & Becirbasic, 2015; Violi, 2015). This debate has been ongoing in both Argentina and Sri
Lanka in their respective postconflict periods.
Argentina, from its transition in 1983 until about 1995, followed the collective amnesia
(or forgetting) approach, seeking to figuratively put the past behind (Gates-Madsen, 2016).
However, the Madres never advocated forgetting, despite the enormous criticism they faced for promoting accountability for crimes against humanity and remembering the period of state terrorism (Bouvard, 1994). Since 1995, there have been growing voices to remember
Argentina’s past, although it remains a contested process (Gates-Madsen, 2016; Politi, 2017).
As the following chapters will show, Argentina’s transitional justice process has proven more
23 This was clarified in 2005 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, which set the expectation for transitional justice following armed conflicts and other mass traumas (UNGA, 2005; Neumann & Thompson, 2015).
93 robust than Sri Lanka’s, although this is in part due to the more recent conclusion of the Sri
Lankan civil war. In Sri Lanka, the emphasis has largely been on deeming the war a necessary response to a terrorist group—the LTTE—without addressing any of the underlying causes of the ethnic conflict, most notably the oppression of the Tamil community stemming from policies that began in the 1950s onward that have essentially made Tamils second class citizens
(See Chapter 3 for a full discussion) (Tambiah S. J., 1986; Hashim, 2013). Although the earlier demise of the Mothers’ Front compared to the Madres has meant more opportunities for the
Madres to promote the politics of remembering, I argue that the Mothers’ Front was integral to the movement of remembering the civil war and promoting transitional justice (see Chapter 7).
The visual in memory-making
Henri Bergson (1991) has argued that the visual is inherently linked with memory, claiming that individual memories lie in people’s unconsciousness, where the mind recalls memories through visuals. This speaks to the power of images, which is obvious in art, both visual and non-visual, the latter of which invokes images through words or soundscapes. Marita
Sturken (1997) recognizes the role of visuals in memory-making, including how individuals are drawn to specific sites or objects to contain their memories. Memorials are commonly used for this purpose, as are other “technologies of memory,” or objects that represent, produce and reproduce memory are texts, photographs, films and television footage (p. 10-11). Sturken emphasizes the growing role of photographs and news footage in constructing individual and collective memory, wherein most people recall national and international events through media visuals, including where they were when these events transpired or when they learned
94 of these events.24 With the rise of Twitter and other social media applications, newer technologies of memory are growing in the ability to document and archive visuals that represent and generate the politics of memory.
Pointedly, multiple avenues of memory, especially the visual, entangle collective and individual memories. For example, Vietnam veterans interviewed by Sturken (1997) explained that their memories of the war in Vietnam had become so intertwined with news footage as well as Hollywood’s representations of the conflict that veterans could no longer sort out their individual memories of serving in Vietnam from these other visuals. Sturken adds that the body, yet another visual, can become a site of embodied memory-making in which the body functions as “social texts” to be read and interpreted, and “whose meanings change in different contexts,” often around identity signifiers such as race, gender and other classifications (p.
220). The latter point of contextual signifiers on interpretations is of importance in understanding how the Madres resonated so widely both domestically and internationally while the Mothers’ Front had success at the domestic level but failed to capture global attention.
The Madres and the Mothers’ Front consciously engaged visuals to promote memory- making, perhaps most strikingly with photographs of their disappeared children. Sturken argues that a “photograph evokes both a trace of life and the prospect of death” (p. 19). This was emphatically so in the case of the disappeared whose vitality shone in the images, even as these photos simultaneously served as reminders of the loss of these young people. Arguably,
24 More recently, it is likely that millions watched the fall of the second tower of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which was broadcast on the news in real time.
95 these images brought the domestic sphere into the public sphere, as such photographs are typically displayed in the living room (Schirmer, 1994). More importantly, the photographs served as evidence of the disappeared. The most constraining part of enforced disappearances is the lack of records from state institutions such as the police and military to attest to the seizure and arrest of individuals and the lack of a body to prove murder since enforced disappearances are illegally and clandestinely conducted. Photographs wielded by the mothers of the disappeared suggested a crime against humanity had taken place. They could put a face to a trauma that otherwise, in both Argentina and Sri Lanka, went unspoken, mainly out of fear
(Taylor D. , 1997; Thiruchandran, 2012).25
Likewise, the presence of the protesting bodies of the mothers of the disappeared evoked the bodies of their missing children. The Madres and Mothers’ Front presented themselves as resonantly maternal, but mothers who lacked children to care for due to state violence. The Madres became adept at using visuals to promote their narrative of state violence, starting with their use of white headscarves, or pañuelos, which suggested their status as mature women and invoked the image of the Christian Virgin Mary, who is traditionally depicted with her head covered (Taylor D. , 1997). Likewise, the white pañuelos signified baby diapers, another maternal symbol (Schirmer, 1994). In December 1983, the group famously used 30,000 cardboard silhouettes to represent the 30,000 disappeared, which were displayed around the Plaza de Mayo. These evocative images called to mind chilling crime scenes in which
25 Families of the disappeared were stigmatized as neighbors, extended family and friends unconsciously hoped that the disappeared were in fact guilty of something, if only to console themselves that they and their families would remain safe (Taylor D. , 1997; de Mel, 2001). The larger purpose of enforced disappearance is not to torture individuals but rather terrorize communities and societies more broadly (Taylor D. , 1997)
96 the body’s outline is chalked on the ground.26 One of the most famous of these silhouettes was a disappeared individual rendered pregnant, which referenced the missing children of the disappeared (Mellibovsky, 1997).27 The NMF used well-known funeral customs to visually, and orally, draw audible attention to their distress over their missing children while the SMF performed typically private Buddhist religious rituals in public, in front of gathered media, to visually enact their desired punishments for those they held culpable for the enforced disappearance of their children (Kailasapathy, 2012; de Alwis, 2012). Props and the bodies of the mothers of the disappeared were critical to creating a politics of memory that recognized the state’s culpability in their missing children.
The politics of memory in popular culture also includes films and other commodities, which encompasses t-shirts, jewelry, books, posters, buttons and similar objects (Sturken,
1997). In the case of the Madres, there has been an intense cultural institutionalization of the group within Argentina. During my fieldwork, I witnessed numerous street vendors selling
Madres t-shirts, earrings, stickers and pins. The Asociación branch of the Madres offers a wide range of merchandise from baseball caps to small purses and bags to books and even have their own plastic shopping bags bearing their white pañuelos image to ensure that consumers know
26 The concept was developed by the artist Rodolfo Aguerreberry, Julio Flores and Guillero Kexel, who sought social change through art. They were overwhelmed by creating 30,000 separate silhouettes themselves and so sought a partnership with the Madres, to carry the project out (Mellibovsky, 1997). 27 Pregnant disappeared women gave birth while imprisoned and were only then killed, although most endured torture while pregnant. Families of the disappeared were kept from knowing about the births and the infants were given to families deemed “respectable” by the military regime, often military families, to be raised with no knowledge of the fact that they were not the biological children of these families. The Abeulas (Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo have worked to locate these children and reconnect them with their biological families (Arditti, 1999). In contrast, in Sri Lanka, it was rare for women to be disappeared, meaning that the Mothers’ Front was made up of the mothers of disappeared sons, so there was no equivalent issue in Sri Lanka (de Mel, 2001; Kailasapathy, 2012).
97 that they have purchased official merchandise.28 In Chapter 6, I explore the depth of this cultural institutionalization with visual analysis and investigate the visual representation of the
Mothers’ Front as well.
While the politics of memory has only more recently gained attention from political scientists, its central role in transitional justice makes it of critical importance in understanding postconflict societies, including women’s participation. There are no easy answers to designing official narratives of a conflict, including why it happened and what lessons could be drawn from such atrocities. However, states often have incentives to gloss over root causes of conflict and this is arguably the case in both Argentina and Sri Lanka, where both conflicts have officially ended, yet remain high in the public consciousness. I will explore how the Madres and Mothers’
Front have played—and in many cases continue to play—a role in the contestations around the politics of memory.
Conclusion
To conclude, this chapter reviewed the major findings from the literatures of political motherhood, political participation, public and private conceptualizations, social movements and the state, including political parties, and the politics of memory. While political motherhood successfully sustains some women’s political participation in the public political sphere, such as the Madres, active for four decades, there are cases such as that of the
Mothers’ Front in which ended after “only” 7 years of organizing (Fisher, 1989; de Alwis, 2012;
28 The Madres broke into two lines—the Línea Fundadora and the Asociación—in 1986 (Bouvard, 1994). See Chapter 4 for full discussion.
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Thiruchandran, 2012). I suggest that on balance, the potential benefits of political motherhood outweigh its drawbacks and that many negative aspects can be mitigated through progressive interventions by other social movements actors, including concerns over the short duration of activism. I stress how particular social movement actors—notably human rights activists and feminists—can help to promote the legacies of political motherhood movements. In the next chapter, I overview the diverse political backgrounds of Argentina and Sri Lanka and explore the conflicts that eventually catalyzed these two groups of mothers of the disappeared.
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Chapter 3
Two Political Motherhood Movements
Introduction
In the previous chapter, I introduced the major literatures on which this study draws.
Here, I outline a full comparison of Argentina and Sri Lanka’s wars that resulted in a similar outcome of political motherhood movements. Specifically, this chapter introduces the background of both countries and traces the history of Argentina’s period of state terrorism
(1976-1983) and Sri Lanka’s Civil War (1983-2009). These two internal armed conflicts differed in substantial ways. One was based on ideological and class differences, the other was an ethnic conflict. Although both states used mass enforced disappearances to repress citizens during these conflicts, Argentina’s regime was authoritarian, while the government of Sri Lanka was technically democratic. Yet both regimes were responsible for critical human rights violations, particularly for widespread enforced disappearances. The United Nations (UN) convention on the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
(ICPPED) defines enforced disappearances as:
the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of
the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or
acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of
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liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which
place such a person outside the protection of the law (ICPPED, 2018, p. Article 2).29
Globally, Argentina and Sri Lanka share two of the highest rates of enforced disappeared persons (SAHR, 2018). In these dissimilar contexts—varying by geography, history and religious, ethnic and linguistic factors, and situated in different types of internal conflicts operating under different regime types—political motherhood movements arose to challenge enforced disappearances.
After tracing the two conflicts, I stress the connections between Argentina and Sri
Lanka, which resulted in the rise of political motherhood movements. I argue that three factors led to this similar outcome of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres) in Argentina and the
Mothers’ Front in Sri Lanka. These are that political motherhood: (a) provided cover to women activists operating in politically hostile environments, which mitigated some of the societal and state backlashes to women’s organizing, (b) offered an accessible political participation, which appealed to many women and (c) provided a framing device that found broad resonance among many in both Argentine and Sri Lankan society, and for the Madres, resonated internationally.
In the first section of this chapter, I introduce contextual factors of Argentina and outline the leadup to the period of state terrorism. I then overview the Argentine conflict, with a close eye to its transitional justice history. In the second section, I present Sri Lanka and trace
29 In 2006, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), which ruled that enforced disappearance is viewed as a crime against humanity (UNGA, 2006; ICPPED, 2018). As of November 2017, 90 countries have failed to ratify the convention, although 58 have (OHCHR, 2017).
101 the outbreak of its civil war. In summarizing the civil war, I briefly outline its origins but focus on the end of the war, which was marked by extensive human rights violations by both the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The third major section of the paper explores women’s participation in these respective conflicts. I emphasize the shared outcome of political motherhood movements.
Argentina
Before the military coup of 1976, Argentina had a history of both political violence and military interferences in governance (Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Lewis D. K., 2015). Located in South America’s Southern Cone with a population of 43 million who identify overwhelmingly as white European and Roman Catholic, Argentina has been historically split along a political left-right continuum, from socialists advocating for both strong state welfare and labor unionism to fascists advocating anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, hyper-nationalism, Roman
Catholicism and free-market capitalism and the repression of public dissent (Rock, 1993;
Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Finchelstein, 2014; Lewis D. K., 2015).
Argentina is a settler colonial society created under the Spanish. Spanish rule has left a legacy of the widespread use of the Spanish language, the white European racial-ethnic ideal and a strong societal role for the Catholic Church (Sutton, 2010). Other European settlers came to Argentina, notably a strong presence of Italians (Lewis D. K., 2015). For centuries prior to settler colonialization, several nations of indigenous people occupied what is now Argentina, most of whom live today in the marginalized countryside. Current indigenous groups include the Charrúa, Lule, Mbya-Guaraní, Mocoví, Pilagá, Tonocoté, Vilela, Chané, Chorote, Chulupí,
102
Diaguita-Calchaquí, Ocloya, Omaguaca, Tapiete, Toba, Tupí-Guaraní, Wichí, Ona, Tehuelche,
Yamana, Mapuche, Atacama, Avá Guaraní, Diaguita-Calchaquí, Huarpe, Kolla, Rankulche, Tupí
Guaraní and Comechingon (IWGIA, 2011). There is also a long history of Afrodescendent people in Argentina, although they have suffered under heavy discrimination (Guano, 2003; Sutton,
2010). There is a history of racism and ethnocentrism in Argentina, which is both classed and gendered, along with sigifnicant whitewashing and national denial over the issue of race.
Racialized, classed thinking continues to hold sway (Taylor, 1997; Joseph, 2000; Guano, 2003;
Garguin, 2007; Sutton, 2010; Anderson J. M., 2015). 30 Ninety-seven percent of Argentines identify as white and European, while the remaining 3% of population identify as Amerindian, morochos, meaning mixed white and Amerindian, or Afrodescendant (Guano, 2003, p. 148;
Sutton, 2010; Lewis D. K., 2015).
Since the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, Argentina’s elections have been competitive.
The Perónist Party, founded by Juan Perón in 1946, dominated the political system from 1989 through 2015, which saw Mauricio Macri from the right-leaning Republican Proposal (PRO) enter office (de los Reyes, 2015; Lewis D. K., 2015). In 2019, Peronists returned to power in a government led by Alberto Fernández of the Peronist party Partido Justicialista (Justice Party)
(PJ), with previous president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) serving as vice president, the latter a figure closely connected with one branch of the Madres (Londoño &
Politi, 2019).
30 For example, popular discourses linking Europe, civilization and modernity construct Argentina as existing in contrast to the rest of Latin America, which is rendered as linked with indigenous communities, black and brown bodies, rural lifestyles and general “backwardness” (Guano, 2003).
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Figure 3: Map of Argentina
Argentina (Small Map) 2016 (39.4) by “U.S. Central Intelligence Agency” found in the
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (Library, Argentina (Small Map) 2016 (39.4K), 2016).
Perón’s tenure as president from 1946-1955 set the stage for the period of state terrorism through his use of repression and media censorship (Feitlowitz, 1998, p. 4). In 1946,
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Perón won the presidency and centralized power within the Perónist Party and the state based on a loose corporatist system that linked different sectors of society to the government through state benefits to the military, labor unions and the business community, each of which had differing political preferences (Bouvard, 1994; Lewis D. K., 2015; Alvarez, Baiocchi, Lao-Montes,
Rubin, & Thayer, 2017). It was a strategy of populism, meaning that it was rooted in personalistic leadership and mass support from the population (Weyland, 2001, p. 18).
Before the 1950s, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America due to its agricultural and beef exports (Fisher, 1989). However, after World War II, demand for
Argentinian products abroad slowed, which threatened Perón’s hold on power as the national economy floundered. Through repressive measures that relied on the police and security forces to root out “internal enemies,” or rather Perón’s political rivals, as well as media censorship,
Perón won reelection in 1952. Angered with Perón’s support for the working class, the military overthrew Perón in 1955, placing themselves in power, then banning the Perónist Party and exiling Perón (Lewis D. K., 2015).
In 1966, the military dictatorship outlawed all political parties. With no legitimate outlet to express their grievances, many joined militarized groups such as leftist militant organizations and parties and armed neo-fascist groups, leading to regular outbreaks of violence. To counter this growing violence, the military government called for elections in 1973 where Perón was eventually permitted to run on a ticket with his third wife Isabel Perón and became Argentina’s president once again (Fisher, 1989; Taylor, 1997). A year later in 1974, Perón died, leading to
105 widespread uncertainty as Isabel Perón took over an increasingly unstable Argentina.31 In a time ripe with fear, the media portrayed the military as the only means of implementing stability (Taylor, 1997).
Argentina’s period of state terrorism (1976-1983)
The broader context for Argentina’s period of state terrorism was the growing popularity of Marxism across Latin America and the ongoing Cold War (c. 1947-1990) between the Soviet Union and the US, particularly the US’s geopolitical concerns over Soviet influence in the region. The US promoted tactics of torture and murder among military and police in Latin
America through its School of the Americas to deal with the threat of “subversives” or
“terrorists,” defined as any leftist or social justice advocates. These individuals were constructed as national security threats, to be dealt with through counterterrorism (McSherry,
2005; Sutton, 2010). Today, many refer to this period as Latin America’s Holocaust or a genocide due to the thousands of lives lost (Sutton, 2010; Wilson K. M., 2016).
Argentina’s period of state terrorism was initially labeled a dirty war, which refers to a state that “engages in warfare against some of its own citizens for economic, social, ethnic, or ideological reasons” as part of “an illegal militarization of state repression” involving no combatants, only victims and perpetrators, in which state forces are the perpetrators of human
31 During Perón’s exile, the Perónist Party had become bitterly divided between the ultra-right-wing Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA) and the leftist Montoneros and Peronist Youth. The factions had nothing in common but their support for Perón, a result of his populist strategy. Upon his return in 1973, Perón sided with the right- leaning faction, shocking the left due to his long-time support for labor unions and the socio-economically disadvantaged (Taylor, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
106 rights crimes (Woronoff, 2003, p. vii; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Finchelstein, 2014, p. 3).32
Human rights activists and scholars today tend to prefer the term state terrorism over dirty war, arguing that a war suggests the legitimacy of the state’s violence, whereas terrorism implies the human rights violations.33
On 24 March 1976, Isabel Perón was ousted by a junta of three officers in the Argentine military who immediately outlawed protests, rallies and public assemblies (Taylor, 1997).34 The regime dissolved the country’s governmental branches, from the national and provisional legislatures to municipal councils, and replaced both the national cabinet with all military advisors and the Supreme Court and all other courts with judges loyal to the military regime.
Political parties and all political activities were banned. Universities and labor unions were taken over and the media censored, and freedom of assembly and freedom of expression curtailed. The military dictatorship claimed that leftist guerrilla movements were a threat to
Argentina’s national security and a “holy war” was needed against the threat presented by not just guerrilla groups but anyone promoting ideas and values outside the military regime’s understanding of so-called Western, Christian civilization (Navarro, 2001; Kohut, Vilella, &
Julian, 2003).35 The new regime used violence against its perceived enemies, engaging in
32 There is a debate over what allowed Latin America, and its Southern Cone in particular, to become an environment ripe for state terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. Some argue that it was the result of the US’s National Security Doctrine, which encouraged Latin American military leaders to view social justice movements as part of Soviet-influenced communism, while others have maintained that Latin American militaries were responding to the political and social dynamics of their own countries, including locally-rooted strains of fascism of the region’s elites, which has been well-documented in Argentina (Perelli, 1993; Feitlowitz, 1998; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Finchelstein, 2014). 33 I thank Dr. Julie Shayne for pointing this out to me. 34 During my fieldwork, I learned that many Argentines believe that Isabel Perón had tried to step down, but the military kept her in place because she was politically inexperienced and made overthrowing her easy. 35 Small in number, even at their peak over 1974 to 1975, armed leftist groups included fewer than 2,000 individuals, only about 400 of whom were armed (Feitlowitz, 1998, p. 6). This included the Perónist left-wing
107 widespread enforced disappearances and murder. By fall 1976, at least 1,000 prisoners had been killed in Argentina’s prisons while 20,000 individuals were officially reported as missing and 300,000 had been exiled (Feitlowitz, 1998, pp. 158-159).
This repression continued until March 1981 when a second junta replaced the first regime. The second regime’s control waned due to the deterioration of the economy. In
December 1981, a third junta took control with General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri tasked with turning around the regime’s momentum, which was faltering due to the economy (Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003). Galtieri sought to distract the public from the worsening economy. On 2
April 1982, the military invaded the Islas Malvinas, or the Falkland Islands, ruled by the British
(see Figure 3). Argentina maintained that the land was theirs since it lay off the country’s coast.
Hoping that the war would create a nationalistic fervor to solidify the regime’s control, the junta was instead forced to surrender to the British on 18 June 1982. Disgraced, Galtieri resigned. A new military figure, General Reynaldo Benito Bignone, became president on 1 July
1982 and began transitioning Argentina to civilian rule. Elections were held on 30 October
1983, and Raúl Alfonsín of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR, Radical Civic Union) became the first post-transition president since the 1976 coup (Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
The crimes against humanity by the military dictatorship
The start of the period of state terrorism came with the Proceso de Reorganización
Nacional (National Reorganization Process), or simply the “Proceso,” a policy used by the
Montoneros, the Perónist Armed Forces (FAP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), and armed leftist parties including the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) and the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) (Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997).
108 military to target so-called leftist subversion and “restore Western Civilization” and order in
Argentina. It was rooted in vehement anti-communism that linked capitalism, conservative
Christianity and nationalism under the umbrella of Western Civilization (Taylor, 1997; Navarro,
2001; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Sutton, 2010). The Proceso entailed members of military and police forces “disappearing” suspected leftists to any of the approximately 340 secret detention centers that existed at one point in the country, where the disappeared were kept in degrading conditions and subjected to torture and often murder.36 If children were born to detainees, they were taken from their mothers and given to those the regime deemed
“respectable” families, often military families, to be raised as their own children, with no knowledge that they were adopted. Other victims of the regime were manipulated by security forces to appear as guerrillas executed in staged shoot-outs or had weights placed on them and then thrown, still alive, into the ocean. Nearly everyone disappeared was eventually murdered, a disproportionate number of whom were young people between the ages of 18 and 30 (Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003). An estimated 30,000 were disappeared during the period of state terrorism and a new word, desaparecidos, or “disappeareds,” was introduced to describe those who vanished without a trace, “as if by a diabolical magic act” (Agosín, 1990, p. 13; Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
In pursuing so-called subversives to “cleanse” Argentina, three social groups were targeted: women, Jews and the socioeconomically disadvantaged (Agosín, 1990; Feitlowitz,
36 After witnessing the backlash from the international community against the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet’s open violence against Chileans, the Argentine military dictatorship relied on enforced disappearances to deny their crimes since a disappeared person could neither be proven dead nor alive without a body to bear witness to the crime (Feitlowitz, 1998; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
109
1998). Women were targeted for their gender, as the entirety of the military regime’s rule was gendered, including state torture (Bunster-Burotto, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Sutton, 2010; 2018).
There was a gendering of all victims whether men or women, through a feminization and eroticization of violence that construed incidents of torture as “sexual encounters” via acts of rape, sexual assault and the targeting of individuals’ sexual organs (Taylor, 1997). While men were vulnerable to torture based on gendered ideals that men were virile, women were tortured in gender-specific ways that sexualized them, such as through sexual slavery, forced romantic dates with their torturers and the manipulation of their maternal identities that denied them visiting time with their children, something men were permitted (Bunster-Burotto,
1994; Taylor, 1997; Rosenberg, 2006; Actis, Aldini, Gardella, Lewin, & Tokar, 2006; Sutton,
2010; 2018; Montañez, Waisman, & Yoshida, 2017). Unsurprisingly, the Madres responded to the regime through gendered, or maternal, discourses when the regime itself gendered torture and political repression.
The second social group targeted by the regime were Jews. Anti-Semitism was a central feature of Argentine fascism, although the military dictatorship had no official anti-Jewish policy. Even though Jews composed less than one percent of the population, they were 10 to 15 percent of those murdered by the regime (Finchelstein, 2014). Many torture techniques in the prisons and detention camps included verbal abuse and degradation that imitated Nazi methods of torture, and images of Hitler were often hung in prison cells. Finally, the socio- economically disadvantaged were targeted by the regime due to the military’s preoccupation with the image of cleanliness and order, part of its effort to cement Argentina’s place in the so-
110 called First World, which led the military regime to destroy shantytowns and drive out inhabitants (Feitlowitz, 1998).
Most enforced disappearances took place early in the military regime’s rule (Taylor,
1997; Navarro, 2001). By 1979, disappearances had largely stopped, mainly the result of international attention due to interventions by human rights activists in Argentina, including the Madres, and international organizations such as the UN, Amnesty International and
America Watch (Bouvard, 1994). While the work of the human rights community influenced the regime’s demise, scholars overwhelmingly agree that the dictatorship was brought down by its military loss to the British over the Islas Malvinas in 1982, which was compounded by ongoing economic problems (Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
Transitional justice
In the early 1980s, there was a partial return of political party activity through the
Multipartida (Bouvard, 1994). A coalition of parties, Multipartida, the “all-party coalition,” formed in July 1981 despite the ban against party activity, and included major political parties, such as the Perónist party, the Radical Civic Union (URC) and the Christian Democrat party
(Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994, p. 118). After the military loss to Britain, the military’s hold on power loosened, which was exacerbated as Multipartida and civil society pushed for change
(Rock, 1987; Bouvard, 1994). Raúl Alfonsín of the URC became Argentina’s first post-transition president in December 1983 (Calvert & Calvert, 1989; Bouvard, 1994). As Argentina transitioned, society faced the choice of how to understand the period of state terrorism.
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Broadly, two main approaches to transitional justice follow a societal trauma such as an armed conflict. Part of the politics of memory, this is an ongoing debate on healing societies following atrocities, which much decide whether to give amnesty for crimes or prosecute crimes (Barahona de Brito, González‐Enríquez, & Aguilar, 2001; Hamber & Wilson, 2002; Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Teitel, 2003; Mendeloff, 2004; Leebaw, 2008; Hirsch, 2013;
Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, & Miall, 2016). The collective amnesia approach, or forgetting, involves amnesty for most crimes committed (Malamud-Goti, 1996; Dyzenhaus, 1998; Douglass
& Vogler, 2003; Mendeloff, 2004; Gates-Madsen, 2016). It stands in contrast to the transitional justice approach, which seeks accountability for those involved in human rights abuses, and typically emphasizes remembering to ensure nunca más (never again) (Barahona de Brito,
González‐Enríquez, & Aguilar, 2001; Teitel, 2003; Barahona de Brito, 2010; Ramsbotham,
Woodhouse, & Miall, 2016). The Madres have always sided with accountability and remembering, although the two branches have differed over how to remember (discussed in
Chapter 4) (Bouvard, 1994; Agosín, 1990).
The state initially took an overall approach of forgetting the period of state terrorism, which gave amnesty to most perpetrators and sought to forget the period of state terrorism
(Bouvard, 1994). This began to shift in 1995 when a younger generation of Argentines sought answers about this era. The country moved even further toward remembering with the entrance of Néstor Kirchner into office in 2003, who embraced remembering as part of his platform (Werth, 2010; Gates-Madsen, 2016; Vaisman, 2014; Sheinin, 2012).37 However, in the
37 Laws granting impunity to those who had committed human rights violations during the period of state terrorism only began to be reversed under Nestor Kirchner in 2003. Since 2006, there have been ongoing
112
1980s, wary of upsetting the military, which could threaten the government’s control of the state, the first transition government of Alfonsín took the official position that both the military and leftist guerrillas were equally guilty for the violence of the period 1976 to 1983, part of a process of forgetting. This was the “two devils theory,” which the Madres and other human rights activists criticized (Bouvard, 1994, p. 133; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
Alfonsín’s government did institute a truth commission, the Comisión Nacional sobre la
Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP), or the National Commission on the Disappearance of
Persons, to record the atrocities of the period of state terrorism. This was the first of its kind, and set a precedent for transitional justice to include truth commissions (Werth, 2010, p. 27;
Hayner, 2011, p. 10).38 Although CONADEP sought to remember the crimes of the period of state terrorism, it could not enforce accountability for crimes against humanity (Bouvard,
1994). Alfonsín elected to make only those “most responsible” for the horrors of the period of state terrorism accountable, with all charges of torture and execution against lower-level military and police forces dropped. Trials against the top echelon of the military leaders began in 1985 (Taylor, 1997; Bouvard, 1994; Feitlowitz, 1998; Montañez, Waisman, & Yoshida, 2017).
Later convicted leaders were pardoned by the next government of Carlos Saúl Menem, of the
investigations and criminal trials through Argentina’s national judiciary system into human rights abuses from the period of state terrorism (Sutton, 2010; Montañez, Waisman, & Yoshida, 2017). 38 The commission’s report Nunca Más (Never Again) detailed their findings, which included evidence of 8,960 people disappeared during the years 1976 to 1983 and made it clear that most of these individuals were neither participants in guerrilla movements, nor supporters of guerrilla organizations. In contrast to CONADEP, human rights groups believe that a more accurate number of those killed by the regime stands between 20,000 and 30,000. Most of the victims identified by CONADEP were leftists, largely intellectuals, labor activists, student activists, teachers, performers and artists, along with the priests, nuns, lawyers and journalists working to help make the lives of those targeted by the regime better. Additionally, relatives, friends and even casual acquaintances of suspected leftists had been targets of the military regime (Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
113
Perónist Party, in the early 1990s during “the Age of Impunity” (Feitlowitz, 1998, p. 3; Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
In 1995, Argentina saw a reversal in the politics of memory when a former officer in the navy, Adolfo Scilingo, confessed on public television that he had carried out “death flights” for the military dictatorship. This entailed throwing drugged but alive people out of planes into the
Atlantic Ocean where they drowned (Werth, 2010; BBC, 2005). This confession launched a
“memory boom,” which included a renewed interest in both testimonies about the period of state terrorism as well as prosecutions for perpetrators of human rights violations (Gates-
Madsen, 2016, p. 5; Vaisman, 2014, p. 130). The governments of both Nestor (2003-2007) and
Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015) carried out this memory work in government through a series of official memory projects, including the transformation of the Higher School of Mechanics of the
Navy (ESMA), a notorious detention center during the period of armed conflict, into Memory
Museum and the creation of Memory Park, both of which involved the participation of some members of the Madres (the Línea Fundadora branch) (Bosco, 2004; Levey & Lessa, 2014).
There was a general move in the opposite direction with the 2015 election of the conservative Mauricio Macri. Since the mid-1990s, Argentina’s debate around forgetting or remembering has centered along the ideological divide, with those on the right seeking to forget the period of state terrorism and more on the left seeking to remember this history.
Macri led a backlash against remembering the dictatorship’s crimes with a renewed emphasis on the two devils theory, which postulates both the military and guerrillas are equally responsible for the violence of the period of state terrorism and justifies the military’s action as
114 necessary to “save” the country from guerrillas (Politi, 2017).39 With the return of left-leaning
Peronists in 2019 in Alberto Fernández of the Peronist party Partido Justicialista (Justice Party) and former president Cristina Kirchner returning as vice president, the government is once again remembering the period of state terrorism.
To sum up the period of state terrorism, the military government relied on techniques that terrorized the Argentine population, making them either fearfully compliant or accepting of the repression to “improve” society. The military dictatorship readily manipulated the population with nationalism and populism, using rhetoric that appealed to people’s identities as focused on their families, as Catholics or patriots and simply the hope for a growing economy and a stable society (Taylor, 1997; Brailovsky, 1997; Sheinin, 2012). The Madres were the first to collectively and openly protest the regime (Bouvard, 1994). While they initially protested for the return of their disappeared children, over time, they demanded peace in Argentina, an end to the dictatorship. Since the end of the conflict, they have called for “Memory, Truth and
Justice,” a rallying cry of many of Argentina’s human rights groups (Bouvard, 1994; Vaisman,
2014, p. 125).
39 Additionally, there is a newer movement to acknowledge the political work of the disappeared. During the early transition period, many assumed it expedient that holding the military accountable entailed a narrative that painted the regime’s victims as “innocent” to ensure the military was seen as “guilty.” Innocence was thought to require a silencing of the disappeareds’ political work. Since 1995, there has been a commitment to acknowledging the social justice politics of those disappeared by the regime, some of whom had indeed taken up arms against the state (Sutton, 2018).
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Sri Lanka
While both Argentina’s period of state terrorism and the Sri Lankan Civil War were internal conflicts that relied upon enforced disappearance, the striking homogeneity of
Argentina stands in contrast to the deeply embedded ethnic differences that underlay Sri
Lanka’s civil war, revealing differences between these two conflicts, even beyond their geographic location and histories. Yet just as the mothers of disappeared arose in Argentina to protest enforced disappearances through political motherhood, so too arose the mothers of the disappeared in Sri Lanka, challenging the state’s brutality through a politicized maternal sorrow and rage.
Sri Lanka is a small island country in South Asia. Approximately 21,128,772 people live in
Sri Lanka, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Most Sri Lankans trace their heritage over 2,000 years to one of two cultural-linguistic groups originating in India, the Sinhalese and Tamil, labels derived from the languages spoken by each population. Both the
Sinhalese and Tamil communities are believed to have begun settling in Sri Lanka around 500
BCE. Evidence suggests both populations are Dravidian, a cultural-linguistic group with roots in southern India (Gombrich & Obeyesekere, 1988; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).40 In the third century BCE, Buddhism and Hinduism were introduced to Sri Lanka, both of which are still widely practiced. These compose the two major religions, along with a small minority of
Muslims (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).
40 Before the arrival of the Tamil and Sinhala, the island was inhabited by people indigenous to Sri Lanka known as the Veddahs, a term which means “people of the forest.” Over time, most Veddahs intermarried with the Sinhalese and Tamil communities and were absorbed as a cultural group, although a minority exist today as a distinct group (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014; Vedda Village Tours to Dambana in Sri Lanka, n.d.).
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Figure 4: Map of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (Small Map) 2016 (16.1K) by “U.S. Central Intelligence Agency” found in the
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (Library, Sri Lanka (Small Map) 2016 (16.1K), 2016).
Sri Lankan society is divided mainly by language, social practices, religion and caste.
Language and religion reinforce one another since most members of each linguistic group share a religious identity. The largest Sri Lankan ethnic group is the Sinhalese community. The Sinhala language is Indo-European in origin and related to Hindi, a language widely spoken in northern
India. Most Sinhalese are Theravada Buddhists, the more doctrinal and conservative school of
Buddhism (Gombrich & Obeyesekere, 1988; Gombrich, 2006; Skidmore & Lawrence, 2007;
Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). The largest minority community is the Sri Lankan Tamil community who traces its origins to southern India where it shares similarities with India’s
Tamil community. The majority of Sri Lankan Tamils are Hindu (Skidmore & Lawrence, 2007;
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Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). Neither the Sinhalese nor Tamil communities are homogenous, each with distinctive subcultures (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).41
The second-largest minority community is the Muslim community, who are mainly descendants of early Arab traders and speak Tamil (McGilvray, 2008; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, &
Kapur, 2014). Muslims were targeted for their identity during the civil war by the Tamil militant group the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) (Thiranagama, 2011). Since the end of the civil war in 2009, there has been intensifying ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and Muslims, which appears poised to continue worsening (Bastians & Harris, 2014; Fernandez, 2017; Mashal
& Bastians, 2018; Taub & Fisher, 2018). Another minority group is the Indian Tamil community, also known as Estate Tamils, who identify separately from the Sri Lankan Tamil community
(Shastri, 1999; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).42 For full details of the ethnic communities, see Table 1.
41 The Sinhalese are divided between low-country and Kandyan Sinhalese, although these differences are less distinct today than in the past. Sri Lankan Tamils are mainly divided by those living on the northern Jaffna peninsula and those living on the east coast, although there is a strong Tamil presence in Colombo. Most eastern Tamils are less financially well-off and tend to have lower levels of education compared to those living in the north (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). 42 Other minority groups include the Burghers, those of mixed European and Sri Lankan ancestry, and Malays, descendants of Malay traders, each of whom makeup 0.3% of the population. The Burgher community makes up much of Sri Lanka’s economic elite and speak English and practice Christianity (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). The Malay population typically practices Islam and is concentrated in Colombo, with many speaking Sri Lankan Creole Malay, which incorporates Sinhala, Tamil and Malay. However, Malay youth tend to speak English, Sinhala or Tamil rather than Creole (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014; Ethnologue, n.d.).
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Table 1: Ethnic, linguistic and religious breakdowns by community
Ethnicity Language Religion Percentage of
population
Sinhala Sinhala Majority Buddhist 74%
Tamil Tamil Majority Hindu 12.7%
Muslim Tamil Muslim 7.1%
Indian Tamils Tamil Hindu 5.5%
Burghers English Christian 0.3%
Malay Creole Majority Muslim 0.3%
Source: Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur 2014.
Three colonial powers previously dominated Sri Lanka but the last, the British, had the most impact beginning in 1802 when the island became a British crown colony. Quickly adapting to the British system of administration and education, Sri Lankansentered the civil service in 1833 through an executive and legislative council called the Colebrooke Commission, which sought to increase local representation in the colonial government. In 1931, much of the government's power was transferred to a state council elected by the people. While a British governor headed the colony, Ceylon (Sri Lanka’s previous name) was essentially self-governing
17 years before independence, which came on 4 February 1948 (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, &
Kapur, 2014).
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Sri Lanka’s Civil War (1983-2009)
Sri Lanka’s twenty-six-year civil war has been understood as both an example of counterterrorism by the state against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, and an ethnic conflict between the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities (Lawrence, 2007; de Silva, 2007; Lewis D. ,
2010; Thiranagama, 2011; Hashim, 2013; Guneratne, 2013; Newman, 2014). The civil war altered family dynamics, living patterns and relations between ethnic communities, devastated the country’s infrastructure and resulted in malnourishment, illness, mass displacement in terms of both refugees abroad and internally displaced persons (IDPs), domestic violence, poverty and trauma (Lawrence, 2007; Bandarage, 2010; Thiranagama, 2011). In total, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 lives were lost due to the armed conflict (HRW, 2009; Newman,
2014, p. 136).
Most scholars have recognized a recent origin to the ethnic conflict, arguing that it is a result of British colonial policies that favored the Tamils over the Sinhalese, and Victorian British notions of race that connected differences in language and religion to fixed racial categories.
Over time, such ideas about race have been favored by many Sri Lankans (Gunawardena, 1990;
Nissan & Stirrat, 1990; Rogers, 1990; Skidmore & Lawrence, 2007; ICG, 2007; Thiranagama,
2011; Newman, 2014).43 During colonization, the British emphasized their own social practices, such as the use of English in government and commerce and marking Sundays and other
43 The anthropologist Stanley J. Tambiah (1986) observed that historically the terms Sinhalese and Tamil encompassed broad categories of both Indian and non-Indian peoples, showing how the Tamil and Sinhalese labels were fluid categories prior to colonization and became rigid through British influence that sought to create “scientific” or fixed notions of race (Spencer, 1990; Thiranagama, 2011).
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Christian holidays as official religious days (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014, p. 335). In the aftermath of independence, there was a movement to reassert Sri Lankan social practices, but such local practices differed along ethnic lines. With Sinhalese Buddhists the majority, they used their electoral advantage to replace British Christian practices with their own and launched a process of centralization of the government (Morrison, 2001; Hashim, 2013; Oberst,
Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).
Many Sinhalese believed that they were justified in making changes that gave greater power to the Sinhalese community and official recognition for the Sinhala language and
Buddhism. This was because, during colonization, the British had favored Tamils over Sinhalese, mainly by allowing greater numbers of Tamils into the colonial government (ICG, 2007). Two pivotal incidents after independence came in the 1950s and 1970s that led to the outbreak of war in 1983. The Official Language Act of 1956 made only Sinhala an official language, which was shortly followed (in 1972) with official status given only to the Buddhist religion (Tambiah,
1986; Morrison, 2001; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). A second pivotal moment came in 1979 with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which subjected Tamils to warrantless searches and detentions, in addition to torture. This led to enforced disappearances and executions of Tamils by state forces (Tambiah, 1986; Morrison, 2001; Samuel, 2006; McGilvray,
2008; Guneratne, 2013). The PTA defined any language that might cause societal “disharmony” among communal groups as unlawful, and it legally permitted confessions obtained under duress (Tambiah, 1986, p. 42).
Some Tamils began joining militant groups to fight for better treatment of the Tamil community. Given the growing discrimination against Tamils, the LTTE soon became the
121 overriding political force in Tamil-majority areas, including over political parties, after using violence to dismantle other guerrilla groups, a shift that began in 1986 and was fully in place by
1987 (Malik, et al., 2009; Thiranagama, 2011; Newman, 2014).44 Once in control of the north, the Tamil Tigers used fear and intimidation along with ethno/nationalistic propaganda to control the Tamil population, trapping the Tamil community between the state and the LTTE
(Thiranagama, 2011).45
The LTTE funded itself through the Tamil diaspora, which grew steadily due to the violence faced by the community, covering public relations and propaganda expenses.46 Arms were amassed through the LTTE’s Office of Overseas Purchases, which coordinated a global network that shipped weapons from Eastern Europe, Africa and South and Southeast Asia to
LTTE forces (Chalk, 2008, p. supra note 6). The LTTE intelligence network surveilled both ordinary Tamils and Tiger cadres, which resulted in incarceration and/or murder for perceived treason (Thiranagama, 2011). LTTE fighters were recruited through both voluntary and forcible measures, with force increasingly used after the 1990s, notably via child soldiers, the “baby brigade” (Thiranagama, 2011, p. 26). The Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF), formed by Tamil mothers of the disappeared and their allies in 1984, sought to bypass the LTTE’s populist and nationalist rhetoric through political motherhood. Ultimately, the LTTE would force the NMF to
44 Armed Tamil groups jockeyed for position in the north until about 1986 when the Tamil Tigers predominated, declaring themselves the only true representative of the Tamil people, labeling those Tamils who belonged to other groups as “traitors to the Tamil nation” (Thiranagama, 2011, p. 24). See Rohan Gunaratna (1987, p. 27) for an entire list of Tamil militant groups active during the 1980s, which at one point included thirty-six guerrilla groups. 45 Even before the rise of the LTTE’s control of the north, many Tamil leaders had used violence against those who sought peaceful approaches and compromise to resolve the ethnic conflict (Newman, 2014). 46 Over a million Tamils left Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s, settling in North America, the Asia-Pacific and Western Europe, especially Canada, the United Kingdom, India, France, Germany, Australia and Switzerland (Newman, 2014, p. 145; Chalk, 2008, p. 98).
122 submit to its control in 1987, claiming the women were traitors to the Tamil cause for criticizing the LTTE’s sexism and violent tactics against Tamils (Kailasapathy, 2012).
The Sri Lankan government viewed the LTTE as a terrorist organization, as did both the
US and the European Union (EU), beginning in 1997 and 2006 respectively (EC, 2006; Ratner,
2012; State, n.d.). After 2006 and 2007, many countries backed the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to end the civil war, including India and the US, which each offered financial support, as did Great Britain, Germany, and Japan. The most sympathetic governments were those of
China, Pakistan and Iran, which gave financial, political and military backing to Rajapaksa’s SLFP- led government to defeat the LTTE (Uyangoda, 2010).
Summary of the civil war
From 1983 onward, there was periodic fighting between armed Tamils and the government until 2009, with most fighting concentrated in the north. However, in 1987, there was violence in the south, instigated by a small Sinhalese nationalist party, the Janatha
Vimukthi Perumuna (People’s Liberation Front) (JVP), whose members attacked state institutions. The state counter-attacked the JVP uprising by targeting almost all young men in the south, leading to widespread disappearances of Sinhalese men. This gave rise to the
Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF) in 1990 (de Mel, 2001).
Fighting occurred regularly throughout the 1980s, including during the 1987 Indian intervention of Indian Peacekeeping Forces, until 1989 when President Rajasinghe Premadasa,
123 of the United National Party (UNP),47 began peace negotiations with the LTTE. The LTTE pledged to disarm and renounce separatism in return for discussions for Tamil regional autonomy
(Malik, et al., 2009; Peiris, 2009; Guneratne, 2013). However, fighting broke out again in 1990, a year that also marked the entrance of Muslims into the conflict (Malik, et al., 2009). In October
1990, between 70,000 and 80,000 Muslims, the entirety of the Muslim population in the five districts of the north of Sri Lanka was ethnically cleansed from the region by the LTTE. Using this as an excuse to retaliate against the LTTE, the government dropped air bombs in Tamil-majority areas, and by August 1994, the government gained control of the cities in the east and some of the countryside but were unable to subdue the northern peninsula, the LTTE’s base (Malik, et al., 2009). This stalemate was followed by the 1994 presidential election in which the Sri Lankan
Freedom Party’s (SLFP)48 Chandrika Kumaratunga, the country’s first woman president, who won on a platform to negotiate an end to the fighting and offer Tamil regional autonomy through devolution of power (Malik, et al., 2009; Guneratne, 2013).49
In January 1995, negotiations between the government and LTTE stalled over perceived insincerity on both sides (Samuel, 2006; Malik, et al., 2009). In April 1995, the LTTE re-launched the war. By December 1995, the Sri Lankan army was in control of the Jaffna peninsula, forcing the LTTE to retreat to the Vanni region, an area south of Jaffna, where they regrouped and set
47 The UNP, along with the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), historically dominated elections. The UNP is a right- leaning Sinhalese majority party while the SLFP has historically been a left-leaning Sinhalese majority party (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). 48 The SLFP has been one of the main parties in Sri Lanka. It is left-leaning and rooted in Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). Members of the SLFP founded the SMF in 1990 and the SMF remained under the influence of SLFP organizers (de Alwis, 2004). 49 It was a significant election due to the high number of votes Kumaratunga received from Muslims and Tamils considering she ran under the SLFP, a Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist party. However, her platform rejected Sinhala- Buddhist chauvinism (Guneratne, 2013).
124 up a new capital in the city of Killinochchi (See Figure 5). Fighting continued throughout the
2000s (Malik, et al., 2009).
Figure 5: Map Showing the Vanni region
Map from Current Concerns (2009)
After a series of military victories in 2006 and 2007, the LTTE was pushed out of the east, cornered in the north (Malik, et al., 2009). From January to May 2009, the government used heavy weaponry against both the LTTE and over 330,000 civilians along the coast of the
Vanni region, which was occupied by the LTTE (Thiranagama, 2011). For their part, the LTTE ramped up forced recruitment of soldiers, including children, and used the local Tamil population as human shields (Thiranagama, 2011; Ratner, 2012). An estimated 280,000 to
125
330,000 civilians were trapped with LTTE fighters, unable to seek safety in the final stages of the war (UTHR, A Marred Victory and a Defeat Pregnant with Foreboding. Special Report 32,
June 10, 2009; UTHR, Let Them Speak: Truth About Sri Lanka’s Victims of War. Special Report
34, December 13, 2009). In May 2009, the armed conflict came to end with the military defeat of the LTTE by the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE had attempted a surrender to the government on 18 May 2009, but government forces ignored the surrender, leading to the unnecessary killing of thousands of LTTE fighters and approximately 40,000 civilians (Ratner,
2012; Harrison, 2013). For a full summary of the conflict, see Table 2.
Table 2: Summary of the Sri Lankan Civil War Table
Period Actors Major Events
1980s • Multiple armed Tamil • Armed guerrilla groups form in the
groups including LTTE, 1970s and 1980s
Peoples Liberation • 1983: pogroms against Tamils and ban
Organization of Tamil against Tamil politicians from
Eelam, Tamil Eelam Parliament
Liberation • 1986/1987: LTTE gains control of Tamil
Organization, among dominated regions over other armed
others Tamil groups
• Government of Sri • 1987: Indian Peace Keeping Forces
Lanka and its military enter Sri Lanka; JVP launches violent
forces insurrection in the south
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• Indian Peace Keeping • 1989: Peace talks between LTTE and
Forces Government of Sri Lanka
1990s • LTTE • 1990: Indian Peace Keeping Forces
• Government of Sri leave Sri Lanka; LTTE expulsion/ethnic
Lanka and its military cleansing of Muslims from the Tamil-
forces majority region effectively end peace
talks and reignites fighting with
government forces
• 1995: Peace talks begin between LTTE
and Government of Sri Lanka but
quickly break down
• 1996: LTTE uses violence against
Sinhalese civilians
• 1997: Government of Sri Lanka tries to
pursue LTTE but fails; stalemate
Early • LTTE • 2002: Peace talks between LTTE and
2000s • Government of Sri Government of Sri Lanka brokered by
Lanka and its military the Government of Norway begin
forces • 2005: With support from Colonel
• Government of Norway Karuna’s breakaway LTTE faction and
EPDP, the Government of Sri Lanka
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• Colonel Karuna’s essentially relaunches the war, but
breakaway LTTE faction does not pull out officially from peace
• Eelam People’s talks until 2008
Democratic Party
(EPDP)
Post 2005 • LTTE • 2006 and 2007: Sri Lankan military
• Government of Sri forces, Colonel Karuna’s breakaway
Lanka and its military LTTE faction and EPDP military
forces successes over the LTTE
• Colonel Karuna’s • 2009: final stages of the war in which
breakaway LTTE faction LTTE and Government of Sri Lanka fail
to protect civilian life; the Sri Lankan
military defeats the LTTE
1325 in Sri Lanka’s civil war
An important shared characteristic of Argentina’s Madres and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front organizing, besides political motherhood, is that both arose before the transnational regime on
Women, Peace and Security (WPS) based on the UN Security Council Resolution on Women,
Peace and Security (UNSCR 1325) had developed. This meant that the international environments for women’s peace organizing were similar, despite the earlier organizing of the
Madres compared to the Mothers’ Front. But unlike the period of state terrorism in Argentina,
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Sri Lanka’s civil war took place during the formation of the WPS agenda. In October of 2000, the
UN adopted Security Council Resolution 1325, which advocates for the inclusion of women in peace negotiations and postwar reconstruction efforts as both equal participants of men and fully recognized members of their communities (S/RES/1325, 2000; Kuehnast, Oudraat, &
Hernes, 2011; 2016). Part of gender mainstreaming, an approach that works gender perspectives into policymaking with the intent of ensuring equal policy outcomes, UNSCR 1325 brings gendered perspectives to security efforts, with an emphasis on protecting women from rape and other forms of violence in conflict and postwar environments and promotes women’s participation in peace talks, peacekeeping and disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation
(DDR) (S/RES/1325, 2000; Mazurana, Raven-Robets, Parpart, & Lautze, 2005; Kirby & Shepherd,
Reintroducing Women, Peace and Security, 2016).50 Practitioners and scholars working in gender, peace and security use 1325 to promote women’s involvement in political decision- making and other acts of political participation.51
As a result of UNSCR 1325, during the 2002 peace talks between the government and
LTTE, the Subcommittee on Gender Issues (SGI), one of the first of its kind, was launched to ensure Sri Lankan women’s participation in all aspects of the process. However, this body was only given the authority to make recommendations, having no enforcement mechanism (Harris,
2004). While the SGI was praised by much of the international NGO community, Sri Lankan feminists including Malathi de Alwis (2004) and Asoka Bandarage (2010), were critical of the
50 Judith Squires (2005) defines gender mainstreaming as working to integrate “equal opportunities, equal treatment, women’s perspectives, gender, gendered perspectives or, more recently, diversity” into the policymaking process to ensure equal outcomes (p. 368). 51 Visaka Dharmadasa, interview with the author, 27 October 2017. By Skype.
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SGI, asserting that even if the SGI had been given the authority to enforce their recommendations, the very concept of a committee on gender compartmentalized gender issues, rendering them side issues. Bandarage (2010) also blamed the SGI for drowning out local ordinary women’s voices, noting that while some Sri Lankan feminists participated in Track II negotiations during the peace talks, these were entirely elite women.52 Despite these criticisms, the SGI was an improvement to previous peace talks in terms of women’s descriptive representation. Previously, only one woman was present, Adele Ann Balasingham, not even Sri
Lankan, who attended because she was married to an LTTE leader (de Alwis, Mertus, Sajjad, &
Tazreena, 2012).
Transitional justice
In May 2010, a year after the defeat of the LTTE, President Rajapaksa of the SLFP, and a co-founder of the SMF, launched an investigation, known as the Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), into the final stages of the war (Ratner, 2012). The LLRC was meant to give the appearance of transitional justice but sought to exonerate the government of wrongdoing (Herath, 2012; Höglund, 2019). In anticipation of this, in June 2010, UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-Moon convened a UN panel to advise him on Rajapaksa’s government’s commitment to accountability.53 The UN report concluded that the Sri Lankan government had
52 Peace talks are divided into two phases called Track I and Track II, which usually take place at the same time. Track I involves the warring factions and any third-party negotiators while Track II is more informal and includes “secondary” stakeholders, such as civil society actors who hope to influence Track I decision-making through lobbying and advocacy. Those in Track II talks sometimes observe and monitor Track I and offer recommendations for what they believe ought to happen. Track II has often been depicted as a feminized space since the focus is on social issues, while Track I is seen as masculine as this is where the issues are “really” being worked out (de Alwis, Mertus, Sajjad, & Tazreena, 2012). 53 This was not a UN inquiry or fact-finding mission, which had been opposed by the governments of Russia and China, meaning that the panel “lacked authority to engage in formal fact-finding” (Ratner, 2012, p. 798). This is
130 a duty to investigate the allegations collected by the UN and to provide truth, justice and reparations.54 The Sri Lankan government accused the UN of obtaining skewed information from LTTE sympathizers, yet the LLRC’s findings adopted some of the UN panel’s recommendations, including acknowledging the human rights abuses committed by both government and LTTE forces, and echoed the call for truth, justice and reparations (UN, 2011, pp. vii-ix; GoSL, 2011, p. chapter 9; Ratner, 2012). However, the LLRC report asserted that any abuses committed by the government were done in response to actions by the LTTE, exonerating the government of culpability.55
The Sri Lankan government incurred significant state debt during postwar reconstruction and has failed to bring about a resolution to the ethnic conflict, which entered a non-armed stage after the defeat of the LTTE (Hashim 2013).56 Devolution of power to Tamil- majority regions remains highly contentious, although many scholars and experts have recommended it (ICES, 2006; Hashim, 2013; Groundviews, Breaking Down the Interim Report:
On Proposals for Devolution and the State, 2017). Even after the defeat of the LTTE, President
likely attributable to Russia and China’s concerns about their own minority groups as risks for secessionism, notably Russia’s Chechen population and China’s Uyghur community. 54 Among the most heinous violations collected by the UN panel was the government’s use of cluster munitions and white phosphorus against civilians, both illegal weapons of war, and the government’s decision to ignore the LTTE’s surrender (Ratner, 2012; Harrison, 2013). The panel also collected abuses committed by the LTTE, notably their use of civilians as human shields, the purposeful killing of civilians and forced labor and recruitment, including of children (Ratner, 2012). 55 For example, the report identifies that it was the LTTE who used human shields and the government was exonerated from protecting these civilians because it had dropped leaflets warning citizens to flee to no fire zones (GoSL, 2011, pp. 53-55). Notably, the LLRC did not take a position on the UN panel’s allegation of the deaths of 40,000 civilians in the Vanni region (Ratner, 2012). 56 China has been especially prominent in Sri Lanka since its government gave aid following Sri Lanka’s 2004 tsunami, spending an estimated $15 billion in Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2017 (Zu, 2015; Tarabay, 2018). The Chinese State-Owned Enterprise of China Harbour Engineering Group financed a port in Hambantota as part of Sri Lanka’s postwar reconstruction, which has caused the Sri Lankan government to become heavily indebted to China (Goodhand, 2012; Zu, 2015). To pay back the billions it owes for the Hambantota port’s construction, the Sri Lankan government leased the port to China for 99 years (Tarabay, 2018).
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Rajapaksa argued that there was an ongoing separatist threat, emphasizing national security through a “war for peace” and further centralizing the government (Goodhand, 2012, p. 130;
Hashim, 2013). Rajapaksa increased reliance on authoritarian and populist methods, which exacerbated ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities (David, 2018).
Additionally, Rajapaksa tasked the Sri Lankan military—which is dominated by Sinhalese—with postwar reconstruction, which is concentrated in the Tamil-dominated north (Stone, 2014).
Rape of Tamil women by the military has occurred even after the war and state forces saw to a
Sinhalaization of the north, including altering Tamil street names to Sinhala names. This inflamed tensions between the Tamil community and the Sinhalese-dominated state and
Sinhalese community (Pinto-Jayawardena & Guthrie, 2016; Thiranagama, 2011; Stone, 2014).
Rajapaksa focused on economic development to alleviate Tamil-Sinhalese relations
(Wijewardene & Peiris, 2016; Bastian, 2013). Yet his government continued to promote Sinhala-
Buddhist nationalism, failing to deal with the root causes of the civil war (Desasiri, 2016).
The election of Maithripala Sirisena in 2015, from a new party (the New Democratic
Front party, founded in 2009) initially created a rhetorical change of pace in transitional justice.
Sirisena ran on a platform for anti-corruption and democratic reform, which was critical of
Rajapaksa’s authoritarian regime, and promised to reduce the constitutional powers of the presidency (ICG, 2007; Uyangoda, 2015). Sirisena did not run on devolution or promises to deal with minority communities’ concerns, yet garnered support from enough Tamils and Muslims based on his calls for democratic reform that he edged out Rajapaksa, who still earned most of the rural Sinhalese vote (Uyangoda, 2015). Under Sirisena, the government theoretically embraced transitional justice. In 2015, the Sirisena government co-sponsored the UN Human
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Rights Council Resolution “Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri
Lanka” and promised a permanent government office to search for the missing, a government office to distribute reparations for those who have experienced injustices, a truth commission and national trials for those who have committed crimes against humanity (Dibbert, 2017; HRC,
2015). Nevertheless, illegal detentions, arrests and disappearances continued under Sirisena’s government, although to a far lesser extent than under Rajapaksa’s government (Fernando,
2016). Commitments for justice dragged, with, for example, the office to investigate crimes of enforced disappearances launched only in March 2018, which has investigated no disappearances as of February 2020 (Singh, 2018; TG, 2020).
While there is a growing complexity to the politics of memory in Argentina, Sri Lanka’s politics of memory exists in a vastly different form. This is attributable to the more recent conclusion of the armed conflict, which ended only a decade ago, in 2009. The ethnic conflict still exists, operating now in an unarmed stage between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, with a growing new conflict between the Sinhalese and Muslim communities (Hashim,
2013; Fuller & Rizwie, 2019). It took Argentina over a decade before the stirrings against a politics of forgetting began to slowly dislodge, a process that remains ongoing. Yet any chance for Sri Lanka to develop a transitional justice that seeks to preserve the memory of past traumas and promote accountability for past wrongs will now come even more slowly. The recent 2019 elections saw former army colonel and defense minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa elected president, the brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has returned to power as Sri Lanka’s prime minister (Ramachandran, 2019). In 2020, the Rajapaksa government withdrew Sri Lanka’s commitments to the UN to address transitional justice and declared the intention to issue
133 death certificates for all the disappeared, to put the issue to rest and avoid accountability (AI,
2020; Abi-Habib & Bastians, 2020).
To sum up, the ideological conflict of Argentina’s period of state terrorism made it no less fraught and polarizing than Sri Lanka’s civil war, yet the lack of an ethnic component had profound consequences for how the duration of these respective political motherhood movements played out in Argentina as compared to Sri Lanka, something I explore in-depth in
Chapter 5. Notably, in both internal conflicts, the mass levels of enforced disappearances gave rise to political motherhood movements that organized against the state. However, political motherhood was only one of many approaches taken by women during the armed conflicts, both of which included armed women’s participation.
The similar outcome of political motherhood movements
While Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war differ in significant ways—including by their histories, geographic locations, types of internal conflicts they underwent as well as the kind of regimes that launched these conflicts—both countries experienced politically significant political motherhood movements that resisted the widespread enforced disappearances carried out by the state. I argue that three factors explain the similar outcome of political motherhood movements. These include political motherhood:
(a) providing cover to actors operating in politically hostile environments that lessened some of the societal and state backlashes to actors’ organizing, (b) offering accessibility, which as a means of political participation appealed to many women and (c) working as a framing device,
134 which found broad resonance among many in both Argentine and Sri Lankan society, and in the case of the Madres, international resonance.
Yet Argentine and Sri Lankan women’s participation in these conflicts was not limited to political motherhood movements but rather encompassed a range of activities. I briefly outline the different roles that women performed in the period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war before turning to an exploration of political motherhood movements. This suggests the diversity of women’s responses to the armed conflicts as well as contextualizes why political motherhood offered a strategic form of women’s mobilization in politically repressive environments.
Women’s involvement in Argentina’s period of state terrorism
During Argentina’s period of state terrorism, women took on multiple roles, including as participants in guerrilla groups, activists working for progressive change and activists supporting the military dictatorship (Feijoo, 1994; Taylor, 1997). Human rights activists, such as the
Madres, helped families and victims of human rights abuses carried out by the state.57 While some feminist groups were forced to shut down in the repressive environment of the dictatorship, others continued organizing. As the military regime lost power in the 1980s, more feminists joined in political activities and were an important part of the political opposition to the dictatorship. Feminists in Argentina, as in the rest of Latin America, made links between
57 The Madres were notable for being a women’s only group when most human rights groups were mixed gender (Bouvard, 1994). Other well-known human rights groups from this period included the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, Families of the Detained and Disappeared and the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights (Feijoo, 1994; Bouvard, 1994).
135 authoritarianism wrought by the state and in the domestic sphere by patriarchal heads of household (Feijoo, 1994; Bouvard, 1994).
The military dictatorship divided Argentine women into categories of good and bad based on a strict code of gendered norms that women (and men) were expected to uphold, which centered around individual’s roles in the family, an institution portrayed by the regime as the paramount unit of society (Feijoo, 1994; Taylor, 1997). So-called good women were those who supported the military and had children, while bad women included nonmothers, considered not fully women for failing to bear children, and those involved in guerrilla movements, who were viewed as sexually promiscuous and “monstrous” for their “unfeminine” behavior in taking up arms (Taylor, 1997, p. 80). The Madres were also included in the category of bad women for being the mothers of “terrorists,” thereby losing the privilege and respect that the regime claimed was due to mothers (Taylor, 1997).
Women’s involvement in Sri Lanka’s civil war
Unlike Argentina’s period of state terrorism, the Sri Lankan Civil War was notable for the role of women as fighters, mainly in the Tamil Tigers, who composed an estimated 20 to 30 percent of all Tiger cadres.58 The LTTE was the first militant group to train women in weaponry, although this was not out of a belief in gender equality but rather due to the construction of women as both the (re)producers of fighters and fighters in their own right (Maunaguru, 2009).
Like women’s participation in anti-colonial independence movements, the LTTE recruited women by claiming that gender discrimination would end once an independent Tamil Eelam
58 Balasingham, 1993; Schalk, 1994; 1997; Hyndman & Alwis, 2003; de Mel, 2003; Lawrence, 2007; Alison, 2009.
136 was secured (Lawrence, 2007; Maunaguru, 2009; Herath, 2012). There have been varying assessments of Sri Lankan women’s involvement in the fighting with some, such as Peter Schalk
(1994) praising women’s militant participation as “martial feminism” (pp. 163, 165; Bandarage,
2010, p. 659). Others have been more skeptical, arguing that such participation reinforced gender hierarchies among women and men since the LTTE emphasized women’s femininity and duty to uphold sexual purity (de Mel, 2003; Lawrence, 2007; Herath, 2012).
Other Sri Lankan women were peace activists during the war, although this history of women’s peace activism, which includes the Mothers’ Front, has been rendered largely invisible within mainstream scholarship (Samuel, 2006). Much of women’s peace activism was performed by feminists who advocated for a political settlement to the conflict and denounced militarization. Activists documented human rights abuses committed by both the state and militia groups and demanded an end to the fighting. Many women’s rights organizations instituted counseling services for those who had been adversely affected by war and developed income-generating projects for those living in warzones (Hyndman & Alwis, 2003; Bandarage,
2010).
Not all Sri Lankan feminists and women peace activists used political motherhood as the
Mothers’ Front did. Many Sri Lankan feminists have argued that motherhood reinforces heteronormativity, essentializes women and fails to upend traditional gender norms (de Alwis,
2001; 2004; Samuel, 2006). However, it has remained a popular strategy, including for a recent group of mothers of the disappeared, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, who are active in
Killinochchi, the former capital of the LTTE. The group has been participating in an ongoing protest movement since 2017 to demand information on their disappeared loves ones
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(Groundviews, What You Need To Know: Facts on the Enforced Disappearances Bill, 2017;
Groundviews, One Year in Kilinochchi: Tracking State Commitments against Protests by Families of the Disappeared, 2018; Disappeared, 2018). Although seemingly unaware of the history of the Mothers’ Front, these women use many of the same tactics and discursive strategies.
Political cover that mitigated some backlash
I turn in this section to the Madres and Mothers’ Front, movements of women who challenged the state, respectively, in Argentina and Sri Lanka, by positioning themselves as mothers of the disappeared. Political motherhood was not the only response available to women, yet it was popular. While the women of the Madres were the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, in Sri Lanka, many who participated in the NMF and SMF were wives of the disappeared (Bouvard, 1994; Kailasapathy, 2012; Samuel, 2017). The choice of the Mothers’ Front to go with political motherhood then is important to unpack. However, the fact that most of the women in these two movements were the mothers of young people who had undergone enforced disappearance makes it not unsurprising that they opted to represent themselves as mothers. Nevertheless, in both Argentina and Sri Lanka, other civic groups labeled themselves parents or families of the disappeared, meaning that more gender- neutral forms of representation were available to those who had lost a child. These included
Argentina’s Families of the Disappeared for Political Reasons and Sri Lanka’s Organization of
Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared, the latter of which was far less successful than the Mothers’ Front in gaining attention from the media and public (Bouvard, 1994; de
Alwis, 2004). What scholars of the two political motherhood movements have suggested is that the strategic use of motherhood was a major reason for the success in gaining the attention of
138 those in government, media and the general public (Bouvard, 1994; Samuel, 2006;
Kailasapathy, 2012).
In politically constrained environments in both Argentina and Sri Lanka, the mothers of the disappeared challenged the state for the truth of the whereabouts of their loved ones by deploying political motherhood. This form of participation has given civic groups varying levels of concealment to carry out civil society activities in politically constrained environments, at least for a time (Swerdlow, 1993; Navarro, 2001; Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran, 2012;
Stavrianos, 2014). At the point in which they catalyzed, the Madres and Mothers’ Front portrayed themselves as uninvolved in politics, rather focused on the return of their disappeared children (Bouvard, 1994; de Alwis, 2004; Kailasapathy, 2012). Kumudini Samuel
(2006) emphasizes that for many of the rank and file women in the Mothers’ Front, this was their only concern. Notably, most of the women involved in these political motherhood movements had no previous experience in politics. The one exception is the NMF, whose organizers had experience in political organizing (Kailasapathy, 2012).
Where most of the human rights movement actors were hamstrung by the bans against political organizing, political motherhood enabled these women’s groups to organize in hostile environments. In Argentina, civil society organizing was outlawed, as was the case in southern
Sri Lanka in the period of the SMF’s formation (Bouvard 1994; Samuel 2006). Likewise, social movement work was dangerous in northern Sri Lanka in the period of the NMF’s existence
(1984-1987), during which time the region was under intense state surveillance and oppression as well as the increasingly repressive grip of the LTTE, which curtailed individual and collective freedoms and made organizing autonomously difficult and illegal (Samuel, 2006;
139
Thiruchandran, 2012). In both Argentina and Sri Lanka, the women of the Madres and the
Mothers’ Front portrayed their work as nonpolitical by emphasizing their disappeared children
(Bouvard, 1994; de Alwis, 2004). In denying the political nature of their activism by portraying themselves as simple mothers looking for their children, political motherhood provided these groups the cover necessary to create openings for activism in politically constrained environments.
Political motherhood extends “cover” to activists by emphasizing women’s maternal duties and by presenting what are political activities as instead extensions of activists’ motherly responsibilities (Schirmer, 1993, p. 60; Jaquette, 1994, pp. 225-226; Hasegawa, 2004; Anderlini,
2007; Carreon & Moghadam, 2015; Karman, 2016). In political repressive environments that have banned political parties and civic organizing, activists find shrouding their political work under the guise of maternal responsibilities especially strategic (Noonan, 1995). While parties could not function in Argentina due to the ban by the dictatorship, which also impacted civil society, forcing it underground, initially the Madres had significant maneuverability since they were not seen as political actors by the regime (Bouvard, 1994; Waylen, 1994; Taylor, 1997).
Eventually, the Argentine military dictatorship recognized the political implications of the group’s work. At this point, the Madres had to take on several tactics to subvert the regime, including the use of a coded language due to state surveillance and disguising their meetings as parties in the park or rosary prayer sessions at churches. Even so, the Madres had an advantage over other civil society groups. The military regime felt embarrassed for harassing a group of mature women who were asking after their children. It was a public relations nightmare for the dictatorship (Bouvard, 1994).
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Political motherhood helped the two branches of the Mothers’ Front in different ways.
In terms of the NMF, the women successfully navigated extensive pressure from both the state and from the LTTE, at least for a time. The state sought to repress all forms of organizing in the north while the LTTE sought to bring all organizing under its control (Samuel, 2006). One of the earliest actions taken by the NMF was essentially commandeering the Jaffna government building and demanding that the Government Administrator (GA) return 500 disappeared young men.59 The GA was concerned enough to phone the Minister of Defense and ask what to do. The Minister instructed the NMF to come to Colombo to negotiate with him about the return of their children. However, the activists were steadfast and refused, demanding their children’s return without having to go to the capital. Their children were returned within a week from a military camp down south (Thiruchandran, 2012; Kailasapathy, 2012). It is unclear what specifically persuaded a government that had deemed the disappeared young men
“terrorists,” who had already been transported far south for imprisonment, to so readily turn the young men over to their mothers. For scholars of the NMF, they have argued that it was the women’s use of political motherhood (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran, 2012).
The LTTE appreciated the NMF’s criticism of the government. However, they were not pleased with the group’s promotion of nonviolence and its criticisms of the LTTE (de Mel, 2003;
Kailasapathy, 2012). Nevertheless, the work performed by the NMF was apparently appreciated by many in the Tamil community as chapters of the NMF quickly developed throughout the north (Kailasapathy, 2012). The group also engaged in carework to provide for the needs of the
59 A GA in the Sri Lankan political system is a member of the state’s civil service appointed to carry out the policies decided at the national government in Colombo (Kailasapathy, 2012, pp. supranote 3, p. 101).
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Tamil community. The government had cut food supply chains and gasoline to the north, which made obtaining food difficult for many Tamils during the mid-1980s when the NMF was active.
Working with women’s groups in Colombo, the NMF helped bring much-needed aid to the north (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran, 2012). The LTTE was troubled by the group’s criticism of its violence against Tamils as well as the pressure the LTTE placed on Tamil women to be
“mothers of nation” by embodying the LTTE’s definition of respectable Tamil womanhood (de
Mel, 2003). Ultimately, this led to the cooptation of the NMF by the LTTE (Kailasapathy, 2012).
In contrast to the Madres and NMF, which were founded (respectively) by their members, the SMF was co-founded in 1990 by two members of parliament (MPs) with the
SLFP. One was Mahinda Rajapaksa, who would go on to serve as president from 2005-2015, the lynchpin of the government’s actions in the final stages of the civil war, and in 2019, became prime minister. While Rajapaksa is today an important political figure, at the founding of the
SMF, he was relatively unknown and his political career launched in large part thanks to the success of the SMF (Basu, 2005).The other co-founder of the SLFP was Mangala Samaraweera.
Rajapaksa learned about the Madres and their work at a UN Commission on Human Rights, notable because the NMF did not serve as a model for the SMF (de Mel, 2001, p. 244 and supranote 23 on p. 280). There is speculation that Rajapaksa recognized the usefulness of a group of mourning mothers to serve the ambitions of the SLFP (and himself). At the time, the
SLFP was the main political opposition (de Alwis, 2001; 2004) While the UNP government of
President Ranasinghe Premadasa recognized the political nature of the SMF, members of the
SMF, as well as party organizers with the SLFP, regularly denied that the SMF was political (de
Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2004).
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Due to their founding and ongoing links with the SLFP, the SMF was not technically a civic organization. Instead, the SMF is better understood as a corporatist group, which refers to a group with a connection to a state institution, such as a political party, that was engaged in social movement work (Alvarez, Baiocchi, Lao-Montes, Rubin, & Thayer, 2017). With this said, the women of the SMF denied any interest in party politics, insisting that they organized only for the return of their children and transitional justice to address the suffering they had gone through due enforced disappearances. Likewise, the SMF president regularly claimed that the
SMF would break with the SLFP eventually, once the political climate was safer, explaining that the SMF were linked to the SLFP only as a matter of personal security (discussed in Chapter 4)
(de Alwis, 2004). Moreover, the SMF were a prominent part of the human rights movement in
Sri Lanka and constituted one of the few movement groups who could engage so freely and effectively in activism during the reign of terror that enveloped the south from 1987 to 1991
(Samuel, 2006). While the SMF were not a top-down political motherhood in the sense discussed by Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015), which focused on policy implemented by governments, the SMF presents a version of top-down political motherhood.
Being founded and partly run by the SLFP, even if its members viewed themselves as part of the human rights movement and unattached to party politics, renders the SMF a corporatist group rather than a civic group.
In addition to obscuring, even if only temporarily, the political work of activists using political motherhood, stressing women’s maternal roles has lessened some of the societal and state backlashes to women’s organizing. Negative reactions to women’s move into new roles can be intense in contexts of heightened nationalism and ethnonationalism, which
143 characterized both Argentina and Sri Lanka in the periods under study. This leads to an emphasis on women’s biological and social reproductive roles over other roles (Yuval-Davis,
1997; Taylor, 1997; Maunaguru, 2009; Carreon & Moghadam, 2015; Karman, 2016). In many ways, these conflicts were as wrought with nationalistic fervor as many interstate conflicts are.
In Argentina, the military dictatorship’s gendered views promoted their conception of
“Western, Christian civilization,” which rested on the construction of the family as the foundation of society, in part through the depiction of wives and mothers as the cornerstone of the family (Taylor, 1997; Navarro, 2001). Similarly, in the north of Sri Lanka, gendered nationalist discourses were heightened because of the war against the Tamil community by the
Sinhalese-dominated state. The LTTE and other armed groups stressed women’s maternal duties to bear fighters for the Tamil cause (Maunaguru, 2009; Thiruchandran, 2012; de Mel,
2003). Similar discourses operated in the south, where women were pressured to give birth to sons to be sent into the military to “save the country” from the secessionist movement in the north (Maunaguru, 2009; Samarasinghe, 2012).
For the earliest months of their organizing, the Madres were ignored by the regime, not considered worthy of commentary. The women were seen as harmless housewives. Later, when the regime realized the attention the group was receiving and witnessed their growing numbers, they attempted to laugh the women off, dismissing them as the “Crazy Women of the
Plaza de Mayo.” Yet this took months until it began to dawn upon the regime that the Madres were a threat. Even when they did realize this, the military dictatorship faced the difficult task of using violence against senior women holding peaceful silent vigils (Bouvard, 1994; Taylor,
1997). Given stereotypes of elderly women as unthreatening and the entirely nonviolent nature
144 of their organizing, being fearful of a group of essentially grandmothers made the regime itself look weak, at least to those who buy into such gender essentialisms.
In Sri Lanka, the women of the NMF garnered some sympathy from the state and for a while from the LTTE. Their first major action, a protest through the city of Jaffna to bring demands for the return of 500 disappeared young men to the local head of government, was apparently bought through political motherhood. Men in the community assumed that the women would be killed by the military for daring to protest the state and make demands of the government. However, the local military commander learned of the NMF’s planned march and purposefully kept military troops out of Jaffna that day so that women could organize freely.
The former president of the NMF suggests it was due to the sympathy he felt for the women’s loss of their children (Kailasapathy, 2012). In contrast to both the Madres and the NMF, the
SMF never experienced physical violence in part because of their identity as the hegemonic ethnic group and because they had the protection of the SLFP. However, they were regularly verbally harassed by the government, disparaged as bad mothers (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis,
2004; Samuel, 2006). The women of the SMF received widespread sympathy from the Sinhalese general public, even when the women invoked vengeance against those they blamed for the disappearance of their children. Many Sinhalese wrote into newspapers in support of the group, arguing that the women had every right to be angry over the loss of their children and to desire revenge (de Alwis, 2001).
Despite mitigating some backlash, both the Madres and the Mothers’ Front faced repercussions by the state and criticism from some of the general public. In the case of the
Madres, there was brutal repression against the group, including the disappearance of some
145 members and supporters in December 1977, and the regular use of batons and brandishing of guns against the women throughout their organizing under the dictatorship, and even in the transition to democracy (Bouvard, 1994). Nevertheless, the Madres were able to withstand the backlash from conservatives, who deemed them improper mothers, as well as criticism from progressives who have dismissed the group for reinforcing socially conservative gender norms
(Feijoo, 1994; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997). The NMF likewise faced a backlash, yet given the ethnic aspect of the civil war, they were unable to navigate this environment via political motherhood for the long-term. At least one NMF member was forced to fast to death by the
LTTE and members endured the usual harassment that the entire Tamil community experienced by the state, in addition to the authoritarian rule of the LTTE. The NMF was ultimately coopted by the Tamil Tigers, forced to follow their directives for not falling into line behind the LTTE (Samuel, 2006; Kailasapathy, 2012; Thiruchandran, 2012).
The SMF underwent criticism by the UNP government for its association with the SLFP and because the women were specifically condemning the UNP government. The women were deemed irresponsible and ineffective mothers and government officials explained that the men were taken from the women for their ineffective parenting. However, this was the most that the government could do to harm the SMF. With such widespread public sympathy, the women were effectively immune from physical harm (de Mel, 2001). Like the Madres, the SMF was criticized by some progressive voices. The political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda condemned the women as irrational for their use of religious cursing, which the one major action taken by members of the SMF of their own accord. Uyangoda argued that politics should be carried out through reason, not emotional appeals (de Alwis, 2004, p. 128). Many feminists concurred on
146 the grounds that conflating women with religion and emotions was a gender stereotype.
Likewise, many feminists were against political motherhood, suggesting it was heteronormative and reinforced socially conservative gender norms (de Alwis, 2004).
While backlash was not fully mitigated, the use of political motherhood did provide the
Madres and Mothers’ Front with temporary protection. This opened up spaces for human rights organizing that was unavailable to any other group at the time of their organizing. The Madres were the first to engage in collective action against the military regime and could hold regular protests every week for the entirety of the dictatorship’s rule. While they did suffer physical violence, including some disappearances, once the group had become well-known outside the country, the women were protected from further physical harm (Bouvard, 1994). The NMF was one of the only autonomous group organizing in the north at the time of their catalyzation. No other civil society group could manage in such a challenging atmosphere where the entire Tamil community was under intense repression from the Sinhalese-dominated state. It was only due to the growing power of the LTTE, which became increasingly authoritarian and against any group other than itself ultimately in control (Samuel, 2006; Kailasapathy, 2012). Political protest was banned at the time of the SMF’s catalyzation in the south in the reign of terror. Human rights activists were regularly killed and disappeared in this period, making organizing extremely difficult. However, the SMF enjoyed full protection from physical harm based on their identity as Sinhalese Buddhists, which garnered widespread sympathy from the general public that prevented the government from taking action against the women (Samuel, 2006; de
Mel, 2001).
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Accessibility
Besides providing cover and mitigating backlash, political motherhood has wide appeal among many women, cutting across class, ethnicity, racial and other social divides (Samuel,
2003; Plumez, 2002; Helmes, 2003; Sutton, 2010; George, 2010; Anderson, 2016). An approach that highlights positive stereotypes about groups is known as strategic essentialism, by which purposefully adopting an essentialized identity that simplifies reality enables a political movement to better achieve its collective goals (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2013). Affirmative essentialisms such as the idea of a nurturing mother or women’s perceived incorruptibility due to their maternal status can serve as an effective consciousness-raising and mobilization strategy among women (Forcey, 1991; Plumez, 2002; Helmes, 2003; Lloyd, 2005; Steady, 2011;
Fox, 2013; Stavrianos, 2014).
It was the accessibility of the Madres’s use of political motherhood, based on society’s main task for women—mothering—which the group represented through their name and reliance on daily domestic items, such as their iconic white headscarves that symbolized baby diapers. This allowed the organization to appeal to previously apolitical actors (Schirmer, 1994).
Women in the Mothers’ Front similarly relied on the widespread appeal of women’s maternal identities in Sri Lanka in their efforts to draw attention to their missing children (de Alwis, 2001;
Thiruchandran, 2007; 2012). Using political motherhood to seek their disappeared loves ones catalyzed 25,000 women in the south into the political public sphere, indicating that the SMF resonated with grassroots women. The mobilization of the SMF is the largest example of civic engagement in Sri Lanka since its independence, which speaks to how popular this political motherhood movement was (de Mel, 2001).
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To explain their choice to organize as the Madres, members have asserted that it was due to their status as mothers. While the group shared much in common with other organizations that were part of Argentina’s human rights movement, the Madres believed that their issues were unique because they were mothers and it was only as mothers that their position could be represented (Bouvard, 1994). The SMF took a different form of mobilization in that it was co-founded by MPs with the SLFP who had learned of the Madres. From the start, political motherhood had been outlined as the approach for the organization (de Mel, 2001).
The former president of the NMF, Sarvam Kailasapathy (2012), discusses in detail the choice to use political motherhood. A group of seasoned activists had been hoping to start a mass to promote peace (Broomstick March by Jaffna Women!, 1984). It was the mass enforced disappearance of 500 young men that provided the fodder to launch a larger movement that included many ordinary women. The activists gathered to discuss what the name of their organization should be. Women’s Front was one option. However, it was decided that Mothers’
Front was more accessible than Women’s Front (Kailasapathy, 2012). Why mother was deemed to have wider appeal to Tamil women is not made explicitly clear. But there was an apparent understanding that Mothers’ Front held wide appeal. In part this may have to do with the widespread stigma attached to women’s rights and feminism in much of Sri Lanka, where it is often deemed an outside force. Moreover, women’s groups in Sri Lanka tend to be elite organizations, as is generally the case with the entirety of Sri Lankan civil society, so there may have been a thought to avoid the use of women in the organization’s name (Wickremagamage,
1999; Wickramasinghe, 2001; de Alwis, 2004).
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To sum up, political motherhood may provide an easy entrance into politics for women.
Both Argentina and Sri Lanka place a strong value on the institution of motherhood
(Thiruchandran, 2007; Sutton, 2010). That women are socialized in many societies to identify with motherhood is worth unpacking and critiquing. Nevertheless, many women do feel inspired by ideals associated with mothering, particularly the respect that women receive for being mothers (Kandiyoti, 1988; Plumez, 2002)
Framing
As a framing device, political motherhood, particularly in the context of women’s peace activism, continues to have global appeal (Aharoni, 2017). Frames that take up mainstream norms, such as women’s association with motherhood, can find broader resonance than frames that challenge every aspect of mainstream norms. However, frames must do more than simply reinforce the status quo to enact social change. It is arguable that in certain contexts, political motherhood walks a fine line in terms of appealing to status quo ideas regarding women’s roles as mothers while also pushing women into new arenas, such as government and civil society.
While political motherhood reinforces socially conservative ideas that tie women to homemaking, peacemaking and nurturance, it can serve some women’s political participation.
Political motherhood continues to find broad resonance as evidenced in today’s postconflict organizing in both Argentina and Sri Lanka where many groups engaged in political motherhood. This includes in Argentina the transnational group Mamá Cultiva (Mom Grows), a motherhood group working toward legalization of marijuana for medical treatments, whose largest national chapter is Argentina’s, and Madres contra paco (Mothers Against Paco), a group that seeks to end the distribution of paco—a byproduct of crack cocaine—that has
150 flooded working class areas of Buenos Aires (Laje, 2017; Hasse, 2020). In Sri Lanka, in addition to the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, work based on the WPS agenda is being used by the
Association of War Affected Women to promote women’s political participation, particularly through peacebuilding.60
In Argentina and Sri Lanka, the Madres and Mothers’ Front gained attention and the acceptance of many for their organizing. For the Madres, their presentation as housewives in shapeless dresses and headscarves embodied stereotypical understandings of elderly women who are modest and matronly. By wearing a headscarf, they also invoked the Virgin May, which has widespread resonance in Catholic-majority Argentina. The Virgin Mary is often upheld as a sign of ideal femininity and usefully for the Madres, was also a mother who mourned the loss of her son (Taylor, 1997). In Sri Lanka, the NMF’s earliest activities included a day-long fast in a kovil (Hindu temple) and a march of 1,000 people through Jaffna to protest the disappearance of 500 young men taken by state forces. During the march, activists engaged in funeral practices that exhibited sorrow, which included open crying and pulling on their hair and clothes in distress (Kailasapathy, 2012). Such performances resonated with those in the north, the majority of whom are Hindu. Similarly, in the south where the majority of the population is
Buddhist, the SMF engaged in practices that spoke to well-known Buddhist practices in which the women invoked their maternal sorrow and vengeance against those responsible for their missing children (de Alwis, 2001). In both Argentina and Sri Lanka, the Madres and Mothers’
60 Visaka Dharmadasa, interview with the author, 27 October 2017. By Skype.
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Front gained support from significant portions of the general public through motherhood
(Bouvard, 1994; de Alwis, 2001; Kailasapathy, 2012)
When the Madres reached out to international human rights organizations for support and solidarity in the 1970s and 1980s, they were rewarded with extensive support from government officials and those working in international human rights organizations, as well as celebrities, including U2 and Sting (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997). While the NMF and SMF failed to capture international support, there are other examples where political motherhood has successfully seized global public attention beyond the Madres, such as the Liberian activists involved in the Mano River Women’s Peace Network and the Women in Peacebuilding
Network, who used their maternal identities to appeal to the international community to help end the dictatorship of Charles Taylor (1997-2003) and bring an end to Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war (1989-2003) (Mothers' Padayatra, 1984; de Alwis, 2004; Whetstone, 2017).
In part, this study will address the puzzle of why the Mothers’ Front, which followed directly on the heels of the global phenomenon of the Madres, coming in the 1980s and 1990s, did not find resonance in international human rights organizations, which should have been primed to support the Mothers’ Front since they had so readily supported the Madres. This may have had to do with the SMF’s connection to the SLFP, a party rooted in Sinhala-Buddhist ethnonationalism, of which many feminists and human rights organizations would surely have been aware. However, this was not so in the case for the NMF, an autonomous civic organization that advocated for nonviolence, organized with Sinhalese women in cross-ethnic solidarity and promoted women’s rights. These three factors ought to have made the NMF
152 particularly appealing at the international level, particularly the women and peace connection, which is a trope that resonates globally (Aharoni, 2017).
Conclusion
To conclude, two starkly different countries, Argentina and Sri Lanka, and their armed conflicts, shared little in common, one being an ideologically motivated conflict and the other an ethnic war. Yet both countries experienced a similar outcome: women’s groups mobilized through political motherhood to challenge the state’s widespread enforced disappearances. I have argued that three factors likely explain the similar outcome of political motherhood in these divergent spaces, including the usefulness of political motherhood to create openings in politically hostile environments by obscuring the political nature of women’s organizing. This has also lessened at least some backlash to women’s organizing in contexts of heightened ethnonationalism and nationalism. Likewise, political motherhood offers wide accessibility among a wide range of women. Finally, as a framing device, political motherhood has resonated broadly among many in both Argentine and Sri Lankan society, and in the case of the Madres, the international community. In the next chapter I explore how despite both conflicts resulted in political motherhood movements, these movements differ from one in terms of their duration, visibility and remembrance.
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Chapter 4
Remembrance
Introduction
The previous chapter emphasized the similarity in the outcome—that of political motherhood movements—in Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war. In contrast, this chapter highlights the divergent long-term outcomes of these examples of political motherhood—the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres) and the Mothers’ Front—in terms of their duration, visibility and remembrance. I focus on the dramatic differences in the legacies of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. Exploring these legacies points to how what is forgotten or remembered in a society affects future political decisions, especially in postconflict societies where countries must reconcile in some way with the recent past (Barahona de Brito,
2010).
In stark contrast to the remembered legacy of the Madres, the legacy of the Mothers’
Front has evolved in the opposite direction, toward a forgetting. While the Madres are prominent symbols of human rights who speak directly to movement actors involved in human rights and feminist organizing in Argentina today, the Mothers’ Front is forgotten by even some actors involved in human rights and women’s movement work in Sri Lanka. This is most evident in the group organizing to bring attention to those disappeared in the last stages of the civil war in 2009. Known as the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, they have been active since 2017, demanding the whereabouts of their disappeared loved ones and working to move the country in postconflict transitional justice processes. Strikingly, there has been little awareness in the
154 media of how the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared follow in the footsteps of the Mothers’
Front (Disappeared, 2018). Moreover, the general public and international human rights organizations recall the Madres by acknowledging their contributions to human rights. In contrast, there are no memorials or popular cultural references in Sri Lanka to the Mothers’
Front, nor do international human rights organizations revisit the group’s impacts on human rights.
This chapter first more deeply reviews the origins and main activities of Argentina’s
Madres and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front than the brief introduction to the groups in Chapter 3.
Second, it traces the collective memories of the two groups as held by domestic human rights and women’s movements and the general publics in Argentina and Sri Lanka respectively, as well as each group’s resonance within international human rights organizations. I argue that while the memory of the Madres has been preserved through a politics of remembering, conversely, the Mothers’ Front goes in the opposite direction, towards forgetting. However, this is not to say that the group is unknown, as there is a significant scholarship by feminists who have documented their history and the group remains known among many in the human rights and women’s movement, particularly those who worked with them. I demonstrate this argument by exploring the scholarship, popular artifacts—such as t-shirts, murals, memorials, and other public artworks—and acknowledgments that either focus on the Madres and
Mothers’ Front or do not.
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Madres (1977-present)
The Madres are an active women’s group, established in 1977, and operating since 1986 as two separate branches, the Línea Fundadora61 and the Asociación (Association) (Bouvard,
1994; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Politi, 2017; Madres.org, n.d.). In the early years of the
Argentine dictatorship, some mothers of the disappeared trekked from government offices to police stations to military barracks, seeking out information regarding their disappeared children. These endeavors proved fruitless as state forces refused to give families any information. In April 1977, a group of fourteen women who had missing children met in the
Plaza de Mayo, a square in Buenos Aires located near the seat of the executive, the Casa
Rosada (Pink House). There—through silent vigil—they demanded the return of their missing children. The women chose to hold weekly silent vigils during which they circled the plaza to call attention to their missing children. They did so while wearing white pañuelos (headscarves), symbolizing the diapers that they had once dressed their children in, and carrying photos of their disappeared children. These women became known as the Madres (Bouvard, 1994;
Mellibovsky, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
Initially, the government ignored the women’s actions, not seeing any threat to their rule. Yet as the marchers increased in number—to 100 by June 1977—the government became rattled, moving to smear the women as “Las Locas” (the Crazies/ the Mad Women) (Bouvard,
1994; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003). Over time, the group connected with other human rights organizations in Argentina, Latin America and the world, and developed skills in capturing the
61 Roughly translated, Línea Fundadora means “policy of the founders” (Femenía & Gil, 1987, p. 17).
156 public’s attention, holding press conferences, planning and carrying out political actions, even creating a newsletter for their international supporters (Bouvard, 1994). Through transnational advocacy networks, the Madres helped draw global attention to the abuses of the junta, which lessened the dictatorship’s hold over the country (Bouvard, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kohut,
Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
A unified organization (1977-1986)
By fall 1977, some 150 women regularly joined the weekly marches of the Madres and the group developed petitions and two newspaper ads to draw attention to the issue of the disappeared (Simpson & Bennett, 1985; Bouvard, 1994). The newspaper ads altered the
Madres’s relationship with the government as they marked the first mention in the media of the disappeared. While previously the military regime had harassed and mocked the women, in
December 1977, the dictatorship disappeared ten of the Madres in response to the newspaper ads, including their de facto leader Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti. However, the women were not deterred and Hebé de Bonafini took over as leader (Bouvard, 1994).
In 1978, the military government, distracted with preparations for hosting the World
Cup, largely left the mothers alone, although regular harassment and arrests against them continued. At the World Cup, some of the Madres spoke with foreign journalists covering the event. Shortly after, an international medical conference was hosted in Buenos Aires. The
Madres reached out to conference attendees who encouraged the women to shout at their marches rather than stay silent. This was a turning point in how the women viewed their claim over the public space of the Plaza de Mayo and it emboldened their activism (Bouvard, 1994).
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In this same period, the Madres sought greater ties with officials in the US and Europe and international human rights organizations. This work at the international level protected the women from further enforced disappearances by raising their global stature, making it unwise for the junta to physically harm them (Bouvard, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998).
Public opinion in Argentina on the Madres shifted wildly from the latter stages of the period of state terrorism through the immediate postconflict period. During the Malvinas Islas
War (Falklands War) in 1982 (see Chapter 3), the group was despised by many Argentines for being anti-war, and (in their eyes) therefore unpatriotic. By 1983, the Madres were celebrated in Argentina, and globally, as defenders of human rights and democracy. Following the transition, both the government and the general public sought to move on from the period of state terrorism by forgetting it, a stance that defined Argentina from the mid-1980s to the mid-
1990s. However, the Madres promoted preserving history and holding perpetrators accountable for crimes against humanity. Once again, the group was unpopular domestically
(Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994).
Additionally, by the mid-1980s, there were growing internal tensions within the Madres, which came to a head in January 1986 when the Madres split into separate factions, the Línea
Fundadora and the Asociación (Bouvard, 1994). The split revolved around two issues: how civil society organizations should operate under a newly transitioned democratic regime and how to preserve the memories of the disappeared (Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997). At the time of the split, the Línea Fundadora openly supported the government, while the Asociación chose to work exclusively within civil society and regularly denounced the government (Agosín, 1990;
Bouvard, 1994). Likewise, while the Línea Fundadora sought to remember the period of the
158 state terrorism through public memorials and recovering bodies of the disappeared, the
Asociación argued that anything less than the return of their disappeared children alive was unacceptable and disavowed recovering bodies (Bouvard, 1994; Bevernage, 2012).
Most of the rank and file did not understand the division, with many calling two branches “a shame” and blaming the group’s leaders for the separation (Bosco, 2001; 2004;
2006, p. 352).62 Despite differences among the branches, unlike the Mothers’ Front, both lines of the Madres retained their status as autonomous women’s groups. Although both branches have at some point collaborated with state institutions, it was the Madres making these alliances rather than being directed by political parties or other apparatuses of the state. As
Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015) have argued, top-down political motherhood directed by the state can be either emancipatory or patriarchal, whereas bottom- up political motherhood is always emancipatory. I elaborate on this difference between the
Madres and Mothers’ Front in Chapter 5.
The Línea Fundadora (1986-present)
The Línea Fundadora chose to work with the transitional government of Alfonsín in
1986, a move that was in line with other Argentine human rights groups at the time. The thought was to avoid public criticism of the fragile democratic government (Epelbaum, 1987;
Agosín, 1990; Bouvard, 1994). The Línea Fundadora’s reformist stance towards the state has been a common approach in Latin America where translating collective action into institutional
62 Underlying factors also attributed to the split are class and education differences, with those supporting the Línea Fundadora typically middle class with higher levels of education, and Asociación members tending to be working class. There was also a clash of personalities (Fisher, 1989; Snitow, 1989; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997).
159 representation is often a priority (Alvarez, 1990; Bosco, 2004; Alvarez, Baiocchi, Lao-Montes,
Rubin, & Thayer, 2017). Despite choosing to avoid openly criticizing the new democratic regimes in the 1980s and 1990s, Línea Fundadora members derided the government’s policies behind the scenes. In 1988, the group sent a letter to the United Nations (UN) Commission on
Human Rights that was an indictment of Argentine laws granting immunity to members of the military who had tortured and/or killed while following orders from superiors. The group also worked domestically to influence policy outside of public avenues, such as demanding no further amnesty to perpetrators. While Línea Fundadora members did not openly criticize the government, they contested its policies (Agosín, 1990, pp. 113-115).
Other important work by the Línea Fundadora branch included their push at the UN
General Assembly to pass a resolution declaring enforced disappearances a crime against humanity (Agosín, 1990). 63 Additionally, Línea Fundadora mothers worked with the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo64 to increase state benefits for dependents of the disappeared, including a pension for families of the disappeared, and the branch successfully lobbied to have the term
“disappeared” included in Argentine law (Fisher, 1993). Members of the Línea Fundadora have sought to publicly acknowledge their children’s deaths, with one of their main tasks to locate as many of the bodies of the disappeared as possible and to identify these victims through DNA testing. These activities provide evidence to hold the dictatorship accountable for human rights
63 In 1992, the UNGA Res. 47/133, Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, was passed. It outlined how forced disappearances violates several international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, and described enforced disappearance as “an offense to human dignity” (UNGA, 1992). 64 A parallel organization, the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo began shortly after the Madres to search for their grandchildren born to their disappeared children while imprisoned in detention centers before their murders (Arditti, 1999; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
160 violations (Bouvard, 1994; McCormack, 2014). The group has also focused on the creation of memorials and museums to attest to the period of state terrorism (Wilson, 2016). Members of the Línea Fundadora also visit universities, schools and conferences to speak about the period of state terrorism and the disappeared as part of the practice of testimonio or bearing witness
(Burchianti, 2004).
While the late 1980s and 1990s saw the Línea Fundadora’s focus on the issue of the disappeared, since 2000, they have also branched into concerns over neoliberalism, as well as state violence and unemployment. Members of the Línea Fundadora see a connection between what it deems the genocide perpetrated by the military dictatorship against the population during the period of state terrorism and what it perceives as an economic genocide under the post-1983 democratic regimes in the form of neoliberal restructuring (Burchianti, 2004). This has pushed them in the direction of the Asociación branch, which broadened its scope beyond the period of state terrorism as early as the 1990s.
The Asociación (1986-present)
The Asociación line of the Madres has garnered controversy over the years, beginning when it openly criticized the policies of the earliest postwar administrations (Fisher, 1993;
Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2004). There has also been controversy over how the branch has sought to preserve the memory of the disappeared. Asociación members insist that their children are not dead but are rather living on inside their “permanently pregnant” bodies. Additionally, the
Asociación stands against exhumations of mass graves and building public memorials to the disappeared, viewing these as distractions from holding perpetrators accountable for crimes
161 against humanity (Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Bosco, 2004, p. 388). By maintaining that their children are living, Asociación members argue that they pursue justice and keep their children’s memories alive, therein supporting human rights (Bevernage, 2012).
Throughout the 1990s, the Asociación branch promoted a maternal ethic of care politics focused on healthcare and education, full employment, grassroots political participation and international peace (Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2004, p. 388). The Asociación branch has viewed their work as carrying forward the left-leaning politics of their children. This activism—far from the “sorrowful mother” figure of the late 1970s and early 1980s—eroded much of the
Asociación line’s public support within Argentina in the 1980s and early 1990s (Fisher, 1993). A major shift in the organization came in the mid-2000s when the Asociación branch altered its stance towards the state. It was no longer against working with the government, although it followed a partisan approach, unlike the Línea Fundadora branch, which has worked with various governments over the years. The shift for the Asociación came with Néstor Kirchner of the left-leaning faction of the Peronist Party, known as the Front for Victory. In 2003, Kirchner moved to try former junta officials previously given impunity (Sutton, 2010). Following Néstor
Kirchner’s government, which ended with his death, his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was elected president and continued strong ties with the Asociación branch (Kelly, 2011; Bio,
Hebe de Bonafini And Estela De Carlotto Spar Over Relationship With The Government, 2017).65
65 Asociación leader Bonafini even declared that the Kirchner administrations are models for how to serve human rights, a stark contrast to how the Asociación formerly viewed the government and its own role in civil society- state relations (Bouvard, 1994; Iricibar, 2017).
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The Madres today
The Madres remain active as the Línea Fundadora and Asociación branches, standing as
“one of the most effective and enduring networks of activists in the human rights movement in
Argentina and Latin America” (Bosco, 2004, p. 383; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Bosco, 2006;
Madres.org, n.d.) Such duration is notable given that the organization developed spontaneously in response to enforced disappearances and that the women “never had a clear strategy” in the early years, but rather made it up as they went along (Abreu Hernandez, 2002, p. 400; Bosco,
2006). After the period of state terrorism, some doubted the group’s ability to stay collectively organized. This ultimately proved otherwise, with the Madres active for four decades, participating in well over 2,000 weekly marches around the historic square in Buenos Aires
(BBC, 2016). Both branches were energized by the government of Mauricio Macri, of the right- leaning Republican Proposal (PRO), in 2015. Macri shifted Argentina back toward a politics of forgetting around the period of state terrorism, including seeking to lessen the sentences of perpetrators. The Madres did not hesitate to take his administration on (Politi, 2017; McCay,
2017). Both branches’ work has also evolved to support women’s access to abortion and each continues to denounce global capitalism (Sutton & Borland, 2013; Booth, 2018).
Mothers’ Front (1984-1987; 1990-1994)
Unlike the Madres, Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front always existed as two separate operations, composed of the Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front
(SMF). The branches differed in terms of ethnic composition, mimicking the civil war’s ethnic division (de Mel, 2003). The NMF had nearly total Tamil membership while the SMF consisted
163 of mainly Sinhalese women. However, the NMF worked with Colombo-based women’s organizations—the majority of which had predominantly Sinhalese membership—as a way for these women’s groups to show solidarity with Tamils (Samuel, 2006). Although both branches were founded by elite members of society—the NMF by elite Tamil women and the SMF by elite male Sinhalese politicians with the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP)—each branch’s rank and file members, like the Madres, were ordinary women who had not been previously politically active (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran S. , 2012; Kailasapathy, 2012). The NMF and
SMF were catalyzed by different instances of political repression in the north and south and operated in different periods, 1984-1987 and 1990-1994 respectively (Thiruchandran S. , 2012).
Ultimately, the NMF was coopted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the SMF, from the start linked with the SLFP, disbanded (Kailasapathy, 2012; Samuel, 2006).
The Northern Mothers’ Front (1984-1987)
In 1984, Tamil women in the north of Sri Lanka formed the NMF to protest the mass disappearances of some 500 Tamil youths by the government (de Mel, 2003; Thiruchandran S. ,
2012). The group held a day-long silent protest at the Vervill Pillayar Kovil66 on 22 August 1984, during which over 500 mothers sought to bring attention to the disappeared. This was followed by a march of 1,000 women through Jaffna on 24 August, which ended at the local government building headed by the Government Agent (GA),67 the national government’s local representative (Jaffna Mothers Say: Release Hostages, 1984; Samuel, 2003, p. 168; 2006). The
66 A kovil is a Hindu temple. 67 A GA in the Sri Lankan political system is a member of the state’s civil service appointed to carry out the policies decided at the national government in Colombo (Kailasapathy, 2012, pp. supranote 3, p. 101).
164 march—described as akin to “a funeral procession,” during which the mothers openly grieving their disappeared sons—ended at the GA’s office. The women stormed the building to read their list of demands, which sought the immediate return of the disappeared young men
(Samuel, 2003; Kailasapathy, 2012, p. 102). After intense negotiations, the government returned most of those disappeared (Samuel, 2003; Kailasapathy, 2012, p. 103).
The NMF forwarded their demands to Amnesty International, the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM) and the UN Secretary-General, seeking to draw international attention to their cause. These demands were also reprinted in the Tamil newspaper the Saturday Review, and specifically sought the return of the disappeared children, as well as a nonviolent solution to the civil war and better treatment of the Tamil community by the state (Mothers' Padayatra,
1984, p. 5). As inferred from the histories of the NMF, nothing substantive appears to have come of these appeals, as scholars document no examples of support from abroad (Samuel,
2006; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). A search of digitally available documents for Amnesty
International, the UN and NAM further suggest no efforts on the part of any of these organizations to attract attention to the NMF (Non-Aligned Movement, n.d.; Digital Library, n.d.; Amnesty International Library, n.d.; UN.org, n.d.).68
The groundwork for the NMF’s first challenge against the state was laid by a group of seasoned activists who had been calling for an all-women’s protest against both the state for its repression of the Tamil community and against Tamil guerrilla groups for promoting violence
68 None of these sources mentions the NMF for the years 1984-1988. In the future, I will visit the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Archives at Columbia University to confirm that there were no mentions whatsoever of the NMF.
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(Broomstick March by Jaffna Women!, 1984). As the NMF gained recognition following the
Jaffna march, women throughout the north began to form NMF chapters (Kailasapathy, 2012).
In addition to protesting enforced disappearances, the group’s activities also included demonstrations against “arbitrary arrests, detention without trial, rape, torture, establishment of military camps and surveillance zones, and repressive regulations” that were harming the
Tamil community (Samuel, 2006, p. 29).69 This included state cuts to public transportation, which along with the lack of available fuel meant that Tamil citizens struggled to obtain necessities such as food (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Additionally, the NMF mediated conflicts among armed Tamil groups. Before the dominance of the LTTE in the north, there was frequent infighting among militia groups over control of Tamil-majority areas, and
NMF activists often tried to resolve these conflicts. However, this led to internal disagreements, with many NMF members wanting to give full support to the LTTE (Samuel, 2006).
The NMF was supported by several southern-based women’s groups with majority
Sinhalese membership. The NMF and these women’s groups shared information, worked on petitions to the government and provided food and other donations for those in the north
(Samuel, 2006; Kailasapathy, 2012). Through the leadership committee, the NMF also spoke out against women’s marginalized status in Tamil society (Kailasapathy, 2012). The LTTE grew stronger from 1984 to 1987, circumscribing Tamil women’s lives through discourses of gendered nationalism (de Mel, 2003; Maunaguru, 2009; Thiranagama, 2011). The most blatant was “the Ten Commandments,” a list of directives for Tamil women that enforced an ethno-
69 In December 1984, the NMF took up the cause of a pregnant woman’s rape by military forces, becoming one of the first groups to organize around rape by the military (Samuel, 2003; 2006).
166 nationalist femininity. This was described on a poster that appeared overnight in Jaffna in 1984.
The LTTE denied producing the poster, even as statements by LTTE officials indicated support for its message, which encouraged women to dress and behave following so-called Tamil traditions. This was deemed critical to the struggle for Tamil independence (de Mel, 2003).70 In another poster, the LTTE encouraged Tamil women to have more children. The poster depicted a woman with long hair, wearing a pottu marker71 and sari. Next to her were the words “I don’t agree with (the President’s) sterilization programmes,” which referred to state programs that offered 500 rupees to women who underwent sterilization procedures (Kailasapathy, 2012, p.
108).
The NMF denounced these posters in press conferences and local newspapers, arguing that women had the right to decide what to do with their bodies in terms of both reproductive choices and how they dressed (de Mel, 2003; Kailasapathy, 2012). This public condemnation infuriated the Tamil Tigers. While the core leaders of the NMF believed that the group’s struggle was against armed militants’ patriarchy and authoritarianism as much as the state’s patriarchy and authoritarianism, most of the rank and file members of the NMF were uncomfortable with raising women’s rights and hesitant in taking on the LTTE. Throughout the
70 Women were told they should only wear the “traditional” sari to show ethnonational pride, as well as never be seen outside of their homes in bathrobes, a practice common among women when they ran out in the early morning to purchase fish for the day’s meals. Such mandates promoted gendered codes of respectability, as did similar pronouncements that women wear their hair long and avoid riding bicycles, the latter of which is perceived as a male activity (de Mel, 2003). 71 The pottu, known elsewhere as the bindi, is used by some Tamil Hindu women and men as a sign of their faith. It is often a small red mark painted on the forehead, between the eyebrows, although jewelry is also used to make the mark. The pottu has become “a central marker of ethnicity and identity” for many Sri Lankan Tamils, even among Tamils in the Christian community, where some wear it not as a sign of Hindu faith, but rather as a signifier of their pride in the Tamil community (Cowley-Sathiakumar, 2008, p. 145). However, during the civil war, many Tamils feared drawing attention to themselves as Tamil and refrained from wearing the pottu as a means of security (Cowley-Sathiakumar, 2008).
167 organizing of the NMF, there were disagreements over priorities among the leadership and the rank and file (Kailasapathy, 2012).
In 1986, the LTTE’s power in the north was consolidating, which had profound consequences for the NMF. The group came to perhaps an inevitable end as the LTTE ratcheted up control of the Jaffna peninsula (Samuel, 2003; Thiranagama, 2011).72 The Tigers had driven out the military in the north and asserted that because they had done so, in return, all Tamils owed the LTTE their loyalty. The LTTE also launched an all-out assault against other militant groups, ultimately becoming the only militant organization.73 When the LTTE was one of many armed factions operating in the north, the NMF had space to engage politically. However, the
LTTE takeover and repressive rule over the Tamil-majority region of the country meant an end to autonomous organizing. The NMF’s leadership was forced, under the threat of violence, to present themselves to the LTTE shortly after the LTTE’s takeover (Kailasapathy, 2012). The activists were informed that by criticizing the LTTE, they were treasonous to the Tamil community. It was stressed that the “good” Sinhalese women in the south were doing their womanly and patriotic duty, visiting Sinhalese soldiers in hospitals and donating items to the soldiers. One LTTE leader upbraided the NMF for writing in the newspapers of their disagreements with the LTTE, exclaiming:
72 An example of this power came in a hunger strike to the death instituted by two NMF mothers in Batticaloa, in the northeastern area of the country in 1987 or 1988, when the women announced their fast as a protest against the atrocities of the Indian Peace Keeping Forces on Tamil civilians (Samuel, 2006; TamilNation, 2007). One mother eventually quit her fast but the other was forced to fast to death by the LTTE, who used her death to further their nationalist cause (Samuel, 2006). 73 Notably, the LTTE and the state were not the only sources that sought to control the NMF. Tamil men politicians were also eager to make use of the NMF for their own purposes. During the march on Jaffna, the NMF had to prevent men politicians from taking over the march for their own self-promotion. One male MP even tried to claim credit for organizing the march despite living in India at the time (Samuel, 2006; Kailasapathy, 2012).
168
Isn’t something wrong here? Don’t you have any Tamil feelings? How can you criticize
us? We have given our lives to the cause. You are mothers, you should be bandaging our
injured, you should be collecting supplies for us, you should be writing about the
wonderful sacrifices your children are making to the cause, that’s how great mothers
should be, not like you people. You are not doing any of this. So we have decided that
we are taking over Mothers Front (Kailasapathy, 2012, p. 110).
The LTTE announced that the NMF would fall under their command. The NMF leaders chose to disband rather than submit to the LTTE, marking the end of the NMF as an independent, women-controlled organization that stood for peace and human rights (Kailasapathy, 2012).74
The core leaders fled Jaffna to ensure their safety, some leaving political work altogether
(Samuel, 2003; 2006).
The NMF continued, but as a charity-based group under the LTTE—the Jaipur Foot
Programme that produced prosthetics for those with missing limbs—until the group was subsumed and dissolved entirely (ICRC, Sri Lanka: A Step Towards Self-Reliance, 2008; JJCDR,
2018). The NMF had already been operating this program as part of their assistance work to the
Tamil community. However, the LTTE confined them to this work after the takeover, which seemed to make the rank and file happy enough. The rank and file preferred this kind of assistance work over other activities. Meanwhile, the leaders thought providing aid was not central to their mission as an organization (Kailasapathy, 2012). Today the Jaipur Foot
Programme has been renamed the Jaffna Jaipur Centre for Disability Rehabilitation and
74 Selvy Thiruchandran, interview with the author, 24 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
169 continues to be active. Although there is no mention of the NMF on its website, the
International Committee of the Red Cross credits the NMF for helping to set up the original
Jaipur Foot Programme (ICRC, Sri Lanka: A Step Towards Self-Reliance, 2008; JJCDR, 2018).
There is no mention of the NMF after 1991 (Samuel, A Hidden History: Women’s Activism for
Peace in Sri Lanka, 1982-2002, 2006; ICRC, Sri Lanka: A Step Towards Self-Reliance, 2008; JJCDR,
2018). This raises the question of how to recognize visibility and continuity. Perhaps the JJCDR represents a facet of the NMF continuing to exist, albeit in altered form. At the very least, the
NMF’s dedication to the Tamil community lives on in the JJCDR, even if the group is not remembered.
The Southern Mothers’ Front (1990-1994)
In 1990, Sri Lanka’s main opposition party, the SLFP75 founded the SMF during the reign of terror. This period began when the United National Party (UNP)76-led government allowed
Indian peacekeeping troops into Sri Lanka to end fighting between armed Tamils and the government. This set off a chain reaction of violence by the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) nationalists77 and led to the state’s counter-reaction, which played out in the south of the country and affected mainly Sinhalese citizens (de Mel, 2001; ICG, 2007; de Alwis, 2012). In
1994—in part through her strategic use of political motherhood culled from the SMF—
75 The SLFP is a left-leaning Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist party, one of the two largest political parties in Sri Lanka, with a hierarchical party structure that is male-dominated and middle-class (de Alwis, Feminism, 2004; NPCSL, 2005; ICG, 2007; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). 76 Like the SLFP, the UNP is a Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist party, but more right-leaning in terms of its economic policy. It too is male-dominated (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014; NPCSL, 2005). Since independence, the SLFP and UNP have dominated the political system and compete for the Sinhalese Buddhist vote (ICG, 2007; Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). 77 The JVP is a minority party rooted in socialist-Marxist ideology and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014).
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Chandrika Kumaratunga of the SLFP became the country’s first woman president.78 This cooptation of the SMF’s aims brought an end to the group as SMF members appear to have assumed that Kumaratunga would carry forward their political priorities (Samuel, 2006).
The reign of terror lasted from 1987 to 1990 and entailed the enforced disappearance or outright murder of thousands of Sinhalese by both the JVP and state forces.79 The JVP, who condemned the 1987 Indo-Lankan Accord as an affront to Sri Lankan sovereignty and a concession to the Tamil community, began attacking state security forces, politicians and civil society activists. The government, under the UNP, confronted the JVP’s insurrection with its violent retaliation that failed to distinguish between JVP members and young men who had no affiliation with the JVP. This led the state to instigate widespread violence and to curtail civil society (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001; Samuel, 2006).
In this violence, two male MPs, Mahinda Rajapaksa (who would serve as president of Sri
Lanka from 2005 to 2015 and in 2019 became Sri Lanka’s prime minister) and Mangala
Samaraweera, both of the SLFP, developed the SMF. Modeled after the Madres, the idea for the SMF arose when Rajapaksa attended a presentation by the UN Commission on Human
Rights on mothers’ organizations, including Argentina’s Madres (de Mel, 2001, p. 244 and
78 Kumaratunga found it useful to engage with the SMF having lost both her father and husband to political assassination. She used this to link herself to the violence endured by the women of the SMF, who had lost loved ones (CBK, 2016; de Mel, 2001). A popular picture around the 1994 election was Kumaratunga, with a tear in her eye, standing beside a member of the SMF (de Alwis, 2017). 79 There is discrepancy in the numbers of those disappeared, murdered and wounded during the reign of terror (de Mel 2001). In three official government Commissions of Inquiry: Commissions of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons reports, over 15,000 disappearances were recognized (Inquiry, 1995). However, others have placed the numbers higher, claiming as many as 40,000 to 60,000 disappearances took place during this period (Gunaratna, 1990, p. 269; de Alwis, 2001, p. 210).
171 footnote 23 on p. 280). This is significant since Rajapaksa did not take the NMF as a model, but rather the Madres, a group that had no connections to Sri Lanka.
In July 1990, the two MPs united some 1,500 mothers and wives of those disappeared and killed (Samuel, 2006; de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 1998). Ostensibly organized for the women, it is likelier that the SLFP saw potential in using the mourning mothers to criticize their main rival, then in government, the UNP (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2004). Officially, the SMF was not part of the SLFP (Samuel, 2003, pp. supranote 6, p. 178-179). However, party organizers funded and designed most of its activities. Yet the SLFP portrayed the SMF as a non-partisan grassroots organization. Members of the SMF likewise claimed to be uninvolved in politics, asserting that their aim was only the return of their disappeared loved ones (de Alwis, 2004).
Besides claiming nonpartisanship, the SMF also made it known that they were not feminists. Malathi de Alwis (2004) has speculated that this was a strategic move to avoid the typical criticism that feminists receive in Sri Lanka, such as being anti-male, anti-family or
“Western,” which would have distracted from the issue of the disappeared. This move divided
Sri Lanka’s feminist community over whether to support the SMF. The decision was further complicated by many feminists’ concerns over the SMF’s use of political motherhood, as well as their link to the SLFP (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2004; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). In contrast to the support of the NMF by women’s groups, no feminist or women’s groups formed alliances with the SMF (de Alwis, 2004; Samuel, 2006). However, many individual feminists did become members or allies of the SMF, including Malathi de Alwis (2004).80 Since the demise of the SMF,
80 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
172 many feminists in Sri Lanka have criticized the SMF for its hegemonic exclusivity that ignored the issues of Tamil and Muslim women and often promoted Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, which I discuss in Chapter 8 (de Mel, 2001; Samuel, 2006; de Alwis, 2001; 2012).81
Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu, a medical doctor from one of the island’s elite families and a mother who lost a son to an enforced disappearance by the state, served as president of the SMF (de Mel, 2001; Samuel, 2006; Pathirana, 2012). Saravanamuttu was Tamil, an oddity in the largely Sinhalese SMF. Yet for SMF members, Saravanamuttu was viewed in terms of her status as a professional, urban and middle-class woman, which lent respectability to the group, rarely considered in terms of her ethnic identity (de Mel, 2001; Pathirana, 2012).Dr.
Saravanamuttu claimed that the SMF was temporarily linked to the SLFP for protection in the politically hostile climate, a short-term strategy until the SMF could stand on their own.
Saravanamuttu further asserted that the main aim of the SMF was to serve as “peaceful watchdogs of whatever government was in power” (de Alwis, 2004, p. 124). However, this eventual autonomy was at odds with the main aim of the rank and file, which was to locate their missing loved ones (de Alwis, 2004). This on-going tension mimicked the NMF’s divisions between its leadership and rank and file (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2004).
The SMF became an official organization in 1991 and regional chapters were set up in ten southern districts (de Alwis, 1998; de Mel, 2001, p. 244; Samuel, 2006). The immediate goals of the SMF were to locate and obtain the release of the disappeared who had no charges filed against them, as well as to obtain death certificates for those killed. For those killed, the
81 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
173 group demanded economic compensation for their relatives (de Mel, 2001). SMF members also demanded accountability of perpetrators of human rights abuses (Samuel, 2006). On 19
February 1991, the SMF’s first national convention was held in Colombo, followed by a rally, which was monitored by heavily armed state forces (de Mel, 2001; Samuel, 2003). About one hundred people—including diplomats, journalists and NGO professionals from abroad—joined, invited to garner international support for the SMF (de Alwis, 2004). It is unclear which specific
NGOs were invited, but presumably this would have included Amnesty International and similar human rights organizations. Malathi de Alwis is clear that the point was to attract international attention about the ongoing human rights abuses. The SLFP organizers emphasized the issues of Sinhalese mothers but also highlighted the suffering of mothers in the north and east, who were mainly Tamil and Muslim, and claimed that they hoped to create chapters in these locations (de Alwis 2004). De Alwis believes that this was empty rhetoric meant to create a good image abroad for the SMF as a multiethnic women’s peace group, a trope that has wide appeal among the international community (Kirby & Shepherd, 2016; Aharoni, 2017). However, like the NMF, no such international support materialized.
As the party in government, the UNP used state forces to surveil the SMF, and the government-controlled media stressed how the women of the SMF were being manipulated by the SLFP (de Alwis, 2004). After the SMF’s second rally, held on International Women’s Day
1991, news of the SMF spread widely among the populace. President Ranasinghe Premadasa felt compelled to address enforced disappearances, although he justified disappearing young people because of their mothers’ inadequacies. Premadasa asserted that the state was forced to take over parenting by bringing the young men to rehabilitation camps. The Minister of
174
Defense stepped up police surveillance of the SMF, a clear indication that the government perceived the women a threat (de Alwis, 1998; de Mel, 2001).
Like their northern counterparts, members of the SMF engaged in marches, protests and petitioning (Samuel, 2006). Uniquely, they participated in religious practices that called upon the gods to return their children and to enact punishments on perpetrators of the disappeared through invocations called deva kannalauwas.82 The women’s cursing was more effective at challenging the government than any other tactic used by Sri Lankan human rights activists in this period and was significant for being one of the only major actions that members of the SMF themselves developed (de Mel, 2001, p. 249; Samuel, 2006; de Alwis, 2001, p. supranote 14). The SMF received sympathy and attention by shaming the UNP government through this religious rhetoric. Moreover, there was little the government could do to prevent the women from participating in these religious acts because of widespread support for
Buddhism (de Mel, 2001). Notably, while cursing was part of Buddhist popular practice, it was a private act. The SMF’s collective public performance of these private acts politicized them
(Obeyesekere, 1975; de Alwis, 1998; 2012).
The first time the SMF engaged in religious cursing was in March and April 1992 during two human rights marches, in which they cursed Premadasa as personally responsible for the loss of their loved ones (de Alwis, 2001, p. supranote 14; de Mel, 2001). President Premadasa, concerned about possible misfortune befalling him because of the cursing, sought out a
82 Defined as a beseeching of the gods (de Alwis, 1997, p. 12; de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001).
175
Malayali (Hindu) priest83 for protection (de Alwis, 1997; 2001; de Mel, 2001). In a speech at
SMF event, former prime minister Srivamo Bandaranaike, of the SLFP, mocked Premadasa for participating in a ceremony meant to protect him from the curses, indicating that the SLFP was well-aware of the effect of the SMF’s curses. Despite gaining the SMF widespread sympathy and affecting the government, many from the Sinhalese Buddhist upper classes viewed sorcery as unrespectable for its association with folk religious practices. Others on the left and within feminist circles were concerned with the essentialized views of feminine irrationality associated with the emotionally charged practices, which some feared naturalized women’s ties to the spiritual and emotional (de Alwis, 2001). The SMF’s leader Dr. Saravanamuttu also disagreed with these religious practices, which she perceived as focused on revenge. Instead,
Saravanamuttu argued for the rule of law and justice through the court system (de Mel, 2001).
By the end of 1992, major activities of the SMF were over, although members engaged with many of the human rights movement’s events and assisted with Kumaratunga’s campaign during the 1994 presidential election (de Mel, 2001; Samuel, 2006). Kumaratunga was elected to the presidency in November 1994. She was the first woman president of Sri Lanka, following in the footsteps of her mother, the world’s first democratically elected woman prime minister.
Kumaratunga had associated herself with the SMF early on, and at a 1993 presidential campaign rally, identified herself as a member of the SMF since she too had lost loved ones— her father and her husband—to political violence. When Kumaratunga entered office, so did
83 Employing Hindu religious leaders is not out of the ordinary for Sinhalese Buddhists. Since the 1970s, there has been a Hinduization of Buddhism. These changes are a result of the shift starting in the 1970s as individuals moved out of villages into more urbanized spaces. Buddhists sought the more emotive practices that they learned from Hindus, whom they came into increasing contact with (Gombrich & Obeyesekere, 1988).
176 the co-founders of the SMF, MPs Rajapaksa and Samaraweera, as part of the government’s cabinet. This raised the question of whether the SMF needed to continue with collective action
(de Mel, 2001).
The rank and file may have possibly believed that Kumaratunga’s entrance into office meant she would carry out their most sought-after policies. This included economic compensation for relatives of the disappeared, investigative commissions into the disappearances and a peaceful end to the war. The group disbanded at the national level due to lack of interest by both the rank and file and the SLFP84 to continue organizing, although some members of the SMF appeared at the official government commissions that reported on the disappeared (de Alwis, 1998; Basu, 2005).85 As late as 2000, there were still active local SMF chapters in the district of Matara, a stronghold of the SLFP in the south, totaling some 3,000 members (de Mel, 2001).86 These chapters focused on their individual towns, working in close association with their local SLFP branch, looking to the SLFP for material resources such as housing and jobs (de Mel, 2001).
Kumaratunga followed through with the major promises of her presidential campaign, including economic reparations for families of the disappeared, official investigations into enforced disappearances and talks with the LTTE to negotiate for peace (Samuel, 2006). Even in the early 1990s, many members of the SMF were quite elderly.87 This might explain why many chose to exit collective organizing after Kumaratunga took quick action to implement the SMF’s
84 After their appointment as cabinet ministers in Kumaratunga’s government, both MPs Rajapaksa and Samaraweera stopped participating in the SMF, the very source of their newfound political stature (Basu, 2005). 85 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 86 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 87 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
177 major aims. While many in Sri Lanka’s human rights community were critical of the SMF for disbanding and ending their collective action, former members of the SMF did not stop discussing their missing loved ones. After government commissions proclaimed the innocence of those disappeared and given compensation to families, the women had been expected to
“move on.” However, former members of the SMF chose not to forget this period of history and against the government’s wishes, continued to speak regularly about the disappeared.88 I explore this in Chapter 7.
Remembering the Madres
Among those in domestic human rights and women’s movements, in the general public and in international human rights organizations, the Madres continue to be upheld as a powerful story about a group of ordinary housewives who—previously ignorant of politics— transformed themselves into movers and shakers on human rights, and in the process, helped to take down a brutal military government. Although the women could not save their children from the violence of the military regime, the Madres have furthered justice for those harmed by the regime and strengthened democracy within Argentina. I suggest that the Madres’s legacy has been widely remembered, which I support by outlining examples that speak to the group’s memory in the human rights movement, women’s movement, general public and international human rights organizations.
88 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
178
Human rights movement
When Argentine society was largely in favor of forgetting the period of state terrorism in
1983 following the transition to democracy, the Madres refused to accept this. The women worked to both promote remembering the history of the military dictatorship and to demand to hold all perpetrators accountable for their crimes against humanity, even when this was deeply unpopular with the general public (Agosín, 1990; Bouvard, 1994). According to Barbara
Sutton (2010), the activism of both the Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo drew the world’s attention to the period of state terrorism. Sutton claims that the group’s work since then has cultivated:
a collective language and understanding of human rights, memory, identity, and justice
that are still crucial in contemporary Argentina and that have served as a source of
inspiration and strategy for [other] social movements (p. 23).
The impact of the Madres on language and understanding of collective memory is encapsulated in the rallying cry of “Memory, Truth and Justice,” which defines the contemporary Argentine human rights movement. It calls for the regular tellings of the traumas incurred in the period of state terrorism, as well as demands compensating—to the extent possible—those harmed under the military dictatorship. This is to be done by trying those responsible for crimes against humanity and offering reparations to survivors and families of the victims (Vaisman, 2014). In the early 1980s, Argentina was widely viewed as a “pariah state,” given its abysmal human rights record under the junta (Sikkink, 2008). Yet today the country is recognized as “an innovative global leader in its responses to human rights abuses”
179 through its implementation of national-level “truth commissions and trials” that were
“designed to voice crimes of the past in a public manner” (Gates-Madsen, 2016, p. 6).
This move from pariah to leader in transitional justice would not have been possible without the work of the Madres, in conjunction with other domestic human rights groups, who constantly disrupted taboos against speaking about the past that defined the country in the initial postconflict years (Gates-Madsen, 2016). In 2019, I attended Argentina’s activities for the
National Day of Remembrance—known as the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice—that take place in Buenos Aires around the Plaza de Mayo. This national holiday marks the start of the dictatorship on 24 March 1976 to honor the disappeared and to remember this period as a way to avoid future abuses of democracy and human rights. Tanya Wadhwa (2019) suggests that over 1 million people were in attendance that day in 2019, a fact that I can personally attest to from having been there to witness the jam-packed streets. At various street corners, groups rallied—accompanied by musicians on a variety of musical instruments—with songs and chants as they stood with their political party or civic organization or choice. Others carried signs and photos of the disappeared, serving as living memorials to the period of state terrorism. Couples, groups of friends and families milled about, seeking out the street art and artifacts of memory that vendors set up on blankets around the area, many of which featured images of the pañuelos of the Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo. Speakers on a makeshift stage near the Plaza de Mayo shared passionate speeches throughout the afternoon and surely long after I left that evening. Although the day commemorated the darkness of a military regime responsible for the deaths of thousands, there was a feeling of hope. That day
180 not only recalled the horrors of the past, but it celebrated political participation that supported grassroots democracy and respect for human rights.89 (See Photo 1).
Photo 1: Crowds in Buenos Aires, 24 March 2019, near the Plaza de Mayo (photo by the author).
Argentina’s robust human rights movement slowly blossomed during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, although its roots date back to the early twentieth century (Barros,
2013; Keck & Sikkink, 1998).90 Latin America’s human rights tradition was lost during the widespread military regimes of the Cold War, including in Argentina. However, the work of
89 For the first time since the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice was initially celebrated in 2006, the 2020 commemoration activities were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic (BBC, 2006; Alcoba, 2020). 90 In the early 1900s, lawyers throughout Latin America promoted a legalistic tradition steeped in human rights that looked upon international law to preserve sovereignty and noninterference from outside forces, as well as to promote individual rights. After World War II, many Latin American lawyers and other professionals participated in the formation of the burgeoning international human rights regime, notably with the Bogotá Conference in 1948, which led to the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, a document that preceded the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Keck & Sikkink, 1998).
181 actors like the Madres, which included other human rights movement actors, who mobilized around human rights during the dictatorship, helped make Argentina’s domestic human rights movement “central…[to] the Argentinean political context” (Barros, 2013, p. 81). Under the military regime, there was a shift in the human rights movement from an elite-based movement dominated by lawyers to a movement that included grassroots actors. This is attributed to the dictatorship’s ban on political party, labor union and other traditional forms of organizing. The closing of these typical avenues left space for the entrance of community organizations such as the Madres to enter movement work (Waylen, 1994). Throughout the period of state terrorism, the Madres played a major oppositional force to the military dictatorship. They promoted human rights by challenging the state’s narrative that there were no disappeared, or that anyone disappeared was a terrorist and therefore justifiably detained, tortured and/or killed (Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2006).
In the postconflict period, the two branches of the Madres went about human rights promotion in different ways. As noted, Línea Fundadora members focused on gathering physical evidence of crimes committed by the dictatorship—by uncovering mass graves and using DNA testing to identify victims of the military regime—to promote accountability
(Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2004). The Línea Fundadora branch also participated in creating parks, museums and other artifacts to attest to the period of state terrorism, including the Memory
Museum, formerly the infamous Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA), one of the most violent concentration camps, and the Monument to the Victims of State Sponsored
Terrorism, known colloquially as Memory Park (Bosco, 2004; Burchianti, 2004; Wilson, 2016;
Lessa & Druliolle, 2011). In contrast, the Asociación claim that their children are not dead but
182 rather live on inside their “permanently pregnant” bodies, as living memorials of embodied memory (Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Bosco, 2004, p. 388). Asociación Madres suggest that anything less than the return of their children alive would harm human rights since—in their view—it would be tacitly accepting the murders and other human rights crimes committed by the government (Bevernage, 2012).
Since the 2010s, the branches of the Madres began to align, especially with the entrance of Macri’s right-wing government in 2015. Macri’s administration promoted the “two devils theory”—that both the military and those harmed by the military in the dictatorship were equally guilty of violence—and was generally dismissive of the human rights violations in the period of state terrorism. Macri stated that “only” 9,000 people were killed, implying that it was time to put the past behind Argentina (Politi, 2017). In a moment of unity, both lines of the
Madres proclaimed their opposition to Macri as part of their main statements during the 40th- anniversary celebration of their organization in April 2017 (Iricibar, 2017; Goñi, 2017; McCay,
2017). Notably, both lines still march separately from one another at the weekly protests in the
Plaza de Mayo.
The Madres did not singularly institute the remembering of the period of state terrorism. However, their efforts have been central to this aspect of Argentina’s human rights movement. Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (HIJOS, Children for
Identity and Justice, against Oblivion and Silence) is associated with the Madres. Inspired by the
Madres, about 70 young people who were the children of the disappeared founded HIJOS in
1995. Within a year, it was a national group, with some 500 members spread out across the country. HIJOS activists have framed the period of state terrorism as a genocide, a term that
183 has become solidly rooted in popular thinking and in Argentina’s legal system (Feitlowitz, 1998;
O’Donnell, 2009; Seidel, 2011; A Time to Fight: HIJOS Speaks Out for the Disappeared of
Argentina, 2013). Like the Madres, HIJOS engages with birth as a metaphor, claiming that through their activism, they give birth to their disappeared parents (Werth, 2010). When the
Madres are gone, it is the next generation—as exemplified by HIJOS—who will continue the work of remembering the period of state terrorism.
Women’s movements91
Although Argentina’s diverse women’s movement can be divided into those who embrace and those who reject an emphasis on women’s roles as wives, mothers and/or homemakers, the Madres are nevertheless widely appreciated by the women’s movement for their contribution to human rights (Sutton, 2010). The Argentine women’s movement took off in the mid-1970s thanks mainly to women on the political left, mostly middle-class professionals, who experienced the marginalization of women’s issues in leftist parties. Under military dictatorships across 1970s Latin America, feminists found support for their work as part of the democratic opposition to military rule by strategically linking opposition to authoritarianism to women’s issues. Latin American military regimes emphasized women’s maternal duties and the importance of the family. Feminists derided this as “authoritarianism in
91 When I use the term women’s movements, I refer to feminist organizations as well as groups that organize on behalf of women’s betterment but forego the feminist label. There are distinctions concerning women’s roles in social movements, among women’s movements, feminist movements and “women in movements.” Women in movements refers to women’s involvement in non-women’s social movements such as class-based, religious- based or nationalist movements (Beckwith, 2000; 2007). Feminist movements are a subset of women’s movements, which includes nonfeminst women’s movements as well (Basu, 1995).
184 the family,” under which women faced injustices in the domestic sphere, often due to expectations around motherhood (Jaquette J. S., 1989, p. 5).
While many Argentine women’s groups in the 1970s shut down or temporarily ceased organizing in the politically oppressive environment of the dictatorship, some continued holding regular activities. As the military regime loosened restrictions in the early 1980s, the
Argentine Feminist Organization, a reconstituted version of the Front for Women’s Rights, which was an umbrella group of feminist organizations that had shuttered at the start of the dictatorship, began to lobby political parties to address women’s issues. Politicians spoke about wanting to improve women’s conditions but failed to offer many concrete policies (Feijoo,
1994). There were, however, important changes in women’s rights in the postconflict period.
Argentina’s newly democratic government created the National Women’s Council as part of a national women’s machinery.92 Additionally, both reproductive rights and domestic violence entered public discourse as the transition to democracy increased the salience of human rights and pushed the concept in new directions to embrace not only political rights, but also economic and social rights (Feijoo, 1994; Kardam, 2004; Cosgrove, 2010; Pozzi, Nigra, &
Lopreite, 2015).93
92 National women’s machineries advocate for pro-women policies on issues that affect women, including gender- based violence, the feminization of poverty, women’s health and reproductive rights, and family laws on women’s rights in marriage, women’s access to divorce as well as rights to child custody and inheritance (Stetson & Mazur, 1995; Hawkesworth, 2012). 93 Due to neoliberalization, the National Women’s Council ultimately abandoned its focus on gender equality to provide basic social services. Nevertheless, during the 1994 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the National Women’s Council played an important role in increasing women’s participation in political life and its bureaucrats helped to pass national laws against domestic violence (Pozzi, Nigra, & Lopreite, 2015).
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Civil society in the 1990s and 2000s saw new growth and greater women’s participation, and in 1993, thanks to women’s rights activists, gender quotas that mandated women compose at least 30% of all political parties’ candidate lists at the national legislative level went into effect (Jones, 1996; Cosgrove, 2010). Since 2015, a grassroots feminist campaign known as
#NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess) has drawn attention to femicide in Argentina, a form of gender- based violence in which women are killed for being women. The movement is supported by millions across Argentina and has spread to other Latin American countries (G, 2018; Palmer,
2017). Starting in 2016, #NiUnaMenos began to take on economic issues due to rising inequality in the country and growing national debt (Nowell, 2019). To highlight these issues, Argentine feminists have held National Women’s strikes, first in October 2016, then subsequently each
March, in March 2017, 2018 and 2019, wherein women collectively engage in work stoppages.
This includes stoppages of not only their labor in the formal and informal economies but in emotional labor as well. This has “revitalized political struggles in the country,” inspiring greater participation from citizens to become involved in politics (Gago & Mason-Deese, 2019, pp. 203,
202).
#NiUnaMenos also led to a renewed push for access to abortion in Argentina. The pro- choice movement adopted a green pañuelo to represent women’s right to abortion in homage of the Madres. The green pañuelo evokes the iconic white pañuelos that the Madres have worn for decades, which have been described as “an enduring legacy in Argentina” and “a symbol of female courage” (Nugent, 2018; Conn, 2018). For their part, the Madres have been outspoken in support of abortion (G, 2018). In summer 2018, Argentina came closer than ever to legalizing abortion within the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy, a move that would have empowered
186 women to decide when and if to become a mother (Politi & Londoño, 2018). The Madres joined the 2018 rallies for Argentina’s pro-choice movement, the Campaña por el aborto legal, seguro y gratuito (Campaign for Safe, Free and Legal Abortion), as both lines of the Madres support women’s right to abortion (Telesur, 2018; Watson, 2018; Sutton & Borland, 2013). Línea
Fundadora president Nora Cortiñas asserted that women’s rights over their bodies falls in line with the Madres’s broader mission of the “struggle for freedom” and president of the
Asociación, Hebe de Bonafini, has spoken at abortion rights conferences, defining women’s access to abortion as supporting life (Sutton & Borland, 2013, p. 202).
In terms of movement scholarship, work on the Madres could fall into both human rights and women’s movements camps. However, more gender studies scholars have taken an interest in the Madres. A cursory glance at English language only94 scholarly and activist literature indicates that a staggering amount has been written on the Madres, particularly the group’s origins and oppositional efforts to the military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. The group is often included in standard chronicles of Argentina’s period of state of terror that focus on enforced disappearances.95 Throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s works on the Madres emphasized the period of state terrorism, although notable scholarship, including Marguerite
94 As a non-Spanish speaker, I am unable to extensively document the vast literature available to the Spanish- speaking world. However, a simple search on Google scholar for “madres de plaza de mayo” results in well over 100 journal articles, books and other written sources in the Spanish language in the first fifteen pages of results, with a total of nineteen pages of results. While conducting my fieldwork, I saw that the Asociación sold several books about its history at the Plaza de Mayo during their weekly march. 95 For example: Simpson & Bennett, 1985; Femenía & Gil, 1987; Schirmer, 1987; 1994; Agosín, 1990; Fisher, 1989; Navarro, 2001; Taylor, 1997; Feitlowitz, 1998; Lessa & Druliolle, 2011; Sheinin, 2012; Finchelstein, 2014; McCormack, 2014.
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Bouvard’s Revolutionizing Motherhood (1994) and Diana Taylor’s Disappearing Acts (1997), to varying degrees, incorporated the group’s activities in the 1990s.96
More recently, Fernando Bosco (2001; 2004; 2006; 2007) extensively analyzed the activities of the Madres from the 1990s through 2000s, and Barbara Sutton’s Bodies in Crisis
(2010) briefly documented both branches’ work around the collapse of the national economy in
2001 through much of the decade of the 2000s. In general, far less has been written about the
Madres since the 2000s, especially in the 2010s. Nevertheless, there has been continued interest in the Madres even as some of this recent work—such as the reader Women and
Gender in Modern Latin America: Historical Sources and Interpretations, edited by Pamela S.
Murray (2014)—consists of excerpts of Taylor and Bouvard’s work from the 1990s (Kurtz, 2010;
Sutton, 2010; Shepherd, 2010; Bevernage, 2012; McCormack, 2014; Murray, 2014).
In terms of the women’s movement, as measured both through activism and scholarship, the Madres have had a substantial impact. Although there were periods when the group received criticism from Latin American area studies feminists, there has been a shift towards appreciation (Feijoo, 1994; Jaquette J. S., 1994; Sutton, 2010). The admiration for the
Madres by today’s younger generation of feminists and women’s rights supporters was suggested to me by the many young people I witnessed dressed in a Madres shirt or wearing white pañuelo earrings, and marching with the Madres at their weekly rally around the Plaza de
Mayo. I cannot speak for Argentine women’s rights activists. But in Buenos Aires, I felt that
96 (Radcliffe, 1993; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Mellibovsky, 1997; Bosco, 2001; 2004; 2006; Howe, 2006; Kurtz, 2010; Shepherd, 2010; Bevernage, 2012; McCormack, 2014).
188 there was enduring gratefulness for these women who never stopped their political work that would ensure transitional justice for Argentina.
General public
Following the 1995 post-memory boom in Argentina, which seeks to recall the period of state terrorism, plays, books, films, and television shows speaking to this history entered the mainstream. Even before this shift, plays and television programs were seeking to work through processing the military dictatorship (Werth, 2010; Gates-Madsen, 2016). The Madres have been featured in some of these popular cultural histories. Griselda Gambaro’s play Antígona furiosa
(Furious Antigone), which debuted in 1986—long before most of Argentine society was ready to consider the recent past—reimagined the ancient Greek story of Antigone through the telling of the Madres (Werth, 2010). Brenda Werth (2010) suggests that the play provided a space for an emotional reaction, which had been denied to citizens during the 1985 trials of the top generals of the military dictatorship and the Argentine truth commission of CONADEP (see Chapter 3). In these official spaces, the state had worked to purposefully exclude emotions (p. 35).
The Madres’s legacy is felt deeply in and around the city of Buenos Aires, particularly the Plaza de Mayo. The historic square is decorated with visual reminders of the women’s presence, with white pañuelos painted around the circular path and on nearby markers. (See
Photo 2). In other locations around the city, street art—an important part of urban Argentina’s artistic and protest landscape—depicts the iconic pañuelos and other visuals of the group. One such example shows a hovering pañuelo above graffiti taggings in a park in the upper-class
Palermo district. In a powerful street mural in the working-class neighborhood of La Boca, a
189 mammoth depiction of a Madres figure—drawn with rippling chest muscles, outsized powerful arms and an angry open mouth—is represented with distinctly indigenous facial features and warm brown skin. This same mural features other depictions of members of the Madres, alongside protest signs, one of which resounds “Never forget, never forgive,” and images of the disappeared (Pineda, 2018). Such re-appropriations by movement actors of the Madres for their own purposes suggest their relevance to human rights issues. However, it also speaks to the popularity of the Madres as symbols of Argentina itself.
Photo 2: Marker near the Plaza de Mayo (March 21, 2019, Buenos Aires (photo by the author).
The array of pañuelos used by social movements today—adapted from the white pañuelo of the Madres—attest to the enduring legacy of the group in terms of a visual representation in popular culture. The Madres have led to a “pañuelo-ization” of Argentina politics. Scarves of varying colors are adopted by social movements to represent their causes.
Notably, not all of these causes support human rights, as the orange scarves of the anti- abortion movement attest (Conn, 2018). What the pañuelo-ization of movement politics in
190 contemporary Argentina suggests is a deep ingraining of the Madres into the “doing” of politics today. I witnessed this as I walked around the city of Buenos Aires where numerous women— and some men—sported a pañuelo on their wrists, sometimes tied in their hair or looped around a book bag or purse. Most of what I saw were green pañuelos, a defiant gesture in spring 2019 given the bitter disappointment for the women’s movement, after losing the
Congressional vote for legal access to abortion in summer 2018.
Even globally, the Madres have impacted popular culture. Pop songs by U2 and Sting97 memorialize the mothers of the disappeared across Latin America, including the Argentine mothers. Likewise, the Academy Award-nominated film Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo celebrates the women’s achievements and was intended for an English-language based audience (Blaustein & Portillo, 1985). Merchandise of the Madres is ubiquitous in Buenos
Aires, some sold by the group, some by other vendors. However, even outside of Argentina, various artefacts attest to the popularity of the group. I overview several of these in Chapter 6.
The Madres have been arguably culturally institutionalized in Argentina. What does a young person today mean to convey by carrying a water bottle decorated with images of the
Madres? It might suggest their association with leftist politics, their support for human rights and their desire for social change. I think it may also operate as a symbol of Buenos Aires and
Argentina, a space where even after there are no longer any members of the Madres, the group will live on in popular culture.
97 The globally known Irish band U2’s The Joshua Tree album, released in March 1987, included the song “Mothers of the Disappeared” (U2, 2018). The British pop musician Sting released the “They Dance Alone” on his October 1987 album Nothing Like the Sun (Sting, 2018).
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International human rights organizations
The Madres gained attention from international human rights organizations, becoming visible outside of Argentina. They were known to Amnesty International, the UN, and the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States, among others, regularly meeting with members of these organizations, particularly after 1978
(Bouvard, 1994). The group was regularly mentioned in coverage of the ongoing events in
Argentina in major newspapers such as The New York Times. The Madres were also known to political elites in the US and Europe, including Lisbeth Den Uyl, married to Netherland’s then prime minister. Uyi founded the Support Group for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in
Argentina (SAAM), which provided funding for the Madres (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997).
In 1980, the Madres were so well-known among those in international human rights organizations that they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Although they did not win, the group did receive the Peace Prize of the People from the Norwegian government. Through the Nobel Peace Prize nomination and Peace Prize of the People award, the group became even more widely known among government officials and professionals working in human rights
(Bouvard, 1994).
The Madres continued to receive some coverage from international human rights organizations in the postconflict period, particularly in the 1990s (Death Threats and
Harassment, 1991; Death Threats, 1993; Death Threats, 1995; Argentina: Fear for Safety /
Death Threats: Hebe Bonafini, 1999; Network: The UN Women's Newsletter, 2003; Argentina
Convicts Former Military Officials for ‘Dirty War’ Crimes, 2011). By the 2010s, there was a growing memorialization of the group within international human rights circles, particularly the
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UN. In 2011, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the work of the organization against the dictatorship in a speech entitled “Space for Memory and for the
Promotion and Defence of Human Rights” and at a speech given at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, “Argentina and the World” (Secretary-General, at Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ Memorial,
Says World Can No Longer Have Safe Havens for Violators of International Human Rights,
Humanitarian Law, 2011; Address at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - "Argentina and the World",
2011). In 2013, members of the Madres participated in a UN panel that focused on enforced disappearances, showing that the UN still includes the group in its activities (Speakers Deplore
‘Total Impunity’ as Committee on Enforced Disappearances Holds Second Meeting of States
Parties, 2013).
This evidence clearly indicates that the Madres were not only visible to international human rights groups near the start of their organizing but are additionally regularly recalled by these organizations, showing that their memory remains strong among those in international human rights circles. What I wish to stress foremost is that the Madres were visible to international human rights organizations. To be remembered, political motherhood must first be seen. For Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front, they were largely not visible to international human rights organizations. I explore this juxtaposition between the Madres and Mothers’ Front at the international level in Chapter 6.
Forgetting the Mothers’ Front
While Argentina’s human rights and women’s movements regularly recall—and include the participation of—the Madres, there are far fewer examples of this in Sri Lanka with the
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Mothers’ Front. In part, there are major differences in how the human rights and women’s movements exist in Sri Lanka as compared to Argentina. While human rights have a long history in Latin America, and the women’s movement has been linked with human rights, in Sri Lanka both movements are seen as foreign and problematic in terms of loyalty to one’s ethnic group
(Basu, 2003; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; de Alwis, 2004; Orjuela, 2008). Additionally, while sightings of the Madres are found throughout Buenos Aires, in Colombo, there are no equivalent sightings that attest to the Mothers’ Front. Nor do there appear to be any artifacts of the
Mothers’ Front in popular culture as there with the Madres, most notably with the iconic pañuelo. Finally, in terms of international human rights organizations, there was never any acknowledgment of the Mothers’ Front by these groups as the Mothers’ Front did not apparently resonate with them. It is on this basis that I suggest that the group remains marginalized in terms of remembrance, both domestically and globally. In this section, I follow the same groups as for the Madres, including human rights movements, women’s movements, the general public and international organizations.
Human rights movement
In Sri Lanka, the human rights movement is active but small and elite-dominated
(Wickramasinghe N. , 2001; Orjuela, 2008). Due to the civil war and continued ethnic strife, most human rights organizations have historically focused on—and continue to focus on— peace, which also includes a significant portion of women’s groups (Samuel, 2006; Orjuela,
2008). The Sri Lankan human rights movement faces detractors who accuse those working in these organizations of being “terrorists” for supporting the rights of all Sri Lankans as opposed to only those of their own ethnic communities. There are also suggestions that those in the
194 human rights movement are brain-washed by the West for receiving funding from donor agencies outside the country, which is the main support for most civic organizations in Sri Lanka
(Orjuela, 2008, p. 2). Camilla Orjuela (2008) argues there are two main limitations of the domestic human rights movement in Sri Lanka. First, the conflict over ethnicity has given rise to discourses that promote militaristic nationalism that deem those outside of their ethnic communities the “enemy,” making it difficult for civic organizations to define a shared target to mobilize around. Second, most ordinary citizens face tremendous burdens in managing their daily lives, which leaves little time for civic engagement (Orjuela, 2008, p. 4).
Even in the aftermath of the civil war, which ended in 2009, many Sri Lankans continue to fear speaking out—much less organizing against—human rights abuses. Postconflict Sri
Lanka, particularly under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime that ended in 2015, saw little accountability for wartime injustices and political repression remained widespread (Höglund &
Orjuela, 2016). While the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have organized on behalf of human rights since 2017, even under the more progressive government of Maithripala Sirisena (2015-
2019), human rights abuses continued, most notably in terms of continued disappearances
(Fernando R. , 2016; Dibbert, 2017; Disappeared, 2018; Fernando R. , 2018). The human rights movement will face even greater challenges now under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who rode into power through Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in late 2019 and is well-known for supporting militarism and chauvinism against minority groups (Ramachandran, 2019).
While Samuel Kumudini (2006) documents the impact of women’s peace groups— including the Mothers’ Front—on human rights, she points out that this history has been invisible in most accounts of human rights in Sri Lanka. One noteworthy difference in the
195 scholarship on the Madres and Mothers’ Front is that while most studies on Argentina’s period of terrorism regularly mention the Madres, in contrast, I have seen no studies on Sri Lanka’s civil war that mention the Mothers’ Front outside of gender studies scholarship. There are certainly human rights activists, such as Brito Fernando, who are well acquainted with the
Mothers’ Front. However, simply because the human rights movement remains small, this history has not been given what I see as its proper dues in terms of mass recognition.
Women’s movements
Sri Lanka’s women’s movements arose in tandem with national independence— achieved in 1948—wherein women’s liberation and national liberation were seen by many as connected struggles (Jayawardena, 1986; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Additionally, other women’s involvement in women’s movements developed through participation in labor organizing or middle-class leftist parties (Jayawardena, 1986). The diversity of perspectives in Sri Lanka necessitates a reference to women’s movements. However, for ease of discussion, I will use the term women’s movement. Despite being one of the earliest countries to win women’s suffrage—and even boasting the world’s first woman prime minister—women have had a marginal presence in Sri Lankan politics, in both government and civil society (Jayawardena,
1986; Pinto Jayawardena & Kodikara, 2002). Feminists have been working to change this, even as some question whether there is a women’s movement in Sri Lanka. Carmen
Wickremagamage (1999) argues that the lack of mass participation by ordinary women suggests that there is no domestic women’s movement. Admittedly, Sri Lanka’s women’s movement is small and dominated by elites, yet it has a long history (Jayawardena, 1986;
Thiruchandran S. , 2012).
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There has been a diversity of activities in Sri Lanka’s women’s movement, which is attributed to the country’s divisions around ethnicity, religious, class and regional issues. Such divisions in the women’s movement were exacerbated as a result of the civil war that began in
1983, which made travel across the country dangerous and collaborative efforts therefore difficult. Moreover, wartime conditions took distinct characteristics depending on the region, which required locally specific strategies by local women’s movement actors. However, the UN
Decade for Women (1975-1985) did bring shared ideas to Sri Lanka’s women’s movement and gave rise to many of the country’s current women’s organizations, including the Women and
Media Collective, the Women’s Research and Education Centre and the Centre for Women’s
Research. This international work also pressured the government to set up the Women’s
Bureau in 1978, part of a national women’s machinery to promote women’s issues
(Thiruchandran S. , 2012).
Part of the reason for the small size of Sri Lanka’s women’s movement is the lack of state funding for women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which has led to a reliance on outside donor funding. Many Sri Lankans perceive feminism to be Western, a significant factor in a postcolonial country. This is exacerbated by women’s NGOs’ reliance on outside funding as well as these organizations' widespread use of English, even as in a country divided by language, English is spoken to cross ethnic barriers (Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Also, women’s rights are deemed by many to be detrimental to the family and there is a widespread view that feminism is anti-men (de Alwis, 2004). Furthermore, Sri Lanka lacks practices such as sati or purdah and holds high scores for women on human development indicators, including access to healthcare and education as well as a high life expectancy. Such factors have made it easy for
197 many to argue that Sri Lankan women do not need feminism as they are already doing well
(Jayawardena, 1986; Kodikara, 2016). Chulani Kodikara (2016) has pointed out that in international development circles, the Sri Lankan government is well known for claiming that Sri
Lankan women are “empowered” and “ahead of other South Asian women” thanks to high levels of literacy and low maternal mortality rates. This rhetoric reinforces the idea that Sri
Lankan women do not need a women’s movement (p. 132).
Currently, Sri Lanka’s women’s movement is working to meet the needs of war-affected women—particularly within female-headed households and among female ex-combatants— and in deriding ethnoreligious nationalism, notably Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism (WMC, 2016;
2014). While the Tamil community is deemed problematic by Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists, it is increasingly the Muslim community under the greatest scrutiny (Groundviews, Breaking Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State, 2017). The 2019 Easter Sunday attacks in Colombo on a Christian church and three hotels frequented by tourists carried out by
Muslim extremists has been detrimental for the country’s Muslim community. This is especially true for Muslim women who are under pressure to adhere to gendered ideals that supposedly reflect the values of the Muslim community. This revolves around women’s dress, even as the government has banned items commonly worn by some Muslim women as a measure against terrorism (Isadeen, 2019).98 This mimics gendered pressures Tamil women faced from the LTTE during the civil war (Maunaguru, 2009; de Mel, 2003).
98 In recent years, many Islamic preachers on the island have proclaimed it mandatory for Muslim women to not only cover their heads but their faces as well (Isadeen, 2019). Following the Easter Sunday attacks, the government used emergency law to ban “face coverings” in public. Although the niqab or burka were not named in specific, these items were likely the law’s target (BBC, Sri Lanka Attacks: Face Coverings Banned after Easter Bloodshed, 2019).
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Although there are regional connections among South Asian feminists, these are not as strong as compared to Latin America, and certainly, there is nothing equivalent to South
America and the Caribbean’s Encuentros, which are regional conferences that regularly bring together women’s rights advocates (de Mel, 2001; Thiruchandran S. , 2012; de Alwis, Feminism,
2004). Likewise, there is a difference in regional understandings of feminism in Latin America versus South Asia. Amrita Basu (2003) has noted that Latin America’s women’s movements’ participation in transitions to democracy helped women’s rights to been seen as part of broader human rights movements. This eased feminism’s perception in the region as not being completely “foreign.” Compared to Sri Lankan feminists, Argentine feminists have experienced far less criticism that their work is harmful to so-called “traditional” values (Jaquette J. S., 1989;
Feijoo, 1994). Sri Lanka remains a country defined by ethnic conflict, which places pressure on women to represent their communities by staying loyal to the community’s values and staying away from outside influences.
In terms of scholarship, it has been only feminist and gender scholars and researchers who have documented (and therefore remembered) the Mothers’ Front. Only four major scholars of the Mothers’ Front—Malathi de Alwis, Neloufer de Mel, Kumudini Samuel and Selvy
Thiruchandran—have written extensively about the two branches of the group.99 While no book-length monograph is devoted singularly to the Mothers’ Front, Malathi de Alwis has spent over a decade chronicling the SMF in multiple journal articles and book chapters. De Alwis’s thinking of the SMF has moved from a receptive interpretation of the branch to an increasingly
99 (Thiruchandran S. 1997; 2012; Samuel 1998; 2003; 2006; de Alwis 1997; 1998; 2001; 2012; 2013; de Mel 2001; 2003).
199 critical view of the exclusivity of the SMF and its at least tacit reinforcement of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism (de Alwis, 2004; de Alwis, 2013). Based on my interview with de Alwis, this remains her point of view. De Alwis is troubled by political motherhood as a form of mobilization and sees connections to it and the Sinhalese hegemony associated with the SMF that put Tamil women’s issues to the side.100 Another long-time scholar is Kumudini Samuel, who has suggested that it was the use of political motherhood that led to the demise of both branches of the Mothers’ Front. However, when I spoke with Samuel, she spoke highly of the impact made by both branches on human rights (Samuel, 2006).101 Likewise, Selvy Thiruchandran
(1997; 2012) has been consistently appreciative of the efforts of the Mothers’ Front and seeks to promote their legacy. These differences of recalling the Mothers’ Front speak to the diversity of the Sri Lankan feminist community, meaning that there is no one feminist perspective on the
Mothers’ Front.
In September 2017, I traveled to Colombo expecting to find archival records on at least the SMF at Colombo-based research libraries, including the Women’s Education and Research
Centre and the Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR), as well as other research locations, including the expansive library at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Over the weeks I plied these collections, which included studies unavailable outside the island, the CENWOR research librarian uncovered a number of magazines, journals and books related to the
Mothers’ Front, on issues such as women’s participation in civil society and government. Only some of these sources mentioned the Mothers’ Front, although typically in less than two pages,
100 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 101 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
200 sometimes only a line or two (Wickremagamage, 1999; Tambiah, 2002; Pinto Jayawardena &
Kodikara, 2002; Menon, 2004; Wickramasinghe M. , 2009).102
All of this is to say that among today’s women’s movement actors, the Mothers’ Front are nowhere to be “seen.” This is not unexpected for women’s peace activism, both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. What semblance is there of the US Women Strike for Peace in popular culture today, or that of the Greenham Common women’s peace work in the UK? Likewise, it is obviously easier for the Madres to be remembered by the Argentine women’s movement since the group remains active. However, it is curious that even among women’s rights advocates, the legacy of the Mothers’ Front is not well remembered since the Mothers’ Front was an all- women’s group and one branch, the NMF, offered arguably feminist views and the other, the
SMF, entailed a mobilization of some 25,000 women in a country that has little participation in civil society (de Mel 2001). I experienced this in discussions with some of the activists I met in
Colombo. The highly knowledgeable librarian charged with maintaining the Centre for Women’s
Research library collections was more than qualified for her position, having broad familiarity on a range of Sri Lankan women’s issues. However, this librarian had not heard of the Mothers’
102 Carmen Wickremagamage’s (1999) “Sri Lankan Organisations for Women” essay mentions the Mothers’ Front in a few lines in terms of its neglect by the women’s movement in Sri Lanka, criticizing feminists for ignoring the massive grassroots organizing of the Mothers’ Front. Yasmin Tambiah’s (2002) edited volume Women and Governance in South Asia includes Kishali Pinto Jayawardena and Chulani Kodikara’s (2002) essay on Sri Lankan women, which devotes about two pages to the NMF and SMF, more than other comparable sources. Tambiah also mentions the group in one line in her introductory essay to the volume, commenting that the SMF did not turn to the “fatherly” state to beg for welfare support, but rather challenged the state for harming its citizens, which she insinuates was a progressive move (p. 21). Ritu Menon (2004) mentioned the Mothers’ Front in a chapter about South Asian women’s participation in peace activism, although only in a few brief remarks regarding the SMF’s use of ritualized cursing and the inability of both the NMF and SMF to evolve into cross-ethnic organizations. Finally, Maithree Wickramasinghe’s (2009) essay “Imported or Indigenous Knowledges? Feminist Ontological/Epistemological Politics,” which explores feminist internationalism in Sri Lanka, attributes the Mothers’ Front to a local mobilization that defies “distinctions between public and private,” although she says nothing more on the group (p. 268).
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Front. My experiences are by no means a systematic assessment of women’s movement’s actors. But not everyone I encountered at women’s organizations were familiar with the group, something that I find telling.
General public
In stark contrast to the Madres, the Mothers’ Front has not been memorialized in public art and popular culture. Admittedly, there are no ongoing weekly marches to remind the public of the women since both branches of the Mothers’ Front have long ceased operations. Yet there are no specific symbols of the Mothers’ Front taken up by today’s Tamil Mothers of the
Disappeared, despite this group’s same use of political motherhood to press the government into returning their disappeared loved ones or least giving them information on what happened to them. These all point to a forgetting by the general public.
Domestically, the legacy of the Mothers’ Front remains largely unknown outside of Sri
Lanka’s women’s and human rights movements. My friend and host in Sri Lanka, a well- educated engineer who keeps abreast of current events, recalled only a vague memory of the
Mothers’ Front, and nothing specific about the group. In contrast to symbols of the Madres adorning Buenos Aires, there are no enduring visual signs of the Mothers’ Front in Sri Lanka.
Likewise, no pop singers, filmmakers or visual artists have memorialized the Mothers’ Front in popular culture.
The media too appears to have largely forgotten the groups. For example, the leftist publication Groundviews, one of the few sources to extensively cover protests by the Tamil
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Mothers of the Disappeared103 who have conducted daily protests since January 2017, has failed to note how these women’s actions recall the Mothers’ Front.104 The only references I could find that note its resemblance to the Mothers’ Front is a piece by Team Roar, a South
Asian news source, entitled “Mothers of the Disappeared and Civic Responsibility” (Roar, 2017) and a blog post regarding reproductive justice in Sri Lanka by Sachini Perera on Resurj –
Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice’s website (Perera, 2018). While it is not at all unusual for women’s peace activism to fade into obscurity among the general public, it is nevertheless striking to see how beloved the Madres are among much of the Argentine public while in Sri
Lanka, there is no sign at all of the Mothers’ Front. In this sense, the Madres are exceptional rather than the norm.
International human rights organizations
International human rights organizations—such as the UN, Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International—did nothing substantive to support either branch of the Mothers’ Front during their organizing. This rendered the group largely invisible at the international level. In the period since, there have likewise been no activities to promote the legacy of the Mothers’
Front within these organizations. This was despite both the NMF and SMF’s efforts to capture
103 Many mainstream Sinhala and English newspapers have not covered the group in-depth (Fernando R. , 2018). 104 News, Mothers of the Disappeared Should be Given Redress, 2017; News, Mothers of the Missing Fight On, 2017; Fernando R. , 2017; Groundviews, One Year in Kilinochchi: Tracking State Commitments against Protests by Families of the Disappeared, 2018; Illanperuma, 2017; Brief, Joint Statement in Solidarity with Families of the Disappeared Protesting Across the North-East, 2017; Brief, Sri Lanka’s Conflict-Afflicted Women: Dealing with the Legacy of War, 2017; Brief, Facing Sri Lanka’s Ghosts; With Thousands Still Missing, Sri Lanka’s Postwar Progress Comes to a Halt, 2017; Brief, ’They Promised Us Answers’: Justice Delayed for the Disappeared, 2017; Leader, 2017; Roar, 2017; Wickrematunge, 2017.
203 the attention of international human rights organizations (de Alwis, 2004; Thiruchandran S. ,
2012).
Notably, there were some small efforts toward support from abroad. In the mid-1980s, a journalist with the New York Times traveled to Jaffna to interview the women with the NMF.
However, the leaders of the NMF were suspicious of the journalist’s cab driver who hovered nearby. All but then president Sarvam Kailasapathy refused to meet with the journalist, believing it was too dangerous. Kailasapathy noted that many such as this journalist failed to realize that for the NMF to continue with their activism, they had to remain unknown. It appeared that the New York Times journalist thought it would be helpful promote the individual women’s names and their work in an article, although Kailasapathy tried to explain it was otherwise (Kailasapathy 2012). I have searched the New York Times for any mentions of the
NMF, but found none, which suggests that nothing was ever published as a result of this interview with Kailasapathy.
In terms of the SMF, Amnesty International visited the island to document the violence associated with the JVP and government’s violent reaction to the JVP uprising. It released a report in 1991 with its findings, with no mention of the SMF included (Sebastian, 1991; AI,
1991). Notably, this report does remark on the disappearance and murder of SMF president Dr.
Saravanamattu’s son, Richard de Zoysa, even referring to “his mother.” Yet the report fails to mention Saravanamuttu by name, or to discuss to the organization she headed to bring attention to enforced disappearances (AI, 1991, p. 5). By 1993, Amnesty International had learned of Dr. Saravanamuttu, inviting her the UN World Conference on Human Rights in
Vienna. The newspaper article documenting this again makes no reference to the SMF and
204 suggests that Saravanmuttu’s participation was as the mother of Richard de Zoysa and her concern for human rights (McCarthy, 1993).
Conclusion
To conclude, the Madres have endured into the present and their impact has been memorialized both within Argentina and abroad in terms of the a legacy found within the human rights and women’s movements in Argentina, the general public in Argentina and finally in international human rights organizations such as the UN and Amnesty International. In comparison, the Mothers’ Front, which ceased activity by 1994, has been largely forgotten, recalled only by those in Sri Lanka’s women’s and human rights movements. Likewise, because the Mothers’ Front cause was never visible among those in international human rights organizations, the group has not been memorialized outside of Sri Lanka. In the next chapter, through an assessment of some possible causal explanations for the differences in the outcomes of the Madres and Mothers’ Front, I suggest what likely contributed to the earlier demise of the Mothers’ Front over the Madres, which may, in turn, hold the key for understanding the differences between the legacies of the two mothers’ groups.
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Chapter 5
Duration
Introduction
In the previous chapter, I outlined the differences in the legacies of the Madres of the
Plaza de Mayo (Madres) and the Mothers’ Front, which are tied to each organization’s respective duration, visibility and remembrance. In this chapter, I overview several overlapping factors that may account for the differences in the respective durations of the Madres—still active after over 40 years—and the Mothers’ Front—active for about seven years. This chapter contests suggestions that the end of both branches of the Mothers’ Front—the Northern
Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF)—was due to the reliance on political motherhood. That the Madres are one of the longest-running movement organizations in Latin
America shows that political motherhood can allow for long-term organizing. I argue that the shorter durations of the NMF and SMF compared to the Madres are due to three factors: (a) the political opportunity structures available during Sri Lanka’s civil war as compared to
Argentina’s period of state terrorism; (b) the organizational structures and choices of the groups; and (c) whether international human rights organizations lent support to the groups.
Political motherhood has been identified as what both allowed the women with the
NMF and the SMF to construct a space for themselves in civil society, as well as what contributed to their eventual downfall. Kumudini Samuel (2006) has claimed that while political motherhood provided the women of the NMF with some temporary protection from the state and militant Tamil groups, it was an ineffective strategy for women’s long-term political
206 empowerment because it failed to challenge gender roles, or the structures of power in society, the state, political institutions or political movements. Similarly, Malathi de Alwis (2013)105 and
Neloufer de Mel (2001) have been critical of SMF activists’ use of political motherhood, claiming that it limited the SMF’s long-term organizing by reinforcing traditional gender norms.
I trouble these interpretations by arguing that organizing opportunities available to the
Mothers’ Front were not always easy, particularly for the NMF. In the case of the SMF, while they had arguably more opportunities than the Madres did (at least before the end of the military dictatorship), organizational structures and choices—such as links with the state and their choice of framing—influenced their decision to end collective organization. Finally, I stress that both branches of the Mothers’ Front’s lack of transnational support left them with less solidarity and material support than the Madres. This is an interesting area and one to tread carefully—you don’t want to be in a position of appearing to say you “know better” than Sri
Lankan women/feminist scholars who were on the ground working with these groups or at least having lived through them and through the war too! So just an issue of phrasing it carefully and acknowledging that’s not what you’re trying to say/imply
In the first section of this chapter, I outline three factors that I suggest influenced the political opportunity structures of the Madres and Mothers’ Front that were advantageous to the Madres in terms of longevity. In the second section, I point toward organizational structures and decisions that influenced the duration of each group. In the third section, I explore transnational support and how that linked with not only each group’s duration, but also
105 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
207 impacted the respective visibility of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. Finally, comparative analysis can shed additional light on accounts for the earlier end of the Mothers’ Front compared to the Madres.
Political opportunity structures
Social movements seek to influence change by persuading the government to meet their political demands directly, or by pressuring the government indirectly by influencing the general public (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Kriesi, 2014). The literature on political opportunity structures explores openings at the systemic level for social movement actors to use to their advantage to gain their preferred policy outcomes (Tarrow, 1989; 2011;
McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 1996; McAdam, 1996; [1982] 1999). Political systems are dynamic and fluctuations within political institutions and changes to alliances among actors such as political elites, provide movement actors opportunities to achieve their political demands
(Giugni, 2011). In this section, I suggest that the types of internal armed conflict, regimes, and the timing of achieving political demands, are aspects related to the different political opportunities available to the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
Armed conflict
Although the Madres and Mothers’ Front each arose in internal armed conflicts, these conflicts differed substantially from one another. The absence of an ethnic war in Argentina and the presence of an ethnic war in Sri Lanka impacted the outcomes of the respective political motherhood movements in terms of duration. As explored by Fernando Bosco (2006), the emotional bonds of the Madres have been critical to keeping the group organizing for decades.
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But what allowed for the development of such strong bonds? In this section, I suggest that the lack of an ethnic conflict in Argentina’s period of state terrorism made this likelier for the
Madres.
In contrast to Sri Lanka’s Civil War, Argentina’s period of state terrorism was not an ethnic war. Argentina is a less heterogeneous country in comparison to Sri Lanka in which the population almost entirely identifies as white European and Roman Catholic, although there are
Jewish (less than 1% of the population), indigenous (3-5% of the population) and Afro- descendant citizens (less than 1% of the population) (Feitlowitz, 1998; Guano, A Color for the
Modern Nation: The Discourse on Class, Race and Education in the Porteno Middle Class, 2003;
Garguin, Los Argentinos Descendemos de los Barcos’: The Racial Articulation of Middle Class
Identity in Argentina (1920–1960), 2007; IWGIA., 2011; Lewis D. K., 2015; Luongo, 2014). The period of state terrorism was an ideological and class-based war that targeted citizens for their political beliefs about economic justice. There was no major hurdle of racial or ethnic divisions for the Madres to overcome during their organizing, although the military dictatorship was white supremacist (Taylor, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003; Lewis, 2015). Notably, the state and media manipulated the portrayal of the disappeared and families of the disappeared in the same a dehumanizing light, making it easier for families of the disappeared to unite with one another than in Sri Lanka where an ethnic war worked to keep the Sinhalese and Tamil communities from identifying with one another (Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 1994; Taylor D. , 1997; de Mel, 2007).
In part, the shared understanding among the Madres is likely attributable to the fact that enforced disappearances were carried out uniformly across the country, over the same
209 period from 1976 to 1979. There were a few main methods used by state forces in disappearing individuals. Often it was a home break-in by state forces in the middle of the night, that not only resulted in a kidnapped a member of the family but also trashed homes. Or it might have been that a loved one was snatched off the streets in broad daylight. Whether in Buenos Aires or Cordoba, this pattern held (Fisher, 1989; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, &
Julian, 2003; Bosco, 2006). In contrast, in Sri Lanka’s civil war, while enforced disappearances occurred in both the north and the south of the country, these disappearances took place in different periods under different circumstances (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001; Thiruchandran,
Women's Movement in Sri Lanka: History, Trends and Trajectories, 2012; Kailasapathy, 2012).
Enforced disappearances lasted in the north throughout the conflict, peaking around the end of the war in 2008 and 2009 (Ambrose & Yeo, 2018). During the war, Tamils were largely treated as terrorists or potential terrorists by the government (Thiruchandran S. , 2012). The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) gave the government legal rights to arrest and detain Tamils without warrants, as well as use to information gained by torture. There was a culture of legalized torture against Tamil civilians (Tambiah, 1986). In contrast, enforced disappearances in the south occurred during the reign of terror, 1987-1991. These disappearances did not relate to ethnic identity, but rather came as a result of the government’s overhanded response to the
Sinhalese nationalist movement, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front or
JVP) who attacked state forces. Those in the south never felt targeted because of their ethnic identity, in clear contrast with those disappeared in the north (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001).
Malathi de Alwis (2004) shared stories of the NMF and the Madres with SMF members.
In both cases, de Alwis stated she received “blank-faced politeness tinged with a certain
210 impatience and weariness” from most SMF women with whom she spoke (p. 131). There was a strong current of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism among many in the SMF. Some SMF women viewed all Tamils as “terrorists” and members of the LTTE. One SMF member stated her support for the Sinhalese soldiers who tortured, disappeared and/or killed any Tamils they came across. She claimed: “I’m only angry that these boys [Sinhalese men] did the same thing
[disappearing, killing, harming] to their own brothers…people of their own blood” (p. 131).
However, de Alwis stressed that some SMF women shed tears when they heard reports of the suffering of Tamil women and were critical of the state’s war in the north. Neloufer de Mel
(2001) also found evidence that some members of the SMF recognized the importance of cross- ethnic alliances. One member, Leela, stated: “We [in the SMF] have discussed the disappearances in the north…We would like mothers from the north to join us but there is no opportunity to do so” (p. 260). For some, the desire was there, although there was a lack of clarity around how to logistically carry it out.
In Sri Lanka, the use of political motherhood likely exacerbated ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities by promoting the mother of the nation trope that upholds women as reproducers of their respective ethnic communities (de Mel, 1996;
Maunaguru, 2009). This had a poisonous effect among the Sinhalese majority in which trope, which seeks/sought to limit women to biological and social reproduction, encouraged “us versus them” thinking (Yuval-Davis, 1997; Samarasinghe, 2012). With the theater of war far removed from the daily lives of most Sinhalese people, the collusion of the government, media and pop culture in framing the government and military as saviors of the country led to perceptions among much of the general Sinhalese public, including many members of the SMF,
211 that the Tamil Tigers were terrorists with justification for their violence and to the conflation of ordinary Tamil citizens with LTTE fighters (de Alwis, 2001; 2004; de Mel, 2007; Samarasinghe,
"A Theme Revisited?" The Impact of the Ethnic Conflict on Women and Politics in Sri Lanka,
2012; Harriffa & Samuel, 2016). 106
Because enforced disappearances in Argentina occurred in parallel ways across the country, there was a widely shared experience among mothers of the disappeared, which connected them (Bouvard, 1994; Bosco, 2006). Conversely, in Sri Lanka, enforced disappearances operated differently in the north and the south, which due to historical factors has been divided along Tamil/Sinhalese lines. This meant that there was less of a sense of shared experience among Sri Lankan women on a mass basis (Thiranagama, 2011;
Thiruchandran S. , 2012). This is by no means to suggest that there were no cross-ethnic connections. As noted, there were plenty, including the NMF, which had allies in southern women’s groups, which were majority-Sinhalese membership (Samuel, 2006).
Regime type
While the regimes that both the Madres and Mothers’ Front respectively catalyzed under were nondemocratic, they differed in terms of being authoritarian or illiberally democratic. In the cases of both the Madres and NMF, working with elites in power at the
106 The Sri Lankan government and media controlled what the general public learned about the civil war. All media, both private and state owned, self-censored and selectively showed images and restricted the flow of information about the war (de Mel, 2007). The images brought by the media to the masses in the south depicted the Sri Lankan military in a positive light. Military soldiers saved Tamil civilians, particularly the elderly, from the LTTE, and military doctors provided medical care to children. Moreover, the media never showed the bodies of killed civilians (Harriffa & Samuel, 2016). The Sri Lankan military was portrayed as masculine heroes saving the country from LTTE terrorists who wanted to destroy the cohesiveness of Sri Lanka by creating an independent Tamil Eelam (de Mel, 2007).
212 national level to achieve their desired policy outcomes was not possible because of the authoritarian nature of these regimes. Argentina was strongly authoritarian during the formation of the Madres, and the north of Sri Lanka was arguably authoritarian during the time of the NMF, due to the state’s oppressive policies against the Tamil community. There was regular harassment of Tamils, including enforced disappearances or outright murder, and for five years in the 1980s, the Tamil community was denied representation in the national legislature (Tambiah, 1986; Malik, Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009). Authoritarianism grew in the north after the LTTE defeated other armed militias by 1987. The LTTE was not elected and ruled Tamil-majority areas with absolute control, curtailing civil and political rights and viewing any form of dissent to their rule as treason (Thiranagama, 2011; Kailasapathy,
2012). The Tamil community was trapped between the oppressive state and repressive rule of the Tamil Tigers.
Like Argentina under the period of state terrorism and northern Sri Lanka throughout the civil war, southern Sri Lanka during the formation of the SMF saw political assembly prohibited and civil and political rights frequently violated (Samuel, 2006). Yet the state held regular competitive elections and the ongoing civil war did not disrupt the day to day life of most southern citizens. As noted, the theater of war was in the north (de Mel, 2007; Malik,
Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009; Harriffa & Samuel, 2016). The horrors that southern
Sri Lankans experienced came from the reign of terror, which was begun by the JVP and exacerbated by the United National Party (UNP) government’s violent reaction to the JVP insurrection. In the state’s overhanded response to the JVP, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party
(SLFP) saw an opportunity against the UNP, their long-time political rival. MPs Rajapaksa and
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Samaraweera of the SLFP co-founded the SMF, surmising that “wailing women” could serve as an influential political tool in the next election cycle (de Alwis, 2004).
The authoritarian environments in which the Madres and the NMF formed may have contributed to their further radicalization as compared to the SMF, which through its affiliation with the SLFP gained a measure of protection in a repressive political environment. All three groups experienced rhetorical harassment that demeaned them as “bad mothers” (Bouvard,
1994; de Alwis, 2001; Kailasapathy, 2012). However, the Madres and the NMF endured more than verbal harassment, including arrests and enforced disappearances in the case of the
Madres. The NMF experienced violences from both the state and LTTE (Tambiah, 1986;
Bouvard, 1994; de Mel, 2003; Samuel, 2006; Thiranagama, 2011; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Such events had a radicalizing effect on the leaders of the Madres and NMF that made the urgency of their work greater. Violence by the state against citizens, such as being thrown in jail or seeing your fellow activists and citizens killed as both the Madres and the NMF experienced, can radicalize activists further into oppositional movement work (della Porta, 2006; Cai, 2008).
The puzzle then is if the Madres and the NMF had more in common with one another, why then did the NMF not continue as long as the Madres? I suggest this was due to the rise of the LTTE and its attendant gendered nationalism in the midst of an ethnic conflict that ultimately prevented the NMF from remaining an autonomous organization. In the second section on organizational choices, I explore how being free from the state—or in the case of the
LTTE, a de facto state—may also help to explain the different outcomes in terms of duration of the Madres, NMF and SMF. For now, I turn to the last aspect of the different political opportunities available to the two political motherhood movements.
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The timing of achieving political demands
Another factor that may have contributed to the respective durations of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front in terms of opportunities available to activists has to do with the timing of each group’s achievement of some of their major political demands. The Madres and the SMF present a paradox in terms of their respective political demands. The Madres did not achieve readily or even fully their political aims, including the very reason for the formation of their organization—the return of their children—nor the aim of holding accountable the perpetrators of enforced disappearances committed by the military dictatorship. It was only in the mid-
2000s that higher-level members of the military dictatorship—who had been living as free men for decades—began undergoing new trials for their crimes against humanity. Lower level perpetrators were excused by the first transition government from being held accountable for crimes against humanity (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997; Montañez, Waisman, & Yoshida,
2017).
In contrast, within four years, the SMF had achieved most of its major aims when they were enacted by Chandrika Kumaratunga’s SLFP-led government. This included investigative commissions and a system of economic compensation for the families of the disappeared
(Samuel, 2006; de Alwis, 2012). The government commissions were a signal that the disappeared had been unjustly killed by the state, helping to end the stigma against families of the disappeared. The SLFP-led government had every incentive to carry these programs out since it framed the previous UNP government, its long-time political rival, in a negative light, as a government that targeted innocent people. Additionally, many SMF members viewed former
President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s murder by a suicide bombing in 1993 as justice for his
215 responsibility in participating in enforced disappearances, thereby providing a measure of
“accountability,” another desired outcome, of many of the SMF (de Alwis, 1998; de Mel, 2001).
As a national group, the SMF disbanded in 1994, to the criticism of many (de Alwis,
1998; 2012; Samuel, 2006). However, in terms of achieving their political outcomes, the SMF was highly effective. As noted in the social movement literature, when movements largely achieve their aims, the typical response by movement actors is to demobilize (Offe, 1990; Basu,
2015). While the SMF’s president Dr. Saravanamuttu, tried to convince members to continue with their political participation by moving to new issues, most of the women were uninterested. However, a niche stayed active in local politics in Matara working for the SLFP throughout the 1990s (de Mel, 2001; Samuel, 2006).107 Saravanamuttu herself moved into NGO service sector work, providing counseling to those affected by armed conflict and other crises by establishing the Family Rehabilitation Centre, located in Colombo, which continues to offer its services to those affected by war, natural disaster or domestic violence (de Mel 2001; FRC
2017). While there is an emphasis in the literature on the SMF on the group’s dissolution in
1994, a good number of former members stayed in political work. This included some moving into NGOs working in counseling, development and human rights. Those who moved into this work lived in larger areas where NGOs were set up. Many former members of the SMF lived in rural areas that had no NGO activity. Without the financial support of the SLFP, these women had few opportunities to engage in political organizing (de Mel, 2001). I elaborate below why they may not have had the political efficacy to, say, form a civic group of their own.
107 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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In the case of the NMF, if the branch had not been disbanded/coopted by the LTTE, it is unknown what might have happened with its long-term demands, including its efforts to broaden women’s rights. The NMF achieved its immediate ends with the return of the disappeared young men from Valvettithurai in August 1984 after their march on Jaffna
(Kailasapathy, 2012; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Evidence of the threat that they presented to the government is found in the Government Administrator’s (GA) call to the Minister of Defence after the NMF stormed his office in August 1984. The GA exclaimed on the phone to the
Minister, “We are surrounded!,” a message that conveyed how the state constructed the women as mothers to be taken seriously as if some kind of militant force (Kailasapathy, 2012, p.
103). However, the NMF struggled to keep the momentum going in protests against the state.
Some women, whose sons were not affected by kidnappings, were difficult to press into activism. The group also experienced ongoing tensions over what direction to go—toward criticizing the LTTE or supporting it—which divided the rank and file and leaders. The rank and file were mainly committed to supporting the LTTE, while the leaders sought to take the LTTE on for its restrictive gendered discourses (Kailasapathy, 2012). Being caught in an ethnic conflict limited much of the ability of the NMF, including its ability to avoid an early end, trapped as it was by a hostile state and widespread guerrilla violence, neither of which was open to autonomous civil society groups.
Most puzzlingly, although the Madres endured violence, while the women of the SMF did not, it has been the former that has remained active. Even following enforced disappearances of members and supporters, including their de facto leader, the Madres remained active against the military regime (Bouvard, 1994). This may have been due in part to
217 what Dina Bishara (2015) calls the politics of ignoring. The Argentine military dictatorship engaged in this practice from April 1977 when the Madres first began drawing attention to themselves through public protests. The regime did so throughout most of the remainder of
1977 until the government’s overhanded reaction of enforced disappearances of some of the
Madres. Bishara (2015) defines “the politics of ignoring” as the regime in power “not communicating with protesters, issuing condescending statements, physically evading protesters, or acting with contempt toward popular mobilization” (p. 959). Ignoring activists allows the regime to provide some acknowledgment of a movement but only in terms of a condescending brushing off of their activism. The politics of ignoring derives from research on regime-civil society relations in authoritarian contexts where political opportunities for collective action are limited. Faced with a mobilized political opposition, a regime must engage with what is known by some as the “concession-repression dilemma,” to decide how to confront movement activism, either by giving in to the movement or repressing it (Cai, 2008, p.
412; Kitschelt & Rehm, 2014; Bishara, 2015, p. 959). The Argentine regime’s politics of ignoring likely led to indignation on the part of the Madres, which may have buoyed the women’s determination to keep organizing, despite the obstacles they faced in their initial year as an organization.
In contrast, there was an absence of a politics of ignoring for the SMF by the illiberally democratic UNP regime under Premadasa, who treated the women as legitimate threats (de
Alwis, 2001; de Mel, 2001). Unlike the Madres who experienced being ignored and then mocked by the military dictatorship as harmless apolitical housewives, the Premadasa regime took the SMF seriously from the beginning, during the first national rally held in February 1991.
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The government had the event covered by heavily armed security forces (de Mel, 2001; Samuel,
2003). The threat from the SMF was signified most notably in Premadasa’s strong reaction to the women’s religious cursing against him (de Alwis, 1998; 2001; de Mel, 2001). Ranjan
Wijeratne, the Minister of Defense, frequently denounced the SMF as a “subversive” organization that was “against the security forces who saved democracy” (de Alwis, 2004, p.
128). Statements such as this demonstrate that the SMF was heard and seen by the government and that the government was afraid. By portraying the women as a threat to state security, they were hoping to deter citizens from being sympathetic toward the women. In short, the Madres were in part longer lasting as an organization because they were initially unseen by the government. For the SMF, being seen so readily—recognized early on as a threat—in part meant that they had less reason to stay organized as group compared to the
Madres.
The comparison between the Madres and SMF raises the question of the purpose of social movements, which is to achieve aims. Because the SMF so quickly achieved their aims, there was no need for them to remain organizing. The only reason to continue on as the SMF would have been to take on new issues. In contrast, for the Madres, it was precisely because the effort to achieve their political demands took so long that they were sustained as an organization.
To sum up, I suggest that the political opportunity structures of Argentina during the period of state terrorism in comparison to Sri Lanka’s civil war provided the Madres with more opportunities to organize than the Mothers’ Front. First, the presence of an ethnic component in Sri Lanka’s civil war meant there were fewer opportunities for domestic solidarity as opposed
219 to Argentina’s period of state terrorism. This is exemplified in the Mothers’ Front’s ethnic division and particularly in the hegemonic nationalism that came out among the SMF. Second, the greater opportunities to influence the state—including by aligning with a political party— may have brought an earlier end to the SMF compared with the more authoritarian systems that the Madres and Mothers’ Front endured. Third, it appears that the politics of ignoring by
Argentina’s military dictatorship may explain, at least in part, why the Madres developed a determination that contributed to their sustained political mobilization. In turn, the absence of a politics of ignoring in the case of the SMF by the UNP regime and the later SLFP-led regime was evidence of their being taken seriously. The SMF’s alliance with the SLFP, in particular, may have contributed to the shorter duration of the SMF. I now turn to organizational structures and decisions such as state alliances.
Organizational structures and choices
Issues related to the political opportunity structure help in part to account for the differences in duration of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. I also suggest that organizational decisions—whether actual choices or not—impacted the different duration of the two political motherhood movements. These include whether the organizations were aligned with the state—particularly with a political party—and in how the groups framed their political motherhood. Their choices on particular maternal framings influenced their resonance at the international level, which I explore in the third section.
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Autonomy and alliances in organizing
Due to their autonomous status, both the Madres and the NMF employed what
Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015) call “[m]aternalism from below,” which refers to “actors that are separate from the state, government or military power” who engage in political motherhood as “an enactment of bottom-up self empowerment” (p. 21). In contrast to the Madres and the NMF, the SMF was aligned with the SLFP from its beginning, meaning that the SMF’s political motherhood was a “top-down version of maternalism” (de Mel, 2003;
Carreon & Moghadam, 2015, p. 21). A top-down political motherhood can be emancipatory for women, such as in Nicaragua under the Sandinista government, which relied on political motherhood to inspire fighters—both men and women—in the revolution to overthrow the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza DeBayle. Once in power, the Sandinistas then used political motherhood to justify a national women’s organization and policies such as women’s right to divorce (Carreon & Moghadam, 2015). While the SLFP did not seek to limit women like the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini did following the Iranian Revolution in 1979—what Carreon and
Moghadam call top-down political motherhood “in a traditional, patriarchal form”—that sought to re-confine Iranian women to the private sphere and limit their civil rights, the SLFP certainly did not seek to emancipate the women as did the Sandinista government (p. 24).
While there are both benefits and drawbacks with movement-state alliances, in the case of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front, one issue has been how these organizational structures influenced the formation of political efficacy or each group’s sense of what it can do to impact politics (Campbell, Gurin, & Miller, 1971; Prindevillem, 2003). The benefits of alliance with political parties and other state institutions are material and symbolic support. This includes
221 prestige earned through official status, which in some cases includes a monopoly over representation within state institutions, as well as ready access to state decisionmakers. If a movement aligns with or becomes a political party, parties provide dues-paying members, which can help financially support a cause. Moreover, in some countries, parties are supported materially by the state (Offe, 1990; Saward, 1992; Basu, 2003). Becoming incorporated, or institutionalized, into the state as a political party can also prevent a movement cause from dying out. This is a problem where, following the end of the crisis that instigated mobilization, movements often go dormant, leaving only a niche of activists still organizing. Such demobilization following a movement win is the norm. However, this can be offset by the incorporation of the movement into the state or party bureaucracy, which takes up the cause
(Offe, 1990; Basu, 2015).
Despite benefits arising from aligning with state institutions, there are drawbacks, including the diluting of movement demands. Social movements are generally more radical than state forces (Piven & Cloward, 1977; Basu, 2003). Even if movement aims enter the agendas in state institutions, they may be watered down by less radical types found in the state, whose motivations to preserve their organization—such as a political party or government agency—outweigh other goals (Michels, 1959; Dryzek, 1996). Inclusion in state institutions poses other challenges, notably the loss of motivated and skilled activists who leave movements for state institutions (Alvarez, 1990; Dryzek, 1996). Another drawback is the risk of purely symbolic representation. This is a tokenization in which actors have no influence on decision-making but their presence as representatives of a social movement provides state
222 institutions with a moral legitimacy that gives the appearance of considering the movement’s cause, although this may not be the case (Saward, 1992; Dryzek, 1996).
Political party activity was banned by Argentina’s military dictatorship, so a state alliance was not a possibility for the Madres. Upon forming in 1977, the women were intentional about remaining autonomous from other human rights groups, as they believed that only they could represent their unique issues as mothers of the disappeared. Furthermore, the group viewed political parties as not simply ineffective but morally corrupt since parties had failed to take on the military dictatorship (Fisher, 1993; Bouvard, 1994). Georgina Waylen
(1994) has argued that because normal political activity, which was carried out by male- dominated political parties and labor unions, had been shut down by the military government under the period of state terrorism, the only site available for political activity was the community level. This paved the way for groups like the Madres, who were thoroughly situated in civil society in the period of state terrorism.
Community groups launching the fight against authoritarianism was found in much of
Latin America, which saw extensive rule by military dictatorships throughout the 1970s and
1980s tied to Cold War geopolitics (Safa, 1990). However, by the 1990s, much of Latin America had transitioned to democracy and many civil society groups were institutionalizing through representation in government and/or by aligning with political parties (Jaquette, 1994). As
Sonia Alvarez (1990) documented in Brazil, which transitioned to democracy earlier than other
Latin American states, Brazil’s women’s movement turned to government councils during the
1980s to increase both women’s representation and feminist politics in government. Over time, many of these councils became corrupted as political leaders used them to build what
223 appeared to be a democratic representation of civil society, but in fact were partisan councils staffed with individuals with no connection to women’s groups. Rather these women were loyalists to the politicians who had appointed them.
Similar struggles over whether to work with the government after military rule ended occurred with the Madres, which in part led to its division of the group into the Línea
Fundadora and the Asociación in the mid-1980s. From 1986 on, the Línea Fundadora branch worked alongside the government regardless of who was in power, while throughout the remainder of the 1980s and 1990s, the Asociación situated itself exclusively as an oppositional force to the government. The Asociación, did, however, lobby parties and the legislature, but chose not to join party or state alliances (Fisher, 1993; Bouvard, 1994; Taylor, 1997). By the mid-2000s the Asociación had altered its views on movement-state alliances after deciding that the Front for Victory bloc of the Peronist Party was an ally in the group’s effort to ensure perpetrators of the military dictatorship were held accountable for their crimes against humanity.108 For this reason, the Asociación has become an ardent supporter of the Front for
Victory (Sutton, 2010; Kelly, 2011; Bio, 2017). The critical point is that both the Línea
Fundadora and Asociación branches chose when and how to align with state institutions.
Like the unified Madres, the NMF elected to remain autonomous from both the state, which was at war with the Tamil community, as well as from the authoritarian and masculinist armed guerilla groups taking on the state (de Mel, 2003; Maunaguru, 2009; Herath, 2012). The
108 It was under Néstor Kirchner’s Front for Victory-led government that formerly exonerated military rulers of the period of state terrorism began undergoing new trials in the Argentine national courts. His wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who followed him into office in 2007, continued this policy (Sutton, 2010).
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NMF likely saw little value in aligning with Tamil political parties, which had lost credibility in the 1970s when politicians failed to make headway in dismantling repressive state policies against the Tamil community (Malik, Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009; Thiranagama,
2011). Likewise, male politicians were known for trying to coopt the NMF by taking credit for the group’s activities (Kailasapathy, 2012). The NMF as an autonomous group came to an end in
1987 when its leaders disbanded rather than submit to the Tamil Tigers (Kailasapathy, 2012).109
The discourses that engulfed the Tamil community in the 1980s stressed ethnonationalism in response to the Sinhalese-controlled state’s war with the Tamil community, which limited women’s roles to the mother of the nation trope. It appears that many rank-and-file NMF members either agreed with this or felt it should be endured since criticism of such expectations might undermine the Tamil community against the state (de Mel, 2003;
Kailasapathy, 2012). In this vein, the NMF was brought under the LTTE, a cooptation that the rank and file may have supported to show their commitment to either an independent Tamil
Eelam or to signal their aversion to a state that treated them as mothers of terrorists rather than as Sri Lankan citizens. Working strictly as the charity-based Jaipur Foot Programme—which became the still active Jaffna Jaipur Center for Disability Rehabilitation (JJCDR)—meant that the
NMF existed for a short time under the Tigers, although there is no mention of the NMF after
1991 (Samuel, 2006; ICRC, 2008; JJCDR, 2018).
The SMF had a full-fledged state alliance. It is most probable that the SMF was an embodied means of political propaganda for the SLFP, a useful tool in their toolbox of political
109 Selvy Thiruchandran, interview with the author, 24 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
225 strategies. SMF co-founders, MPs Rajapaksa and Samaraweera appear to have believed that the
SMF could either serve as a mechanism to force the UNP-led government to be accountable for crimes against humanity committed in the JVP uprising or, more cynically, hoped that the SMF could drive home the message that the UNP was too morally corrupt for office. It may have been a bit of both. The SLFP had every incentive to demonize their longtime political rival, the
UNP. The SLFP and UNP have been the two major political parties in Sri Lanka, who vie for votes from the working and middle classes of Sinhalese Buddhists (ICG, 2007). The image of heart- broken Sinhalese Buddhist mothers was an ideal method to insinuate the moral corruption of the UNP. The SLFP and mothers themselves constructed the SMF in a sympathetic way that limited the ability of the government to demonize them (de Mel, 2001; ICG, 2007;
Samarasinghe, 2012).
The UNP government did try to shame the mothers (de Mel 2001). In reaction, many citizens rose to the SMF’s defense, likely because the women embodied hegemonic Sinhalese
Buddhism. Supporters of the SMF argued that the mothers had every right to mourn their disappeared children and to be angry and grief-stricken (de Alwis, 2001). The UNP government was prevented from using violence against the SMF no doubt due to the protection that the
SLFP offered. SLFP leaders would have seized such an opportunity to shame the UNP for attacking “defenseless mothers” (de Mel, 2001). In addition to protection, the SLFP offered material support for the SMF, such as bus transportation to sites of political activity, and symbolic support, including SLFP organizers’ knowledge on the inner workings of the political system. This combined with the protection offered by a political party in an environment where
226 human rights activists were hamstrung, meant that members of the SMF were spared a great deal of violence that may otherwise have befallen them.
Yet in protecting the SMF from violence, the SLFP also prevented members from having greater control over decision-making. As noted, the party organized many of the SMF’s activities (de Alwis, 2001; 2004). In contrast, the leaders of the Madres and the NMF were decision-makers. If the NMF had been able to continue as an organization, there is a chance that the group would have developed high political efficacy on a grassroots level as the Madres have over the last four decades. By deciding on and engaging in their political activities, members of the Madres built self-perceptions of political efficacy over time. In stark contrast, the SMF was denied the ability to develop and carry out most of the activities that their group engaged in due to the SLFP party organizers who took charge of arranging most of the group’s events (de Alwis, 2001).
Had the SLFP allowed members of the SMF greater participation in designing and implementing political activities, there could have been a gradual buildup of their political efficacy, as happened with the Madres. Instead, the SLFP chose to rely on the SMF more as a political prop than as co-collaborators. Without gaining high political efficacy, members of the
SMF may have felt their continued participation was not critical to the achievement of their political aims, which they believed the SLFP would carry forward as the government in power in
1994. While their informal alliance with the SLFP protected them from the state, it also appears to have limited their ability to do for themselves, which could have contributed to their developing new skills and a sense of political efficacy.
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Framing
The second aspect of organizational choice refers to the movements’ respective decisions over maternal frames. I suggest that the framing of the Madres and Mothers’ Front likely accounts in part for their different outcomes in terms of duration. The literature on social movements notes that movement actors seek to establish their legitimacy as a political force through standing and framing (Kriesi, 2014). Standing refers to a social movement’s presence and voice in the media, and framing makes up a substantial part of this process (Ferree,
Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002). Frame analysis was developed by the sociologist Erving
Goffman (1986) to identify how individuals use meaning-making to convey a point of view. The application of frame analysis to the study of social movements is used to understand how movement actors try to convince others of their political aims (Snow & Benford, 1992; Benford,
1997; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Stavrianos, 2014).
Some frames align more closely with dominant beliefs in society, while others appear more radical if they challenge mainstream ideas. Some frames fall somewhere in-between these two extremes (Ferree & Mueller, 2004; Hewitt & McCammon, 2004; Kutz-Flamenbaum,
2007). In part, the choice of frame or frames—many movements rely on multiple frames to reach different audiences—depends on the long-term goal of movement actors. For those who hope to gain adherents to a mass movement, embracing at least some mainstream frames makes this process easier, since their cause will then resonate more widely (Ferree & Mueller,
2004; Hewett, 2006; Kutz-Flamenbaum, 2007).
Women’s civil society groups rely on a variety of frames to gain support for their causes.
These frames include gender equality, gender sameness, complementary gender differences
228 and the need for gendered protections (McCammon, Campbell, Granberg, & Mowery, 2001;
Franceschet, 2004; Franceschet, Piscopo, & Thomas, 2016). Mona Tajali (2015) argues that women make strategic choices about framing, as portrayed in her study of women in Turkey and Iran. Conservative religious women in Turkey, a country which since its establishment in
1923 has defined itself as secular, have adopted secular human rights language, notably women’s rights, and have relied on international legal regimes such as the Convention of the
Elimination of All Forms of Decimation against Women, to frame their religious-based causes.
Conversely, secular feminist groups in Iran rely on religious language and the Qur’an to frame women’s rights with the goal to make their efforts appealing in a context where a theocratic government has ruled since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Many women’s movement actors do not necessarily support all or many of the adopted frames. Rather, frames are strategic choices, made based on an assessment of what will be most useful in achieving movement actors’ desired outcomes.
Some studies have looked specifically at maternal framing, with many identifying a single maternal frame in women’s political organizing (Noonan, 1995; Bayard de Volo, 2004;
Franceschet, 2004; Goss & Heaney, 2010; Tripp, 2010). Of these, only a few studies have noted the variety of angles that a maternal frame can take (Stavrianos, 2014; Franceschet, Piscopo, &
Thomas, 2016). Cynthia Stavriano’s (2014) The Political Uses of Motherhood in America, describes the “maternal collective action” frame as encompassing multiple maternal framings, including the maternal stealth agency frame and the maternal empowering frame. The former relies on political motherhood to mask political actions by portraying women’s activities as an extension of their mothering work rather than political engagement. The latter considers
229 political motherhood a method of empowering women through a reclaiming of so-called feminine virtues that emphasize women’s differences from men.
Elsa Chaney (1979) noted how women legislators in Peru and Chile used the supermadre
(supermother) frame to suggest the compatibility of housewives’ tasks of budgeting for household expenses and caring for family members with skills needed in state-level budgeting and caring for constituents. Building on this, Susan Franceschet, Jennifer Piscopo and Gwynn
Thomas (2016) refer to this as the traditional supermadre frame and add two additional maternal framings, the technocratic caretaker and macho minimizer, which are common today in much of Latin America (p. 3). The technocratic caretaker frame emphasizes gender equality, but with roots in maternal thinking that suggest gender differences in which women are deemed experts on children’s welfare, health care and education. Women’s “unique” leadership skills are viewed as being based on a maternal ethic of care, which enables women to be on different but equal footing with men’s supposed natural strengths. The macho minimizer framing helps women politicians known for their assertiveness, a trait often deemed necessary in politics, yet one seen as masculine, to soften their image by discussing their children or grandchildren. The thought is this will allow women to be more appealing to the electorate through maternal imagery.
None of these frames, however, fully or accurately captures the cases of the Madres and Mothers’ Front, who each could be said to have used a combination of some of the maternal frames outlined above. Since both movements operated in politically oppressive environments, part of their ability to navigate this repression was by claiming that they were not political, but rather mothers seeking the return of their children. This fits with Stavrianos’s
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(2014) maternal stealth agency frame. Additionally, there was considerable overlap with the traditional supermadre frame outlined by Franceschet, Piscopo and Thomas (2016) among the
Madres and Mothers’ Front. Women of both movements used the traditional supermadre frame to suggest that they were ideal actors to take on the respective governments of
Argentina and Sri Lanka because they were caring mothers in contrast to morally corrupt governments. This emphasized socially conservative notions of motherhood and stood in sharp contrast to the violence conducted by the state. Given that both movements utilized these frames in their organizing, something else may help to better explain the differences in the respective duration of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. In my cases, I identify two forms of maternal framing which previous literature has not captured, adding to the maternal framing literature. One maternal frame is based on an idealized maternal authority and the other emphasizes maternal emotionality. I suggest that these better account for the differences in the outcomes of the groups than the maternal frames, including the maternal stealth agency, maternal empowering, traditional supremadre, technocratic caretaker and macho minimizer frames, in the extent literature.
When deployed by movement actors, the maternal authority frame associates mothers with a moral or sacred element, and emphasizes women as matriarchs (Mann, 2000). This framing has been popular among women in government in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and
Latin America. Some women in office have portrayed themselves as “Super Mothers” who provide for their constituents, just as mothers provide for their children (Chaney, 1979; Steady,
2011). Women construct their leadership “as an extension of motherhood,” offering
“protection [for] and collaboration [with]” those under their authority (Steady, 2011, pp. 8,
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239). Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected woman head of state, won by portraying herself as what Mary Moran (2012) describes as a sexless or masculinized
“powerful mother” and “Iron Lady,” a clear example of maternal authority (p. 52, 61). This frame often emphasizes women’s ability to provide for others in terms of material goods or protection, especially in the case of women seeking office, and it may de-emphasize women’s emotions. This is evident in such nicknames as “Iron Lady,” which suggests impenetrability and strength. UK’s Margaret Thatcher does not fit with the maternal authority frame as she did not use political motherhood, although Thatcher came to be known by the moniker “Iron Lady” like
Johnson-Sirleaf.
In civil society, the maternal authority frame is used by activists to suggest their status as competent participants in the political process, who can and seek to contribute to political decision-making. Women exert this power through a maternal role, often by shaming their political opponents. This was exemplified in Liberia’s civil war when women civil society activists confronted government and rebel leaders, shaming them for fighting while ordinary people suffered. The conflict ended when one mother, Leymah Gbowee, used her maternal body to put the warring factions in their places—under her authority—during the peace talks.
Gbowee insisted that if the factions did not settle a ceasefire, she would reveal her nakedness.
In much of West Africa, seeing a mother’s body is deemed a curse. Typically, all older women are perceived as mothers and seeing one’s mother’s nakedness is a taboo (Whetstone, 2017).
As described by a third-party negotiator at the talks, former president of Nigeria General
Abulsalami Abubakar, the women activists that day scolded grown men like they were boys
(Reicker, 2008). Liberia achieved not only a ceasefire but the end of a dictatorship, which made
232 way for Sirleaf’s electoral win and an upturn in women’s political participation throughout the country (Bauer, 2009).
A maternal emotionality frame plays up emotions, including grief-stricken sorrow but also anger and vengeance. The maternal emotionality frame is often associated with the sorrowful mother image. Because women in most societies have been tasked with caring for children, mater dolorosas (sorrowful mothers) may gain some public sympathy since this frame aligns with status quo understandings that associate women with nurturance (Kline, 1995;
Taylor, 1997; Bejarano, 2003). However, actors using maternal emotionality may not emphasize sorrow at all. They may use the frame to exhibit maternal anger, even vengeance. These emotions are linked with motherhood through ideas such as the “mama grizzly bear” who becomes wrathful if her children are harmed or threatened. The maternalism in this framing of aggression can even justify women’s use of violence by simultaneously appealing to socially conservative gender norms that emphasize femininity (Deckman, 2016). Nevertheless, there is considerably more backlash for women exhibiting anger versus sorrow. Women who exhibit anger or vengeance tend to be labeled as “monstrous,” even not “real” women at all, particularly if they engage in violence (Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Åhäll, 2015). For right-wing women in the US, most of whom belong to the hegemonic majority, the use of a maternal emotionality frame to justify anger does not reduce their perceived femininity (Deckman,
2016). Similarly, this was the case for the SMF in terms of their vengeful maternal emotionality frame.
Because women are discursively linked to “irrationality” through pre-existing discourses that label women as “emotional,” the maternal emotionality frame can harm women’s political
233 participation since this frame can portray women as “too emotional” to be legitimate political actors (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; El-Bushra, 2007). Nevertheless, I have found a maternal emotionality frame is key to garnering support for the issue of enforced disappearances. It was deployed by the Madres, NMF and SMF and is being used today by the
Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta (2001) argue that due to patriarchal stereotypes about women and emotion, political activities carried out by women may be described as emotional outbursts devoid of political substance. Yet, at the same time,
Goodwin et al. point to how women’s use of emotions can be strategic, both mobilizing others to political causes and enabling movements to achieve their political aims by sustaining the movement and convincing the public and government of their aims.
As noted, the Madres and Mothers’ Front relied on both the maternal stealth frame and traditional supermadre frames. Likewise, to varying degrees, the Madres and Mothers’ Front also engaged with maternal authority and maternal emotionality. Over time, the Madres’s framing moved from singularly deploying maternal emotionality to also relying upon maternal authority. From the beginning, the NMF simultaneously engaged with maternal authority and emotionality. In contrast, the SMF relied singularly on emotionality. While an emotional frame serves strategic purposes, it is insufficient to sustain a social movement in the long-term without a frame that can portray women as legitimate political actors.
After first engaging in a silent protest in April 1977, the Madres continued gathering to circle the Plaza de Mayo in protest week after week, which became one of their hallmarks, an
234 act they continue to perform today.110 During these early marches, the women evoked a maternal emotionality frame: they embraced their status of mourning mothers, evoking images of the sorrow over the death of her son by the Virgin Mary, a maternal figure who resonated in
Catholic-majority Argentina. This also fits well with the values of the military regime, which claimed to be working on behalf of Western, Christian and capitalist values that emphasized the importance of the family (Taylor, 1997; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003).
Over time, the Madres deployed this maternal emotionality frame in conjunction with a maternal authority frame. A turning point in the group’s framing came in 1978 during a major medical conference, the International Conference on Cancer Research, held in Buenos Aires.
Some conference attendees, non-nationals, had joined the weekly march and encouraged the women to break their silence during their protest (Bouvard, 1994). At the march, one of the mothers proclaimed, “They took them away alive, we want them returned alive!” This cry, part of the maternal emotionality frame, was taken up by the other mothers as they scattered to avoid the authorities, with the women shouting their demand again and again (Bouvard, 1994, p. 81). However, this moment constituted the beginnings of the group’s turn to a maternal authority framing.
110 The group nearly missed a weekly march during the 2018 meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20), a forum made up of the top twenty or so global economies, which was held in Buenos Aires in November 2018 (Booth, 2018; G20, n.d.). The Plaza de Mayo was planned to be shut off to civilians to create “security” for the summit. Had this gone forward, on Thursday 29 November, the Madres would have missed their first march in 41 years. However, the women organized a press conference to protest the proposed closure as a way to shame the government into letting them access the square. Their bid was successful (Jenner, First Day of the G20: Missed Planes and Cancelled Meetings, 2018; Jenner, G20 Closures Could Stop the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo March for the First Time in 42 Years, 2018). The only thing that has stopped the Madres in over 40 years of organizing has been the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Argentina issued a lockdown order in March and in addition, the Madres are far advanced in years, meaning it would be especially dangerous for them to be gathered in a protest outdoors during the pandemic (Arainfo, 2020).
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Margarite Bouvard (1994) described the first shout at a protest as a step forward for the
Madres, who from then on began to establish that they were political players. The group suggested this through embracing issues beyond the return of their children, such as working to hold accountable both the government and the Church for complicity in tearing apart families and engaging in murder (Bouvard, 1994; Navarro, 2001). The shift towards a maternal authority frame—used in tandem with the maternal emotionality frame—was also apparent as members of the Madres began traveling the world to meet with heads of governments and international organizations, seeking their assistance not through only emotional supplications but through arguments about the unethical nature of the regime and the need to support human rights
(Bouvard, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kohut, Vilella, & Julian, 2003). The women of the Madres were no longer “just” concerned about their grief and anger over the loss of their children, but also bigger picture issues such as democracy and human rights (Guest, 1990; Bouvard, 1994;
Navarro, 2001). A framing of maternal authority suggested the group’s role and competency in influencing policymaking at the global level.
In contrast to the Madres, who adopted maternal authority framing later, the NMF’s deployed both maternal emotionality and authority frames from the start. The NMF’s first action, a march on Jaffna to demand the return of their disappeared children by state forces, was said to be like a funeral procession with the mothers crying out in grief and anger over their disappeared sons (Kailasapathy, 2012). Yet when the NMF arrived at the government administration office to make their demands face to face, while continuing to openly mourn, they also used a maternal authority frame. This was done by relying on their maternal status to both shame the government for kidnapping and detaining their children and by engaging with
236 elite politicians as equals, even their betters. When the Minister of Defense suggested that the women be helicoptered to Colombo, the seat of the national government, to negotiate for the release of their sons, the women rejected his offer. Instead, they were adamant that the government release their children right away. The combination of their intense emotions paired with their insistence that they should be treated as figures of authority and citizens with rights legitimized the NMF as a force that the state would have to contend with (Kailasapathy,
2012; Thiruchandran S. , 2012).
The NMF engaged in similar campaigns to the Jaffna march as other enforced disappearances broke out in the north. Additionally, the branch highlighted the problems that all Tamils in the north faced, such as lack of access to sufficient food, as well as curtailed political and civil rights (Kailasapathy, 2012; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Much of the women’s efforts concerned violations by the state. But the NMF was also critical of the violence wrought on Tamil civilians by armed Tamil militants and the pressures to uphold a gendered nationalism that placed a burden on women as mothers of the nation (de Mel, 2003; Kailasapathy, 2012).
The one segment of Sri Lanka that did not take the women of the NMF seriously as political players were Tamil armed factions, likely because of the perceived high stakes of the conflict between the state and the militia fighters.111 While the NMF’s censure of government actions
111 This is not to say that the LTTE denied women could be political actors. The LTTE’s women’s armed participation constituted between 20 and 30 percent of its forces, which attracted keen scholarly interest in the 1990s through the 2010s (Balasingham, 1993; Schalk, 1994; de Mel, 2003; Alison, 2009; Bandarage, 2010; Herath, 2012; Bloom, 2011; Parashar, 2014). The LTTE constructed women as both defenders and mothers of the nation, recruiting women as fighters with claims that gender discrimination would end with an independent Tamil Eelam as well as encouraging Tamil women to birth fighters for the cause of Tamil independence (de Mel, 2003; Maunaguru, 2009; Herath, 2012; Parashar, 2014). Women as violent participants in wars of liberation are often excused for violating femininity codes because feminine stereotypes can gain them opportunities to harm their political opponents unavailable to male counterparts, who immediately draw suspicion (Parashar, 2014). About one-third of the Black Tigers, the LTTE’s suicide bomber unit, were women (Bandarage, 2010). The most notable LTTE female suicide
237 was appreciated by the LTTE, their criticism of the guerrillas constituted treason in the eyes of the LTTE (Kailasapathy, 2012; Thiruchandran S. , 2012). The women of the NMF understood that they could rely on a maternal emotionality frame that tugged on the heartstrings and provided a sympathetic image of the women. However, they also recognized that the group could simultaneously present themselves with a maternal authority frame that portrayed their members as capable activists to be reckoned with. However, this only lasted until the LTTE took control of the north, ruling with an authoritarianism that would allow no autonomy for civil society (Thiranagama, 2011; Kailasapathy, 2012).
Unlike the NMF and the Madres, the SMF relied exclusively on a frame of maternal emotionality. While active, the SMF held national conventions and rallies arranged by SLFP organizers and were frequently brought to SLFP political rallies (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001).
Of the activities that the group engaged in on their own accord were religious cursings, part of
Buddhist folk practice (Gombrich & Obeyesekere, 1988; de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001). In their activities, from conventions to rallies to public cursings, the SMF remained rooted in a maternal emotionality framing that stressed their grief and anger at the loss of their children (de Alwis,
bombing was 1991’s assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at a public event in Chennai, India by Thenmuli Rajaratnam, also known as Dhanu. The assassination has been viewed as an act of revenge for Rajaratnam’s rape by an Indian solider during the Indian peacekeeping intervention into Sri Lanka, as well as an act of retaliation by the LTTE against India for intervening (de Mel, 2003; Herath, 2012). Another well-known suicide bombing was in 2006, when an LTTE woman suicide bomber attacked Sarath Fonseka, then the Sri Lankan’s army chief. The woman used her pregnancy to access the medical facility Fonseka was in and avoided detention with other LTTE fighters because of her pregnancy (Parashar, 2014; Bandarage, 2010). However, since the civil war ended, former women fighters have been ostracized for violating perceived codes of femininity, and have struggled with reintegration, both in terms of earning a living and in reconnecting with civilian society, including being unable to find marriage partners (Krishnan, 2012; Parashar, 2014; Azmi, 2015). Overall, the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) in Sri Lanka has been fragmented, carried out by several government bodies with little coordination among them, and it has sought to train former women combatants in occupations perceived as feminine, such as sewing and domestic labor. Former combatants with physical disabilities are particularly disadvantaged, with little being done for them in terms of reintegration (Krishnan, 2012).
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2012). Their religious cursings invoked violence, revealing the women’s outrage against those who had disappeared their children. Yet calling upon the gods to give the UNP leader and president Ranasinghe Premadasa the violent death that their children had endured did not earn the women widespread condemnation by the Sinhalese-majority public. In fact, the SMF obtained sympathy in expressing their anger (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001).
This maternal emotionality frame constructed SMF members strictly in terms of their status as revenge-seeking, heart-broken and devastated mothers. There was never evidence of them as figures of authority. Their use of Buddhist curses against President Premadasa came close to a maternal authority frame since the cursings were agentic. However, they did not offer much more than the release of pent-up emotions. While the ten resolutions the group developed at the first national convention did offer policy solutions, when protesting, the SMF members did not emphasize this platform, but rather their despair and rage (de Mel, 2001; de
Alwis, 2001; 2012). The government focused on the anger and violence of the women trying to portray them as unrespectable women, while the public in the south sympathized with the women for their maternal loss, glossing over the mothers’ anger (de Alwis, 2001).
To sum up, both alliances with, or autonomy from, the state and decisions over framing choices likely help to account for the differences in duration of the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
State-directed political motherhood can easily become repressive, while bottom-up political motherhood is always emancipatory, at least for the women engaged in the organizing. The
Madres and the NMF both began as autonomous organizations (Carreon & Moghadam, 2015).
While the Madres has linked with the state at various points over their 40+ years of organizing, this was always by their own decision. Perhaps autonomy from state institutions is most critical
239 in the early years of a political motherhood movement. In terms of the NMF, the group was eventually coopted by the LTTE. In contrast to both the Madres and NMF, from its start, the
SMF was linked with the SLFP, whose MPs founded the group. This link to the state was detrimental in terms of members of the SMF having the chance to engage in much of political organizing as SLFP organizers did most of the work, although it was very useful in terms of the group meeting its political aims.
In terms of framing, at the founding of the Madres, the NMF and the SMF, all three relied on the frame of maternal emotionality. However, the NMF also relied on the maternal authority frame in combination with a maternal emotionality frame, and over time the Madres came to embrace a frame of maternal authority, which they used in combination with a maternal emotionality frame. Even so, the NMF was shut down by the LTTE. Had it not been forced to submit to the LTTE, perhaps, as the Madres, the NMF may have continued into the present. In contrast, the SMF relied exclusively on the maternal emotionality frame. By relying only on the maternal emotionality frame, the SMF failed to convey themselves as legitimate political actors with solutions to address Sri Lanka’s political situation. This may have influenced the women’s self-perception, possibly leading many to believe that they were not adept enough at organizing to continue for longer than the few years it was active.
Transnational support
In addition to varying political opportunity structures and organizational structures and choices, a third reason that may have contributed to the divergent outcomes of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front was whether the groups received support from outside the country. The
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Madres received extensive international support compared to the Mothers’ Front, both branches of which gained little attention from intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Two main issues may be at the root.
First is the predominance of the global North’s influence in transnational activism within human rights and feminist movements, which disadvantages global South actors, some more than others. Second is how the level of regional integration into international institutions and transnational advocacy networks might play a role in domestic movements’ resonance at the transnational level. I suggest that a third issue might also explain in part the different levels of international support given to each group, which is related to global North predominance in the transnational sphere and underlying Christian values embedded in the visual representations of the Madres.
The first issue is inequities found within global civil society, which is the contested sphere wherein transnational activism takes place. A scholarly debate centers over whether global civil society is a progressive site of resistance against anti-democratic forces, or if it is better understood as an arena where neoliberal processes, which emphasize capitalism, private property and the reigning in of democratic practice, better characterizes global civil society
(Macdonald, 1994; Kaldor, 2003; Chandler, 2004; Lipschutz, 2005). The former view is a bottom-up approach to global civil society, which is hopeful regarding emancipatory possibilities at the transnational level, a space where actors are seen as progressive activists and NGOs (Macdonald, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kaldor, 2003). The latter view is a top-down approach, which suggests the disciplinary nature of international organizations. This includes how global civil society can limit the ability of citizens to exercise decision-making through the
241 dominance of powerful elites working within IGOs and NGOs (Chandler, 2004; Lipschutz, 2005;
Kumar, 2007).112
I follow Karen Buckley (2013) who argues that global civil society contains the potential for both progressive and neoliberal forces. Regardless, the global North holds inordinate influence over the possibilities of progressive transnational activism (Bob, 2001; 2002;
Benessaieh, 2011). Global North activists and donors within transnational spaces influence the kinds of work that local activists can partake in by limiting local decision-making. The voices of the grassroots are not amplified but instead shunted into “a predetermined script” by outside actors (Chishti, 2002; Farrell & McDermott, 2005; Vogel, 2006; Benessaieh, 2011; Meyers, 2014, p. 461). This was aptly demonstrated in the work of the US NGO the Feminist Majority
Foundation, which in the early 2000s used the effort to improve Afghan women’s lives to bolster the US women’s movement by rallying US women via pity for Afghan women. The
Feminist Majority minimized the work done by Afghan activists and made a case for the US military intervention, which ultimately harmed most Afghan women, justified on the grounds of women’s rights (Farrell & McDermott, 2005).
Framing by social movements to appeal to audiences globally—notably those within international human rights organizations who hold the purse strings for movement activism—is often critical to the possibilities of long-term organizing (Bob, 2001; 2002; Benessaieh, 2011).
The role of victim, a less than empowering position, makes an appealing frame for global audiences. More privileged individuals in the global North believe that they can “save” these
112 Neoliberalism refers to the expansion of international finance and deregulation of the market globally, while governments become increasingly decentralized (Harvey, 1995).
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“victims” through the global North’s more progressive values (Farrell & McDermott, 2005;
Hopgood, 2013). Frequently, global South women have been cast in the role of victim and white/global North women as their saviors. This has led many global North feminists to support
“civilizing missions” by invading militaries, believing that such interventions help women, although they frequently cause great harm (Orford, 2002; Farrell & McDermott, 2005; Aroussi,
2011; Mohanty, 1988).
Leaving aside the ethical issue of casting those experiencing oppression as helpless victims, even being visible to international human rights organizations remains problematic.
Clifford Bob (2001; 2002) points out that global civil society is not an arena of easy solidarity but rather a viciously competitive sphere. Movement groups must unabashedly promote themselves to obtain transnational support, often at the expense of similar groups. This means many worthy causes go unsupported.113 Bob has argued that domestic actors’ framing is critical to determining their ability to gain support from global civil society. Certain approaches find more resonance than others. For example, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
(MOSOP), which advocated for Nigeria’s Ogoni, an ethnic group located in an oil production area of the country that is both oppressed and impoverished by the state, initially struggled to gain global support using a framing that demanded political autonomy. However, once MOSOP framed their cause in terms of indigenous rights and environmental protectionism necessitated by environmentally destructive oil production, the Ogoni became a global cause célèbre
113 Understandably, organizations working in the international human rights movement must be strategic in choosing which domestic groups to support as this reflects on their own organizations’ reputations, as well as because they have only so much capacity in terms of financial and other resources (Bob, 2001).
243 throughout the 1990s, with significant support from international human rights and other transnational organizations that support indigenous and environmental rights (Bob, 2001).
This points to the need for greater diversity in global civil society to allow for genuine input from global South actors rather than pressuring domestic groups “to speak a
‘transnationally resonant’ language in order to be heard” by international human rights organizations where “the norms and values of Western-liberal societies” predominate (Bob,
2001, p. 71, 74). The fact that most global South actors in global civil society depend on resources from global North actors suggests that the transnational activist sphere is anything but egalitarian. Rather it is a site of profound inequality wherein donor preferences become the priority, although local groups do try to work around these limitations to pursue their own agendas, often unbeknownst to donors (Benessaieh, 2011).
The second issue is the level of domestic integration into global networks. Such integration affects the ability of local actors to participate in transnational activism (Smith &
Wiest, 2005). Within Latin America, dense human rights support exists through both regional and international organizations, including the Organization of American States's Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which assisted local human rights actors during
Argentina’s period of state terrorism (Bouvard, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Atkins, 1999; Stites
Mor, 2013). In contrast, South Asia is one of the least integrated regions globally, including in terms of human rights (Rizvi, 1986; Mallick, 1998; AI, 2002; Rahman, 2012; World Bank, 2016;
Huda & Ali, 2018). The region’s main cooperative organization, the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC), has yet to create a body to monitor and assist with human rights, in stark contrast to most other regions of the world (Basnet, 2014; SAARC, 2018). In part,
244 these differences can be explained by Latin America’s experience with military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, which were opposed by human rights movements and helped transition the continent toward democracy, as well as a historical connection to human rights at the international level and to more shared regional characteristics, which I outline below. In contrast, in South Asia—which has a far more recent postcolonial history compared to Latin
America—human rights have been stigmatized as foreign (Basu, 2003). Likewise, South Asia is an extremely diverse region, meaning that there are fewer direct connections in terms of language and religion, although that is not to say that there are none.
Robust networks of transnational human rights advocacy work grew in the 1970s and
1980s Latin America thanks to rising numbers of domestic human rights NGOs and to strengthening ties among actors both within and outside the region (Keck & Sikkink, 1998;
Stites Mor, 2013). Much of this was in response to US interventionism into Latin America, part of the geopolitics of the Cold War, which spurred “dialectical processes” among progressive groups and activists both within and outside the region, who together resisted this imperialistic incursion (Stites Mor, 2013, p. 6). Moreover, organizations such as the IACHR promoted human rights, which included the American Convention on Human Rights, to promote human rights at a regional level (IACHR, 1969; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). The combination of these institutions and international human rights organizations such as America Watch and Amnesty International enabled the Argentine human rights movement to maneuver in the period of state terrorism
(Keck & Sikkink, 1998).
Such transnational connections are apparent in the case of the Madres. Marguerite
Bouvard (1994) traced the extensive relationships that the group developed with activists,
245 officials and politicians beyond Argentina’s borders, including at the UN and IACHR, and with activists, politicians and government officials in Europe and the US, such as the US State
Department official Patricia Derian of the Carter Administration. Much of the group’s funding, which for example, enabled them to set up their first office, was donated through a European human rights organization, the Support Group for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in
Argentina (SAAM). The Madres appears to have derived both financial support and movement solidarity from these connections (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997).
In part, shared language and religion among not just Argentines but many within Latin
America has led to widespread americanismo, or Pan Americanism, within the region. This contributes to cross-border interactions, including in the area of human rights (Atkins, 1999;
Stites Mor, 2013). In contrast to Argentina’s widespread embrace of regional and transnational linkages stands Sri Lanka where the effects of colonialism have operated differently, leading to more pernicious views of the NGO sector, which is sometimes deemed as allowing corrupting
Western values into the country (Wickramasinghe, 2001). While Argentina’s colonial experience led to the widespread adoption of the Spanish language and the Catholic Christian religion due to the massive influx of Europeans, Sri Lanka’s colonial experience has seen the Sinhala and
Tamil languages remain mainstays, serving as the first languages of most Sri Lankans (Oberst,
Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014; Lewis, 2015). Likewise, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam remain widespread among Sri Lanka’s populace (Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014). These ethnic, linguistic and religious variations have led to ongoing and unresolved discussions of what it means to be a Sri Lankan. Human rights are sometimes viewed as being disloyal to one’s ethnic community (Orjuela, 2008).
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Furthermore, the need for national sovereignty, from the West but also from South
Asia’s regional superpower, India, continues to be an important issue among diverse sectors of
Sri Lankan society (Rizvi, 1986; de Silva K. M., 1995; Mallick, 1998; Wickramasinghe, 2001;
Oberst, Malik, Kennedy, & Kapur, 2014; Sun, 2018; Wijesinghe, 2018). For this reason, regional cooperation is difficult. Moreover, Sinhalese Buddhists have since the 1950s sought to ensure the protection of Buddhism, which many Buddhists feel is under attack from “the West,
Christianity, and capitalism,” despite the religion’s official status and the fact that the majority of Sri Lankans identify as Buddhists (Wickramasinghe, 2001, p. 42). Discourses that paint international and domestic NGOs as nefarious outsider-influenced institutions remain prevalent, with many Sri Lankans perceiving NGOs as undermining the country’s sovereignty through Western influence. To this point, the universalism represented by much of human rights discourse can mask neoimperialism and it tends to prioritize the values of the global
North over the global South (Peterson, 1990; Wickramasinghe, 2001; Hopgood, 2013).
Indeed, Asoka Bandarage (2010) has argued that while part of the reason both branches of the Mothers’ Front ended was the coopting roles of both the LTTE and SLFP, there was also cooptation by Sri Lanka’s elites, whose donor-funded NGOs drowned out the voices of ordinary women. No women’s groups supported the SMF, although many did support the NMF (see
Chapter 4) (de Alwis, 2004; Samuel, 2006). Carmen Wickremagamage (1999) points out that Sri
Lankan women’s rights and feminist organizations have not historically focused on issues that matter to most Sri Lankan women, such as economic struggles and ethnic discrimination.
Wickremagamage is critical of Sri Lanka’s women’s movement for not supporting the SMF because of the emphasis on women’s roles as wives and mothers, pointing out that the use of
247 political motherhood is precisely what catalyzed most of these women into the political public sphere. That the SMF mobilized in a country where women’s political participation is low and rose to include the participation of 25,000 women is no small feat (Pinto Jayawardena &
Kodikara, 2002; Kodikara, 2014). The experience of the SMF highlights how elite members of civil society—including the domestic feminist movement—were mostly unwilling to support the grassroots work of the SMF.
Despite Sri Lanka’s lack of integration into transnational spaces, both branches of the
Mothers’ Front sought transnational support, hoping for solidarity. The NMF alerted Amnesty
International and the UN regarding the 1984 kidnapping of youths from the village of
Valvettiturai, seeking to draw attention to their cause (Mothers' Padayatra, 1984). Former leader and co-founder of the NMF Sarvam Kailasapathy (2012) noted that a New York Times reporter attempted to do a write up on the group. However, the dangerous political conditions in the north prevented the leaders of the group from speaking openly with him. I have searched for articles on the NMF in the New York Times and failed to locate any such publications.
Perhaps if there had been, the article would have caught the world’s attention since, in the late
1980s, the Madres was still very much in the international public’s eye, including in pop culture, praised by U2 and Sting (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997).114 Alternatively, the international community might have been fatigued by another story of mothers of the disappeared, finding this framing tiresome after so much coverage of the Madres. This could be the case as the SMF attempted to connect transnationally (de Alwis, 2004; de Mel, 2001). Such outreach never
114 The well-known Irish band U2’s The Joshua Tree album, released in March 1987, included the song “Mothers of the Disappeared” (U2, 2018). Similarly, the musician Sting released the “They Dance Alone” about the group on his October 1987 album Nothing Like the Sun (Sting, 2018).
248 materialized in transnational support for the group, even as the SMF attempted to use peaceful political motherhood, which is often responded to enthusiastically by the international community (de Alwis, 2004; Aharoni, 2017).
It may have been that the Madres came first and caught the world’s attention so that the NMF, and later the SMF, never had a chance of finding resonance. It is striking that two similar cases working to draw attention internationally resulted in the cause célèbre of one and not the other. That the widespread use of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR
1325) and its accompanying Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has gained significant standing in development, peacebuilding and transitional justice discourses since its launch in
2000 might suggest that the Mothers’ Front simply missed out on what might have been strong transnational support for their agenda if they had come only a decade or two later. Although a counterfactual, had the UNSCR 1325 existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, perhaps it could have given the NMF and SMF leverage (see Chapter 8). Gaining this leverage may have necessitated solidarity from Sri Lankan feminists, who collectively chose not to give this support, suggesting the domestic-international connection. However, the case of the Madres attests to the fact that some mothers of the disappeared caught international sympathies without the WPS agenda. For this reason, I suggest that a third issue may be at play in the sphere of transnational activism.
International human rights organizations and discourses remain under global North influence, associated with “rational” European Enlightenment thinking and the individualistic assumptions of liberal theory (Peterson, 1990; Wickramasinghe, 2001; Rajagopal, 2003;
Hopgood, 2013). The international human rights regime has its historical roots in European
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Christianity, which Stephan Hopgood (2013) argues has led to the development of a secular human rights religion wherein bourgeois middle-class global Northerners assist the
“backwards” of the global South (p. 11). Hopgood sees the international human rights regime as a secular church, with human rights advocates preaching their values to those they consider uninitiated, mainly those in the global South. I acknowledge Hopgood’s argument but suggest something else might explain differences in international support for the Madres and the
Mothers’ Front. Even if religion—the Christian faith in particular—is dropping in importance among many in the global North, these values are ever-present within the discourses of these societies. The Madres embodied some of the ideals associated with global North Christianity— such as love and peace—and often framed their cause using quotes from the Bible, most notably in the newsletter they published that was directed at an international audience
(Bouvard, 1994). Their very image mimics the sorrowful mother of the Christian Virgin Mary as she mourned the loss of her own murdered son. Notably, the earliest marches of the Madres were carried out in silence, mimicking the idealized vision of silently suffering Virgin Marys
(Taylor, 1997). In contrast, mourning in South Asia presents differently, including wailing, chest- beating, pulling out one’s hair and tearing on one’s clothes, all of which stand in stark contrast to the image of a stoic Virgin Mary (Kailasapathy, 2012).
Was the fact that the Madres found such resonance at the transnational level while the
Mothers’ Front received little attention because the Madres were mostly white in appearance and associated with Christianity in contrast to the members of the NMF and SMF, the majority of whom were Hindu or Buddhist and brown? Bob’s (2001; 2002) claim that certain types of framing find resonance in global civil society over others is my starting point. While many
250 feminists in Sri Lanka have speculated that the cooptation of both branches of the Mothers’
Front had to do with their use of political motherhood, it may also have had to do with global civil society’s embedded values that subconsciously resonate with Christian and Christian- influenced groups rather than those who embody non-Christian faiths, especially those outside the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tripartite.115 As de Alwis (2001) has pointed out, Christianity is often deemed rational while Buddhism and Hinduism are seen as irrational, at least within global
North discourses. I argue that framing a movement like the Madres through Christian
(specifically Catholic) imagery likely helped catapult the group onto the world stage where their appearance resonated with embedded understandings of the Christian Mary, helping the
Madres to strike a chord unconsciously. In contrast, Hindu and Buddhist mothers of the disappeared whose more vocal beseeching religious practices and mourning performances of wailing and tearing their hair and clothes did not resonate. I explore these different visual representations of motherhood in Chapter 6.
Accounting for variance in organizational duration
The Madres and Mothers’ Front vary in terms of their respective durations, visibility and remembrances. I have outlined several factors that may explain the divergences in the respective duration of the groups, which in turn impacted their differing forms of visibility and remembrance. Broadly, differences that impacted their duration include political opportunity structures, organizational structures and choices and transnational support. The similarities
115 Despite the regular linking of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Aaron Hughes (2013) argues that these three religions do not share as many commonalities as suggested in the construct of Abrahamic religions.
251 between the Madres and Mothers’ Front point to how both catalyzed in repressive environments of internal armed conflicts where civil society organizing was constrained. Both organizations found political motherhood useful to navigate the limited opportunities available to activists in Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war. However, differences in the type of internal armed conflict—an ideological or class conflict versus an ethnic conflict—and whether the government was authoritarian or illiberally democratic likely impacted the respective durations of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. Relatedly, the timing of achieving their respective political demands was another factor. In terms of the organizations, autonomy or alliances with state forces and the types of frames adopted by the groups also impacted their durations. Finally, whether the movements received transnational support is another contributing factor in the divergent long-term outcomes of the Madres and Mothers’
Front.
Much of how long an organization stays active is linked with the political environment in which a movement arises. Opportunities available to movement actors in social movement studies are said to exist within the political opportunity structure. The more open the structure is, the more possibilities there are for movement actors to influence the general public and government of their policy desires (Giugni, 2011). In particular, the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and whether the state was authoritarian or more democratic influenced the opportunities for movement organizing for the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka largely prevented widespread shared experiences among grassroots Tamil and Sinhalese women, something that the government and media contributed to by emphasizing only certain images of the war to the Sinhalese south (Wickremagamage,
252
1999; Wickramasinghe N. , 2001; de Alwis, 2004; Bandarage, 2010; de Mel, 2007). In the case of the Madres, while there were differences among women—including rural/urban divides, class divides and religious differences among some members who were Jewish versus the majority who were Catholic—the conflict itself was not ethnically based. This made papering over differences among women less difficult than if it were an ethnic conflict (Bouvard, 1994; Bosco,
2006). In turn, because of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, the NMF branch had to contend with violence by Tamil militias, which made women symbols of the Tamil nation. The ethnic war and growing power of the LTTE constrained the number of openings to maneuver in their political organizing and ultimately overtook the organization (Kailasapathy, 2012).
In terms of government, living under an illiberal democratic regime, the SMF did not suffer the level of atrocities that the Madres did under an oppressive military regime that murdered some of their members and saw to the regular arrest and use of weapons against the women (Bouvard, 1994; Samuel, 2006). Likewise, the NMF and entire Tamil community were under considerable violence from the state, in what could arguably be understood as an authoritarian system (Tambiah, 1986; Malik, Rahman, Kapur, Oberst, & Kennedy, 2009;
Thiranagama, 2011). The violence that the NMF experienced due to their Tamil ethnic identity under a state-led war against the Tamil community meant that the women of the NMF endured more harassment than did the SMF, whose members were largely from the hegemonic ethnic group, the Sinhalese. In the illiberally democratic south where political parties were able to operate, the SMF’s strategic alliance with the SLFP provided them protection from state violence (Samuel, 2006).
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The kind of domestic regime that the Madres, the NMF and SMF catalyzed under likely influenced the longevity of each group, although not necessarily in the ways one might expect, except for the NMF. The NMF came to an early demise due to the dually-challenging environment, caught between a state that was oppressing the Tamil community and a militarized sector of the Tamil community that wanted to use violence against the state. Being nonviolent and seeking a political solution to the conflict between the state and Tamil community led to the group’s cooptation by the LTTE for their failure to unquestioningly support the LTTE (Kailasapathy, 2012). In the cases of the Madres and SMF, contrary to expectations, the group operating in a military dictatorship endured over the group under an illiberal democracy. Argentina’s military government could not stop the organizing of the
Madres. Yet in the more open environment of southern Sri Lanka, the SMF’s came to end on their own accord after four years organizing. I suggest that this may be explained by the role of the SMF’s state alliance, which was only possible in the more democratically oriented southern part of Sri Lanka.
Another aspect related to political opportunity structures that helps explain the different durations of the Madres and SMF is the timing of achieving their respective political goals, which played a role in each group’s decision and/or ability to remain active. Although the
SMF achieved its main aims early on while the Madres struggled for decades to achieve some of their major aims, it was the SMF that came to an earlier end the Madres (Bouvard, 1994;
Samuel, 2006). Dina Bishara’s (2015) concept of the politics of ignoring notes how civil society groups’ failure to be taken seriously by a regime can spur ongoing political mobilization. This may explain the Madres’s continued organizing, even when they were not achieving a single
254 major aim (Bouvard, 1994). The politics of ignoring also explains how its absence in the case of the SMF, where their recognition by the UNP assured the SMF that they were being taken into account as threats to the government (de Mel, 2001).
Organizationally, whether the different political motherhood movements allied with the state or remained autonomous and what types of maternal frames the groups chose to represent their cause may also help to account for the different durations of the Madres and
Mothers’ Front. The protection offered by the SLFP for the SMF was critical to the women’s safety, yet the SLFP organizers’ decision to handle most of the group’s decision-making meant that the women of the SMF had little opportunity to push themselves to learn new skills.
Moreover, the SLFP contributed to the SMF’s decision in 1994—following Chandrika
Kumaratunga’s election into office—to disband, apparently believing that the SLFP would see to the fulfillment of their political aims (de Alwis, 2001; 2004). In contrast, the Madres had no choice but to learn how to plan organizing campaigns. There were no political parties able to operate during the early years of the group due to the ban on political activities by the military dictatorship (Bouvard, 1994). The SLFP used the SMF as a political prop rather than treat them as co-collaborators. Without a sense of political efficacy gained by designing and implementing their activities, members of the SMF may have believed that their continued participation in civil society was not critical to achieving their political aims, which the SLFP promised to carry forward (and notably did so). As for the NMF, they remained autonomous until coopted by the
LTTE, which occurred because the branch was trapped in between the state and Tamil militants.
It was not viable to challenge both the state and Tamil militants (Samuel, 2006).
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There were both similarities and differences among the Madres and Mothers’ Front in their choice of social movement frames. Framing accounts in part for how groups are perceived. Movement actors must prove that their cause is worthy of support by using a framing that resonates broadly, to appeal to policymakers and other political elites, as well as the general public (Snow & Benford, 1992; Benford, 1997; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Bob, 2001;
Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Kriesi, 2014). There is no end to the types and combinations of frames that groups may rely upon. Movement actors are strategic in their choice of frames, often selecting messages that fit with at least some mainstream aspects of their society, so that their movement has widespread appeal (Ferree & Mueller, 2004; Hewitt &
McCammon, 2004; Kutz-Flamenbaum, 2007). The Madres and the Mothers’ Front each relied on the maternal stealth frame to obscure for as long as they could that their organizing was political, as well as the traditional supermadre that emphasized the how mothers are focused on their children. This brought them each widespread visibility within Argentina and Sri Lanka.
Additionally, the Madres, the NMF and the SMF each relied on the frame of maternal emotionality at their launch, which stressed anger, grief and/or the desire for revenge against those who harmed their disappeared children. However, at the same time, the NMF used a maternal authority frame in conjunction with a maternal emotionality frame, wherein they expressed sorrow but also took on roles as legitimate actors in the political system
(Thiruchandran S. , 2012). Over time, the Madres came to do the same, by taking on a frame of maternal authority in combination with their maternal emotionality frame. This allowed the
Madres to both express their anguish and anger over the loss of their children, as well as to contribute policy ideas for the political system (Bouvard, 1994). Although the NMF came to an
256 early end once the LTTE shut them down, the Madres has continued to rely on the combination of maternal authority and emotionality frames (Politi, 2017; McCay, 2017).
In contrast, the SMF relied exclusively on the maternal emotionality frame, never adopting the maternal authority frame. The maternal emotionality frame was driven home by their use of religious cursing against President Premadasa of the UNP but also came through presenting themselves as sorrowful mothers (de Alwis, 2001; 2004). By relying singularly on the maternal emotionality frame instead of in conjunction with maternal authority, the SMF failed to convey themselves as legitimate political actors with solutions for Sri Lankan politics. This may have influenced their self-perception, possibly leading members to believe that they were not adept enough to continue organizing after the SLFP’s Kumaratunga entered office. The SMF may have seen its role as drawing attention to the disappeared while the SLFP did policymaking.
The world is a visual space (Howells & Negreiros, 2012). We are bombarded with images. Whether at the domestic or international level, civil society is a competitive sphere wherein civil society groups must make their mark to be seen (Bob, 2001; Benessaieh, 2011).
While both the Madres and the Mothers’ Front used various maternal framings to great effect at the domestic level, their different visual representations of motherhood resonated in divergent ways at the international level. Both the Madres and the Mothers’ Front navigated political motherhood in part through religious discourses, especially in the case of the Madres and the SMF (Bouvard, 1994; Taylor D. , 1997; de Alwis, 2001). While the SMF’s use of religious cursing played well in Sri Lanka, because of inequalities in global civil society and the
257 international human rights regime, the Madres’s perhaps inadvertent use of Christian imagery resonated better globally than the Mothers’ Front (de Alwis, 2001; Hopgood, 2013).
The inequalities in global civil society make it clear that values associated with the global
North find resonance with those in international human rights organizations. This is due to the over-representation of the global North in the international system due to historical, material and power inequalities (Chandler, 2004; Lipschutz, 2005; Kumar, 2007; Hopgood, 2013). That the Madres resonated at the transnational level as mothers of the disappeared while the
Mothers’ Front received little global attention is likely tied to the fact that the Madres were associated with Christianity in contrast with the members of the NMF and SMF. The values of
Christianity are deeply embedded in international human rights organizations, while there are discourses about the “irrationalism” of Hinduism and Buddhism (de Alwis, 2001; Hopgood,
2013). I explore this in full in Chapter 6.
Visibility is linked with duration at the international level. The attention that the Madres of the Plaza de May received came first from outside Argentina—only later did it come domestically—and this likely bolstered members’ desire to stay organizing (Bouvard, 1994;
Bosco, 2006). It is noteworthy that the Madres were villainized by most Argentines until the military regime lost the Malvinas Islas War to Great Britain. The women’s status as human rights advocates and proponents of democracy began at the transnational level and only circled back to Argentina when it was clear the military regime was nearing its demise. In the transition to democracy, the Madres’s domestic popularity took a severe dip since they were critical of the transitioning government (Bouvard, 1994). However, over the decades, the group, now as two separate branches, made a resurgence domestically by maintaining their visibility in
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Argentine politics and through their memorialization into the international human rights regime
(see Chapter 4) (Bouvard, 1994; Mellibovsky, 1997; Sutton, 2010; Conn, 2018; Pineda, 2018).
To sum up, overlapping factors—such as the type of armed conflict, regime type, timing of achieving political demands, alliances or autonomy from the state, types of maternal frames and support from international human rights organizations—help account for the difference in duration of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. It not easy or necessary to disentangle each of these. The point of this chapter is to move beyond attributing the “early” demise of the
Mothers’ Front solely to the use of political motherhood. Like any political mobilization, political motherhood movements must be understood in context.
Conclusion
To conclude, this chapter suggested that the shorter durations of the NMF and SMF compared to the Madres are linked with the different a) political opportunity structures available in Sri Lanka’s civil war as compared to Argentina’s period of state terrorism, b) to organizational choices by the groups and c) finally whether international human rights organizations lent support to the groups. While political motherhood may inhibit women’s access to the public political sphere, it is not the only issue that limits women’s organizing. In the next chapter, I move from exploring the different durations of the two political motherhood movements to look exploring how they diverge in terms of visibility. I do this by exploring international human rights organizations and the different visual representations of political motherhood used by the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
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Chapter 6:
Visibility
Introduction
In the last chapter, I outlined factors that may account for the different durations of the
Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres) and Mothers’ Front, including available political opportunities, organizational structures and support from international human rights groups. It is the latter to which I now turn. The main question that this chapter pursues is why international human rights organizations lent enthusiastic support to the Madres yet turned more of a blind eye toward the Mothers’ Front, despite both groups using political motherhood to seek international recognition, support and solidarity. I ask: What made the Madres visible on the international level?
I suggest that the respective religious tropes differently depicted by the Madres and
Mothers’ Front impacted their international visibility. The resonance within international human rights organizations that the Madres launched by invoking—at first inadvertently and over time with strategic choosing—the image of the Virgin Mary, the sorrowful mother who mourns the loss of her son—had profound consequences for the organization in terms of international visibility. The Virgin Mary is a well-known figure to Western audiences, who due to historical events, predominate within powerful positions of global civil society (Orsi 2001,
Katz 2001, Warner 2013, Hopgood 2013). While Protestant Christianity does not feature the
Virgin Mary in the same way as Catholic Christianity, the Virgin Mary has featured prominently
261 in Western cultural history and is a familiar figure to all Christians, Catholic or otherwise. The characteristics associated with the Virgin Mary are idealized as highly feminine and promoted among non-Catholic Christian women as well (Orsi 2001, Katz 2001, Warner 2013).
The Virgin Mary in Latin America is tied to a concept known as marianismo, a term coined by Evelyn Stevens (1973), to describe what Stevens saw as a widespread cult throughout
Latin America that emphasizes women as morally and spiritually strong, even “semidivine” for their ability to be self-sacrificial like the Virgin Mary (p. 91, 95). Stevens suggests that the majority of Latin American women are raised to emulate these characteristics, which includes submission to male relatives. Stevens asserts that marianismo plays counterpart to machismo, a cult of manhood found throughout Latin America that encourages men to engage in
“exaggerated aggressiveness” toward other men and to practice “sexual aggression” with women (p. 90). Such blanket descriptions to cover all Latin Americas have roundly been criticized by some Latin America area specialists, no more so than by Marysa Navarro (2002).116
Navarro points to the lack of intersectional (even basic contextual) analysis in Stevens’ argument: “Stevens would have us believe that, regardless of class origins, cultural specificity, religious beliefs, political convictions, ethnic origin, educational levels, or history, the ideal Latin
American woman is everywhere the same” (p. 265). Navarro notes that marianismo as described by Stevens is depicted in some Latin American countries’ popular culture television, films and books and that depending on class status, historical period and other specifics, may resonate with some women in some Latin American countries. But even as Stevens portrayed
116 For other various critiques of Stevens’ marianismo concept see: Arrom 1980, Bourque and Warren 1981, Moraes‐Gorecki 1988, Ehlers 1991, Vazquez 1994.
262 marianismo as ubiquitous in Latin America in the early 1970s, women throughout the region at this time were participating in feminist activism, joining the ranks of professional sectors, running female-headed households and taking up arms in guerrilla movements. Feminine ideals associated with Virgin Mary have been placed upon some women in Latin America, although not as expansively or to the extent implied by Stevens.
Although marianismo remains disputed in Latin American area studies, scholarship suggests that the Virgin Mary plays an important role in much of Latin America and certainly in
Argentina, and influenced how the Madres portrayed themselves in their organizing (Taylor
1997, Sutton 2010, Finchelstein 2014). Conversely, the Mothers’ Front appeared visually far removed from Christianity—Catholic or otherwise—in their performance of political motherhood, an issue that I argue made it difficult for the group to garner the sympathies of international human rights organizations and among Westernized, Christian audiences in the same way that the Madres did. The Madres purposefully imitated the grief-stricken stance of the Madonna as they recognized how this image resonated within what has been described as a nationalistically Catholic country (Finchelstein 2014, Taylor 1997). Yet in eliciting an emotional response from domestic audiences by embodying the Virgin Mary, the Madres also furthered their ability to resonate internationally since Christianity and its symbolism, even secularized versions of this symbolism, influence many members of international human rights organizations.
In this chapter, I first overview the differences in the transnational opportunity structure for the Madres and Mothers’ Front due to geographic and geopolitical differences between
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Latin America and South Asia, as well as how global feminism operated at the different time periods of the two political motherhood movements. In the second section, I outline visual analysis as a method and point to how Christian tropes (and in the case of Argentina/Madres, specifically Catholic) tropes may resonate within international human rights organizations. The third section constitutes the bulk of the chapter, a visual analysis of selected images of the
Madres and Mothers’ Front. The fourth section discusses the different levels of international visibility for the two political motherhood movements based on their visual representations associated with varying practices of Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism.
Differences in transnational political opportunity structures
I first highlight how the Madres and Mothers’ Front developed within regions that have different levels of human rights transnationalism. Moreover, during their respective catalyzations, Latin America and South Asia held varying levels of geopolitical relevance. Finally, the political motherhood movement arose in periods of differing emphases in global feminism.
These factors play a role in how each group resonated within international human rights organizations.
As noted in previous chapters (see Chapters 3 and 4), there are differences in the density of human rights networks within Latin American and South Asia. Significantly, Latin
America has one of the densest transnational human rights networks in the world, with connections strong both within the region and in connecting the region with those outside of
Central and South America (Keck and Sikkink 1998, Stites Mor 2013, Atkins 1999). The Madres benefited enormously from tapping into existing transnational advocacy networks, which
264 garnered them exposure, contacts and other opportunities to connect with established human rights organizations, inter-governmental organizations and officials in the US and other globally powerful states in Europe (Bouvard 1994, Keck and Sikkink 1998). Transnational linkages also gave the Madres considerable knowledge in how to organize, which was valuable since most members had little to no previous organizing experience.
Meanwhile, South Asia has one of the least inter-connected regions in terms of not only human rights networks but also economic and other forms of cooperation (AI, Evaluation of the
South Asia Human Rights Defenders Project 2002, Basnet 2014, World Bank 2016, Huda and Ali
2018). There are no regional human rights monitoring bodies in South Asia, which stands in stark contrast to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR), which lent Argentina’s human rights community some assistance against the military dictatorship (Basnet 2014, Bouvard 1994). For this reason, it was less difficult for the
Madres to capture the attention of international human rights organizations since they could begin seeking transnational support within Latin America. In contrast, the Mothers’ Front, which lacked access to the same kinds of legalistic and established avenues that existed in
South America, had to move more immediately beyond the region of South Asia to tap into the global human rights movement. Both groups did seek out experts within the United Nations
(UN) and Amnesty International, but to less avail in the case of both the Northern Mothers’
Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF).
Another possible explanation for less international human rights attention to the
Mother’s Front is the differing geopolitical situations of Argentina and Sri Lanka. While Sri Lanka
265 has become geopolitically relevant in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), this “war” did not begin until late 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11. Julie Polk (2000) suggests that the lack of outside knowledge regarding Sri Lanka’s civil war, including its many human rights abuses, was due to in part to a global media focus on conflicts in Eastern Europe and Africa, which received greater coverage in terms of human rights abuses. Polk noted that the both the Sri Lankan government and Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) worked to control the flow of information outside of the country’s borders, which helps accounts for the lack of media coverage. What coverage there was, focused on the LTTE as terrorists, which made it less likely for them to garner sympathetic outside support. The LTTE became favored case study of defense communities since the LTTE was supposedly defeated by a counter-terrorist operation (Hashim 2013, Lalwani
2017).
After 9/11, the Sinhalese-dominated government’s war on the Tamil community and
LTTE became more globally relevant. Countries such as Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto power over UNSC decision-making, supported the Sri Lankan government’s war on Tamils due to their own internal conflicts with the
Chechnyan and Uyghur communities. Tamils in Sri Lanka, Chechens in Russia and Uyghurs in
China have been regularly portrayed as terrorists in the context of GWOT, and both the US and
European Union (EU) listed the LTTE as a terrorist organization following the launch of the
GWOT to bolster the so-called war against terror as a global issue (European Commission 2006,
D. Lewis 2010, Ratner 2012, Hashim 2013, State n.d.). The LTTE may have been especially useful for proponents of the GWOT since they are non-Muslim and could be used to “prove” that the
GWOT was not anti-Muslim. Previously, including when the NMF and SMF branches were
266 active, Sri Lanka’s internal conflict did not have strategic relevance within US and EU geopolitics. This likely contributed to the Mothers’ Front’s pleas to the international community in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s falling on deaf ears, where those in international human rights organizations did not feel pressured to deal with this conflict since there was little strategic attention given to it by major powers such as the US and EU.
Despite the lack of interest from Western governments in Sri Lanka’s conflict prior to the GWOT, the Tamil liberation movement shared connections with other liberation movements, none of which likely bought them sympathetic audiences in Western countries. In the late 1970s and early 1980s when multiple Tamil militant groups were active, some Tamils trained in Lebanon with Palestine Liberation Organization militants. One armed Tamil group in this period, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam, received weapons from the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In the mid-1980s, the LTTE became the predominant militant group in northern Sri Lanka, absorbing fighters from other groups. Over the 1990s, the LTTE made connections with Turkey’s Kurdish Workers’ Party (Jayasekara 2009).
In 1998, the LTTE declared its solidarity with national liberation groups, working class parties and socialist governments everywhere (Jazeera 2009). Specifically, the LTTE supported the
Naxalite movement in India, which is composed of several groups fighting for Adivasi
(indigenous/tribal people) rights and the landless. While originating in West Bengal, the movement is concentrated in rural parts of eastern and central India (Jazeera 2009, Braud
2015). The LTTE also stood in solidarity with the Khalistan movement, a separatist effort that sought a country for Sikhs in India (Jetly 2008, Jazeera 2009). Additionally, the LTTE developed connections with Islamist rebels in the Philippines in the 1990s and by 1998, links with the
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Taliban. By the early 2000s, the LTTE was working with Al-Qaida affiliated groups in Pakistan and Eritrea. Connections with Islamist groups appear have been mainly to facilitate the LTTE’s access to arms (Jayasekara 2009).
As the GWOT brought attention to the Sri Lankan Civil War after 2001, international human rights organizations sought to promote greater attention to the geopolitical relevance of
Sri Lanka. Major human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had been documenting abuses before 2001, criticizing equally the Sri Lankan government’s discrimination and violence against Tamils and the LTTE for their treatment of civilians.117 The violence carried out by the Tamil Tigers did not endear the organization with human rights defenders, even if grievances of the Tamil community against the Sinhalese-dominated government were justified. This was painfully obvious after the LTTE carried out the forced eviction of 70,000-80,000 Muslims from five districts in the north in October 1990. This implicated the LTTE in the same ethnonationalism of which they had accused the Sinhalese- dominated state (Thiranagama 2011, 106).
In contrast, when the Madres were organizing in the late 1970s and early 1980s during the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union, Latin America was of geopolitical importance to the US and Western Europe. The US’s Doctrine of National Security marked the regions of
Central and South America as an area of US influence that the US had to protect from Soviet infiltration for its national security (Kohut, Vilella and Julian 2003, McSherry 2005, Sutton 2010).
117 HRW 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, AI 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000.
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The National Security doctrine’s support for dictatorships and extreme abuse against civilian populations caught the attention of many leftist organizations in the US. This led to regular contact between intellectuals, experts and activists throughout the Americas, all of which facilitated spread of the Madres’s pleas to the international community (Keck and Sikkink 1998,
Hatzky and Stites Mor 2014, Stites Mor 2013). The uptake of the Madres by more mainstream human rights organizations beyond leftists likely had a lot to do with the non-violent struggle of the Madres, which helped the group find universal appeal.
A third major difference is the timeframes in which women were responding as political mothers and the particular kinds of feminist organizing that were occurring as part of the women’s movement within the broad frame of human rights. The Madres’s struggle against a
US-backed Argentine dictatorship tapped feminist imaginations in the Americas, South and
North, at a time of revolutionary actuality, most notably in the case of Nicaragua, and potential in Central and South America (Randall 1974, 1981). By the 1980s, a lively socialist feminist debate about the effects of women’s participation in such struggles, armed or not, for their future political roles “after the revolution” took hold with concerns that socialist movements were failing to address gender inequality (Randall 1994, Nazzari 1983, Molyneux 1985). The
1980s was also the height of feminist peace movements, particularly against the threat of nuclear war with the US deployment of cruise missiles, which spawned a new wave of maternalist feminist peace activism, notably at women’s peace camps, such as Greenham
Common in the UK. In 1981, Welsh women created a protest camp to highlight their opposition to US nuclear weapons stored at the Greenham Common site, which inspired similar peace encampments against nuclearism in other parts of the world. These activisms relied on
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“nonviolent, uniquely feminist, means of protest,” including the US Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Seneca, NY (Alonso 1993, 242-243, Krasniewicz 1992).
Greenham Common and similar peace actions sparked feminist theoretical attention to maternal feminism, including in the work of Jean Bethke Elshtain (1982) and Sara Ruddick
(1989) who argued for the benefits of maternalism in peace politics, notably its nonviolence.
Others, such as Adrienne Harris (1989), sought a nonmaternal feminist approach, arguing that militance was necessary for peace. In part, this debate was about the difference between practical gender interests associated with women’s maternal responsibilities to protect their children from violence and want at the hands of unjust regimes and strategic gender interests associated with bringing feminist agendas to challenge—among other things—the reduction of women to motherhood into the political arena (Molyneux 1985, Feijoo 1994). Maxine
Molyneux (1985) argued that practical gender interests could morph into strategic ones; thus, making a case for the value of maternalist politics as an entry way into a more feminist politics.
The Madres’ struggle both animated and became a central symbol in 1980s feminist ferment in the Americas with respect to socialist and maternal feminist thinking and debates (Feijoo 1994,
Snitow 1989). This was likewise a time when the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985) was generating significant growth in transnational and global feminisms, the latter characterized by grassroots interconnections and the former characterized by the rise of international feminist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and feminist influence in global policymaking (Alonso
1993, Bunch 2001, Walby 2011).
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The Tamil Tigers identified as revolutionaries seeking independence in the form of a separate state from Sri Lanka and sought solidarity with other national liberation and socialist factions around the world and had women serving as armed combatants (Jayasekara, 2009;
Jazeera, 2009; Maunaguru, [1995] 2009). The latter has become a focus of feminist scholarship.
Early interest came from Adele Ann Balasingham, married to Anton Balasingham, a strategist with the LTTE, and from Sri Lankan feminists and those working in Sri Lankan area studies
(Balasingham, 1993; 2001; Maunaguru, [1995] 2009; Schrijvers, 1999; Thiruchandran, 1997).118
Later, broader feminist interest increased, perceptibly after the launch of the GWOT (M. H.
Alison 2009, Bloom 2011, Herath 2012, Parashar 2014, M. Alison 2011, Gowrinathan 2017).
However, in addition to the lack of density of Asian human rights organizations, the less strategic interest the US/West had in the Sri Lankan conflict prior to the GWOT, and the less solidarity the Tamil Tigers garnered for its national liberation struggle as opposed to those in
Latin America, there were other processes that brought less attention to the Mother’s Front compared to the Madres on the part of international human rights and feminist organizations.
These included less familiarity with the civil war and its religious dimensions in Sri Lanka on the part of secular and US-based transnational and global feminist NGOs and the extended violence of the many decades-long conflict. But in the case of less international feminist attention specifically, were the growing critiques of maternal feminism and the global feminist turn on the part of feminist NGOs. The feminist landscape of the 1990s saw a mounting rejection of maternalism by poststructural and postmodern feminisms, due to concerns over maternalism’s
118 Peter Schalk (1994), a scholar of history and religion, was another early scholar who wrote about women serving in the LTTE.
271 ties to gender essentialism (Butler 1999, Tong 2013).119 Likewise, following the end of the Cold
War in the 1990s, which disrupted to some degree socialist feminist and feminist peace movements, Western feminists working internationally moved from solidarity politics with feminist, peace, and national liberation movements in the global South to working within intergovernmental organizations, notably the UN, for feminist institutional reforms (Bunch
2001, Walby 2011, Wu 2013). This further contributed to neglect of Sri Lanka’s civil war by feminist international human rights organizations who turned their energies to influencing the
UN, most notably through the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 1995).
In what follows, I also argue that the Mothers’ Front suffered from representational invisibility and unsuitability with respect to garnering international attention for their exercise of political motherhood as compared with the Madres, whose images of both sympathetic and muscular political motherhood continue to be used to this day by Latin American feminists in support of feminist causes-, such as pro-reproductive rights and protesting against human rights abuse by post-dictatorship (and new dictatorship) governments in Latin America (Conn
2018, Sutton 2010, Sherman 2019). On the one hand, I critique international human rights organizations, including many feminist or feminist-oriented ones, that are largely based in the
119 Gender essentialism refers to the view that particular bodies are supposed to be tied to particular expressions of gender and that such expressions of gender carry with them particular expectations (Butler 1999, DiQuinzio 1999). A conservative would suggest that men are masculine and supposed to fight wars, while women are feminine and, from the homestead, supposed to encourage their husbands and sons to fight in wars. A cultural feminist likewise argues that men are masculine fighters but that women can use their femininity to promote peace as a means of undermining militarism and masculinity. This stands in contrast to a poststructuralist feminist who would claim that both biological sex and gender—that which is masculine, feminine or other—are equally socially constructed (Wibben 2016, 5)
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West for how their Western perspectives have contributed to obscuring the Mother’s Front.
Such perspectives tend to emphasize human rights as individualist rights, such as to be free from bodily persecution by the state. While international human rights organizations are largely secular, they nevertheless carry with them particular images of motherhood associated with
Christianity, specifically with Catholicism. Given this, international human rights organizations are also often inflected by the still lingering colonial imagination of the Christian West that constructed non-Christian peoples, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others, as uncivilized or barbaric, including lacking in “appropriate” motherhood. This can render a lack of intelligibility and sympathy for non-Western and non-Christian political motherhood movements like the Mothers’ Front.
On the other hand, I analyze the images related to both the Madres and the Mothers’
Front to find that first, there are hardly any images of the Mothers’ Front and those that exist are of poor quality and convey little meaning resonant with Western Christianity, such as stoic silence, and individual agency. In contrast, there are copious images of the Madres, both during their time of protest and since as stylized images of the heroic women of the group, which continue to be used by social movements. This I argue relates to the politics of memory and transitional justice, both in terms of how these two groups are remembered by today’s movement scholars and actors and how their organizing has impacted postconflict justice in
Argentina and Sri Lanka. I speak to these postconflict ramifications of the underrepresentation of the Mother’s Front in my concluding chapter but point to the broad takeaways here that the
Madres remain politically relevant in Argentina and largely hidden in Sri Lankan politics today.
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Roland Bleiker (2019) stresses the link between the visual and memory due to the ability of visuals to “capture key aspects of human existence, but also to communicate these aspects to others” (p. 4). This is bolstered by Henri Bergson (1991) who asserted that the mind can only recall memory through visuals. The staying power of images of the Madres, which are part of the cultural landscape of Argentina and Latin America but even more broadly among human rights advocates globally, is due to the transition of the group’s representation to iconic status.
Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites (2018) describe icons as “photographic images appearing in print, electronic or digital media that are widely recognized and remembered, are understood to be representations of historically significant events, activate strong emotional identification or response, and are reproduced across a range of media, genres or topics” to become part of “global political culture” (p. 176).120 By the late 1980s, the Madres had become global human rights celebrities, invited up on stage with the popular Irish band U2 at their 1989 concert in Buenos Aires for their song “Mothers of the Disappeared,” which honored the group
(Mellibovsky 1997, U2 2018). The women of the Madres were also part of the musician Sting’s inspiration for his song “They Dance Alone,” a tribute to Latin American women who had lost loved ones to enforced disappearance and murder by military dictatorships (Sting, …Nothing
Like the Sun 2018). The music video featured photos of disappeared and murdered men as well
120 There are examples of non-Christian women resonating with international human rights organizations. Aung Syan Suu Kyi of Burma, a Buddhist, is one of the most well-known, despite being from perhaps an even smaller and less geopolitically relevant South Asian country than Sri Lanka. Until only very recently, Suu Kyi was a global human rights icon. Suu Kyi’s status is related to the respectability portrayed in her stoic and patiently endured suffering— not unlike discourses around the Virgin Mary—which is further reinforced by the iconic flowers she wears in her hair and prominent pearl earrings that further invoke her femininity. Suu Kyi, part of the Burmese elite, was married to the white British Oxford historian Michael Aris, and under house arrest for decades. This form of protest is visibly distinct from the angry protests of the SMF, which is linked with folk Buddhist practices. Today Suu Kyi has lost much of her luster among international human rights organizations for her, at least, tacit role in the Rohingya genocide that has impacted millions of the Burmese Muslim minority, displacing nearly 1 million people, the killings of some 10,000 and widespread rape and sexual atrocities (Enos 2020).
274 as women whirling in circles while waving white handkerchiefs, a clear nod to the Madres
(Sting, YouTube 2010).121 These popular culture references cemented the celebrity status of the
Madres beyond even international human rights organizations (Bouvard 1994). Even today, social movement actors use symbols that invoke the Madres as I explore in this chapter, in street art murals, toys, stamps and other artefacts.
In contrast, the Mothers’ Front, neither the NMF nor the SMF, is recalled visually in
Colombo public memorials, art exhibits or in the everyday dress of citizens. I was unable to travel to Jaffna for fieldwork so cannot speak to any visual presence of the NMF in Jaffna or elsewhere in northern Sri Lanka. I searched for visual memorials in my many walks and rides around Colombo. Unlike in Buenos Aires where during most any given stroll, you are likely to come across at least a painted or chalked pañuelo (headscarf), I saw no visuals of the Mothers’
Front. There are plenty of visuals, however, of statues of the Buddha. That the Mothers’ Front is not widely memorialized domestically is striking, particularly so for the SMF who had a major impact on the outcome of the 1994 election. Due to the NMF’s far more precarious existence trapped between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the LTTE and its operations being confined to the north, it is less surprising that there are no representations of the group in
Colombo. Even the fliers created by the NMF to promote their actions were destroyed to ensure the safety of its members, since if discovered, they would have put the women at direct risk of violence by state security forces. As a result, few artefacts of the group remain.122
121 Full YouTube link located in Works Cited. 122 Selvy Thiruchandran, interview with the author, 24 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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The most obvious reason for the lack of visual representation of the Mothers’ Front in
Sri Lanka is because both branches eventually phased out of existence (for reasons why see
Chapter 5). The ultimate cooptation of the NMF and SMF by the LTTE and SLFP respectively is likely a major contributor to their largely forgotten history in terms of public memorials or art.
While the few and poor-quality photos of the Mothers’ Front likely constitutes both branches’ invisibility and un-intelligibility outside of Sri Lanka, it is surprising that the SMF remains invisible domestically, particularly given that their organizing is modern Sri Lanka’s largest political mobilization (de Mel 2001).
Visual analysis as a method
In this third section of the chapter, I explore visual analysis as a method of inquiry.
Visuals hold critical implications for understanding political phenomenon and are political in and of themselves (Bleiker 2019). Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros (2012) explain that all forms of visual interpretation are united in their pursuit of deconstructing the deeper meaning behind images, which is done by understanding how images resonate within their given contexts. This chapter engages with fieldwork in Buenos Aires, Argentina conducted in March
2019 with a focus on visual analysis of some of the visible remembrances of the Madres created in mediums ranging from street art to postage stamps to doll figurines.
Howells and Negreiros (2012) inform us that our world is inherently visual, and that images must be carefully read to understand “how meaning is both made and transmitted in the visual world” (p. 1). Visual analysis provides an important frame to help account for differentials in in/visibility and un/intelligibility in the cases of the Madres and the Mothers’
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Front at the domestic and international levels, the effects of which hold implications for each group’s remembrance. Emma Hutchison (2016) claims that images and language are
“representations of reality,” meaning that “images, reproductions of people, objects and events as they appear [to us]…come to constitute the reality before us” (p. 114). This points to the constructed nature of reality since it is interpretations that give meaning to the images and texts that make up our daily life. Following Hutchison’s analysis of visuals in Affective
Communities in World Politics, I too deploy “an interpretive, narrative style analysis” to parse through the meaning of images of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front (p. 169).
While visual interpretation is always multiple, understanding visual “grammar” or how particular visual conventions are used as “a social resource of particular group” for “its explicit and implicit knowledge about this resource, and its uses in the practices of that group” allows for a systematic exploration of visual resonance (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, 3). To understand resonance, the inherent role of power in visuals must be brought to the fore, including how visuals are transmitted via media, which influences the politics of visibility by playing a mediating role in who comes to the fore and who is forgotten (Hedge 2011). Sujata
Moorti (2011) explores the influence of the global North in international human rights organizations, which often paints those in the global South as needing to be saved by the global
North. Even visuals depicting the global South often refocus attention to the global North, by an emphasis on activists from the global North who support global South causes (Moorti 2011,
Duvall 2011). Most notably, visuals in international human rights organizations tend to focus on individual suffering, which evokes understandings of Christian martyrdom, showing the powerful influence of Christianity within international human rights organizations (Moorti
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2011). Spring-Serenity Duvall (2011) echoes this, noting that the UN promotes “values of liberalism, democracy and Judeo-Christian ideology” as part of the hegemony of the global
North, and the US in particular (p. 147). Roland Bleiker (2019) points out that the popularization of some visuals over others is anything but a democratic process, noting that stories about the global North quickly make it into the news globally but global South stories do not to the same extent. All of this is to say that human rights groups seeking international support find themselves in a competitive space (Bob 2001, Bob 2002).
Christianity’s resonance and creating emotions in human rights
Factors of power, including geopolitics and emotions as well as one notable visual, the face, all played a role in the resonance of visual representations of the Madres and the
Mothers’ Front (Bleiker 2019). As noted, geopolitically, Argentina’s period of state terrorism at the time of the formation of the Madres was relevant to international human rights organizations due to the ongoing Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. Conversely, Sri
Lanka’s civil war at the point in which the NMF and SMF each respectively catalyzed in the mid-
1980s and early 1990s, was not relevant to most international human rights organizations because of Sri Lanka’s then geopolitical insignificance to the global North. This was complicated by two factors, Christian tropes and the visual of the face, both of which impacted emotions.
First, Christian—specifically Catholic—resonance likely promoted the broader resonance of the Madres, which played to the emotions of many working in international human rights organizations. Christian tropes generated by visual art associated with the Virgin Mary, typically depicted as the “quintessence” of the feminine through a portrayal as her embodiment of
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“yieldingness, softness, gentleness, receptiveness, mercifulness, [and] tolerance,” are well- known globally (Orsi 2001, Warner 2013, xxxvi). The Madres launched by invoking—at first inadvertently and over time with strategic choosing—the image of the Virgin Mary, the sorrowful mother who mourns the loss of her son—which had profound consequences for their organization. The Virgin Mary is a well-known figure to Western audiences, who due to historical events, predominate within powerful positions in international human rights organizations (Orsi 2001, Katz 2001, Warner 2013, Hopgood 2013). Conversely, the Mothers’
Front appeared visually far removed from Christian tropes in their performance of political motherhood, an issue that I argue made it difficult for the group to garner the sympathies of international human rights organizations in the same way that the Madres did. Diana Taylor
(1997) has argued that over time the Madres purposefully imitated the grief-stricken stance of the Madonna because they recognized how this image resonated within Catholic-dominated
Argentina. Moreover, most of the Madres were predominately Catholic, so these stances and images came to them “naturally” in some sense. Yet in eliciting an emotional response from domestic audiences by embodying the Virgin Mary, the Madres furthered their international resonance since Christianity and its symbolism, even secularized versions of this symbolism, influence many members of international human rights organizations (Moorti 2011, Duvall
2011, Hopgood 2013).
Second, in terms of emotions in human rights mobilization, the face has been well- documented as critical to creating emotional connections (Edkins 2018, Kogut and Ritov 2005,
Sliwinski 2018, Moeller 2018). It is through the face that we both recognize and connect with others and come to see them as individuals (Edkins 2018). It is often images of suffering that
279 move others to be concerned for and to act in ways to show solidarity and support with those who suffer human rights violations or other traumas such as national disasters (Sliwinski 2018,
Hutchison, Trauma 2018). The face, which can convey pain without words, is useful in creating emotional connections. In the case of the NMF, the political situation in northern Sri Lanka was so dangerous that the women prevented having their faces shown in media images, to avoid being recognized by the government. From their first major action, the members of the NMF requested that all local media only take group shots in which no individual facial features would be perceptible (Kailasapathy 2012). The few blurry photos of collective shots of the women’s activism taken from afar indicate that group was serious in ensuring its members’ safety.
In contrast to the NMF, both the Madres and SMF did not fear showing their faces. At the beginning of their organizing, the Madres believed that the military regime in power was simply unaware of what their state security and police forces were up to in kidnapping and detaining individuals in unknown locations (Bouvard 1994). This would explain why the Madres did not fear having their faces becoming known. When the group realized that the government was in fact behind the disappearances, their group began being regularly surveilled. By then it was too late to hide their faces. The women became known by many in international human rights organizations, particularly after the 1978 World Cup, including by those connected to the
US government and the UN. Being known by those outside of Argentina protected the Madres members from the most violent government harassment, such the December 1977 enforced disappearance of two members and two supporters. Those transnational connections, which were well established by 1978, ensured that the Madres would never again undergo that level
280 of violence against their person, although they continued to bear frequent attacks and regular harassment by state security and police forces (Bouvard 1994).
The SMF was composed mainly of women from Sri Lanka’s hegemonic ethnic Sinhalese community. Although there were widespread crackdowns on civil liberties in the south of the country at the time the SMF launched in 1990, the women of the SMF had far less reason to fear a violent attack against them than did the women of the NMF (de Mel 2001, Samuel 2006).
The Tamil community was under severe repression by the Sinhalese-dominated state in which all Tamil citizens had reason to fear the government. Tamils were regularly arrested, detained and imprisoned without warrants and often underwent torture at the hands of state security and police forces (Tambiah 1986). Initially, many in the Tamil community assumed that the women of the NMF would simply be mowed down by Sri Lankan army forces during their march in Jaffna because that was the general treatment of the Tamil community (Kailasapathy 2012).
While dangerous for activists in the south of the country in the early 1990s when the SMF was active, it was a different context from the north where Tamils experienced violence for being
Tamil. Sinhalese mothers received tremendous support from the general public for being angry and distraught over the disappearances of their sons (Samuel 2006). This widespread sympathy was linked to the women’s identity as Sinhalese Buddhists, which the SMF reinforced by performing Buddhist religious practices in their organizing (de Alwis, 2001).
To sum up, the ability of women in Madres and SMF to reveal their faces to the media helped to create emotional support for these groups. For the Madres, their additional use of
Christian Catholic tropes furthered their ability to resonate broadly due to the predominance of
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Christian values within international human rights organizations. I will argue this through a visual analysis of some selected images of the Madres and Mothers’ Front.
Visual analysis of the Madres and Mothers’ Front
For visual analysis, I selected images of the Mothers’ Front and Madres of the Plaza for various reasons. Due to limited images of the Mothers’ Front, I analyze only one photo from each branch. There are many more images of the Madres to choose from. Some of the photos were selected for their ability to speak to common depictions of the Madres, while others were chosen because they offer a unique representation of the organization. I analyze only one photo of the Madres in action because these photos are repetitive in the sense that they share the same stylistic characteristics. I include images that have been produced in various spaces— the feminist movement, the pavement around the Plaza de Mayo and taggings around Buenos
Aires—to honor the symbolic status of the Madres’s white pañuelo. I then move into a series of analyses of images created in the Madres’s likeness in the form of doll figures, a postage stamp, a film poster and a street art mural.
To give a sense of the international media circulation of the two groups, the New York
Times regularly covered the activities of the Madres during the period of state terrorism. In the earliest coverage, the New York Times used the Argentine government’s term, “mad ladies” of the Plaza de Mayo to describe the group or the term mothers of the disappeared. However, the group’s proper name was used within a couple years of their formation and subsequently mentioned regularly in most current events coverage of Argentina throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. In fact, a search, without quotes, for “mothers plaza de mayo argentina” brought up
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56 relevant hits for the Madres in the New York Times digital archives in a limited search from
01/01/1977 to 01/01/1989, the earliest years of the organization. In contrast, the Mothers’
Front was never covered per se in any New York Times articles, although there was ongoing coverage of Sri Lanka’s civil war. The closest relevant article is one on Dr. Saravanamuttu, the president of the SMF, who is featured in an article about the murder of her son Richard de
Zoysa, a well-known journalist. While emphasizing Dr. Sarvanamuttu’s maternal loss in the article, there is no mention of the collective action taken by Sri Lankan mothers of the disappeared, despite coverage of the widespread killings by the government and despite
Saravanamuttu’s status as the president of the SMF (Crossette 1990). Even the British-based
The Times did not cover the Mothers’ Front--surprising given Sri Lanka’s status as a former colony—although there was coverage of the civil war.
Domestically, the Madres and the Mothers’ Front were covered in local newspapers, although during their early years, the Madres’s coverage was negative (Bouvard,
Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 1994; de Alwis, 2001;
Kailasapathy, 2012). Such negativity has been explained in terms of psychology. Most
Argentines hoped that the disappeared deserved this treatment as a means of self-protection to assure themselves that they and their families were safe. Likewise, the press was not free at this time, so the media largely reflected the perspectives of the military government (Taylor
1997). In terms of the NMF, the group requested that local media only take photographs of the women as a group so that no individual’s facial features would be shown, a measure of protection for the women’s safety (Kailasapathy 2012). The group was covered in northern newspapers, as well as some southern-based newspapers, including the Island (Mothers'
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Padayatra 1984, Jaffna Mothers Say: Release Hostages 1984, Broomstick March by Jaffna
Women! 1984, S. Thiruchandran 2012, 230-232). While well-known in the north of Sri Lanka, the NMF’s activities were mainly known among women’s groups in the south, where women’ groups made it a point to support the NMF (Samuel 2006, S. Thiruchandran 2012). Women’s groups in Sri Lanka have tended to be outside of the mainstream, so most citizens in the south likely remained unaware of the NMF, including SMF members who did not know much of Tamil women’s lives (Wickremagamage 1999, de Alwis 2004, 131). The SMF was well covered in the media, which brought them widespread sympathy from the general public in the south (de
Alwis, 2001).
The Mothers’ Front
There is a lack of available images of the Mothers’ Front outside of Sri Lanka. What I have are poor quality and come from Selvy Thiruchandran (2012) Women’s Movement in Sri
Lanka on pp. 227 and 235. For this reason, I analyze only one photo from each branch to give a sense of their visual representation.123
123 I do not have copyright permission to share these images, meaning these selections are for educational purposes for this dissertation.
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Photo 3: March on Jaffna
This image (Photo 3) depicts the August 1984 march in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, the first action taken by the NMF. The mothers of about 500 missing young men and some allies walked through the city to the administration building to confront the local government administrator and demand the return of their disappeared children (S. Thiruchandran 2012). Local newspapers respected the women’s wish that no close-up photographs be taken of their march as a precaution in the dangerous political environment of the north where state security forces had little hesitation in harming Tamil civilians (Kailasapathy 2012). Such blurry and impersonal photos may have contributed to the lack of connections sparked in international human rights
285 circles, where as noted, intimate portraits of individual faces play a critical role in moving human rights causes by inspiring emotional connections (Edkins 2018, Hutchison, 2018). As previously described, when a New York Times reporter came to interview some of the women with the NMF, members were too afraid to speak with him except for the president Sarvam
Kailasapthy. She stated that while well intentioned, journalists outside of Sri Lanka had no understanding of the danger that the women of the NMF were in by being an active group and that it was paramount that the activists remain unknown as individuals (Kailasapathy 2012).
Images of abuses against civilians by the Sri Lanka government were not widely circulated in the media in the south of the country. The government went out of its way to show visuals of the government helping Tamil civilians, particularly the most vulnerable, to give the impression that it was strictly the LTTE who made life difficult for the Tamil community (de
Mel, 2007). As noted, women’s groups in the south that supported the NMF, with few outside of feminist circles learning about the NMF. The NMF was certainly well-known in the north of
Sri Lanka, but due to the discrimination and repression of the Tamil community by the
Sinhalese-dominated government, they were not well-known throughout the entirety of the country.
Unlike the NMF, the SMF had no compunction against close-up photographs of their faces. Yet unlike the images of the Madres, photographs of the SMF did not reach iconic status internationally, although the image of a tearful mother did become arguably iconic in Sri Lanka around the 1994 election. It was an image of Chandrika Kumaratunga, of the SLFP, standing with women of the SMF with a tear rolling down her cheek, that played a major role in her win
286 of the presidency in 1994.124 Below, I consider an image of the SMF and analyze the factors for this starkly different outcome in the lack of its resonance internationally as compared to the
Madres.
Photo 4: The SMF
Unfortunately, this photo of the SMF (Photo 4) is of poor quality. Nevertheless, the women are clearly engaging in similar activities performed by the Madres, such as carrying photographs of their children, openly mourning their disappeared loved ones and making demands for the return of their children. However, the women’s brown skin and saris are visually removed from the vision of the Virgin Mary the Madres mimicked in their representation of political motherhood. As noted in previous chapters, most of the women of
124 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
287 the Madres are majority white and European due to historical immigration factors in Argentina
(D. K. Lewis 2015). More critically, I argue that the Christian markers of the Madres in part allowed them to capture the attention of international human rights organizations as the images resonated with the Christian imaginary of respectable motherhood with those within these organizations. This motherhood suggests stoic submission to fate as ideally feminine
(Duvall 2011, Moorti 2011, Warner 2013).
As demonstrated in these two images of the NMF and SMF, in marked contrast to the
Madres, particularly at the beginning of their organizing in which the women were completely silent, the women of Mothers’ Front were definitively vocal and angry in their visual performance of political motherhood. As noted, during the NMF’s march on Jaffna, when the group arrived at the local government headquarters to demand the return of their disappeared sons, the local government administrator, frantically called the Minister of Defense, crying out that the building was “surrounded,” as if under attack (Kailasapathy 2012, 103). The arrival of the NMF shook the walls of the building itself as activists poured in. As typical in many South
Asian mourning rituals, the women of the NMF tore at their hair and clothes, banged their heads and wailed as they shouted demands that their children be returned. Some women even jumped atop the desk of the head administrator to more effectively bellow their demands
(Kailasapathy 2012). Such vocalized anger stands in stark contrast to the stoic silence of the
Madres’s earliest protests of solemnly circling the Plaza de Mayo (Taylor 1997).
Like the NMF, the SMF engaged in angry and vocal political motherhood but did so through public cursing against those whom they deemed responsible for the disappearance and murder of their sons. The women went so far as to ask for spiritual favors that would result in
288 the suffering and violent deaths of the perpetrators (de Alwis, 2001). The public cursing of the
SMF was criticized by some Sri Lankans who thought the women unrespectable because these practices are part of folk Buddhism, making it a class issue (de Alwis, 2001, p. 215). Buddhism is divided by those who suggest that ritualistic practices, typically performed by ordinary people, are not part of “true” Buddhism, instead claiming that “real” Buddhism is an intellectual philosophy devoid of ritualism (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988). Such elitism is influenced by the effects of European colonialism, which demonized Buddhism and Hinduism as irrational and uncivil in contrast to so-called civilized and rational Christianity (de Alwis, 2001, p. 220). While the Sri Lankan (UNP) government sought to portray the SMF as bad mothers whose maternal failures resulted in their children’s disappearances and deaths, some on the political left, non- feminist and feminist alike, disparaged the SMF not as bad mothers but rather for their choice of vocal cursing, arguing that it either promoted gender essentialism by linking women with emotional spiritualism or made them appear lost “in the dark” through these “irrational” practices (de Alwis, 2001, p. 218; 2004). However, the general public in Sri Lanka supported the
SMF, believing that the women had the right to be angry for the loss of their children (de Alwis,
2001).125
The visual performances of their vocal and angry political motherhood steeped in practices linked with Hinduism and Buddhism and other social practices embedded in South
Asia likely contributed to the Mothers’ Front’s lesser resonance within international human
125 Many Sri Lankans wrote into newspapers declaring their support the SMF, often sympathetic to the violence sought by the SMF for the perpetrators of enforced disappearance. For example, one individual wrote a poem from the point of view of a mother of the disappeared that called upon Skana, to whom the SMF prayed to during their cursing performances: “Use your divine vision, O Lord / to locate him who abducted my son / Erase his name and identity and / scatter his remains in all ends of the earth” (qtd de Alwis 2001, 217).
289 rights organizations.126 Globally, there has been widespread demonization of Hinduism and
Buddhism as “lesser” than Judeo-Christian traditions (King, 1999; King, Orientalism and the
Modern Myth of Hinduism, 1999; de Alwis, 2001; 2004; Scott, 1994; Jodhka, 2017). Likewise, international human rights organizations are embedded in Judeo-Christian traditions where the
Christian tropes of motherhood—silent and stoic suffering—are often understood as ideal feminine characteristics (Duvall 2011, Moorti 2011, Warner 2013). Quiet submission was decidedly not the visual representation put forward by the Mothers’ Front, particularly the SMF whose demands for revenge are in marked contrast to at least the apparent acquiescence of fate in the early performance by the Madres. While the Madres over time became as vocal and angry as the SMF, their earliest organizing was decidedly “feminine” in the Western sense of silent and patient (Taylor 1997, McCay 2017). Finally, I would argue that the lack of individual faces of members of the NMF in photographs also contributed to the group’s inability to resonate among international human rights organizations where the lack of facial features led to an inability to “see” the women’s humanity (Edkins 2018).
The role of domestic feminists
The diverse domestic feminist community played a critical role for both the NMF and
SMF’s legacies. Sri Lanka’s feminist community as a whole supported the NMF as allies (Samuel
2006). In fact, some of the founders of the NMF were activists tied to the women’s movement and had connections with Colombo-based women’s groups (Kailasapathy 2012).127 Women’s
126 Hindu and Buddhist practices manifest differently in different places, meaning that not all Hindus and Buddhists mourn in these ways, or even like each other. 127 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
290 groups in the south sent aid to the north, supported the NMF’s petitions to the government for better conditions for the Tamil community and arranged good will visits between northern and southern women (S. Thiruchandran 2012, Samuel 2006). Additionally, this was the mid-1980s, when maternalist feminism was still prominent, meaning that the NMF’s use of political motherhood fit with some feminist norms. More importantly, the NMF was one of the only autonomous groups in the north and further, the group was critical of armed solutions to resolving the ethnic conflict, instead seeking dialogue. Finally, the NMF promoted women’s reproductive rights and argued against Tamil nationalism. Such values aligned with many feminist perspectives (Samuel 2006, de Mel 2003, Kailasapathy 2012). More notably, it was critical that women’s groups in the south, with majority Sinhalese membership, supported the
NMF, a Tamil group. This was about solidarity in the face of a conflict that the Sinhalese- dominated Sri Lankan government and armed Tamil militants sought to portray as inevitable, intractable and something that had always been.
By the time of the SMF, which launched in 1990, feminism was moving away from maternalism, with growing awareness of those outside the gender binary. There are three main reasons that Sri Lanka’s feminist community as a whole chose not to collectively support the
SMF, although some feminists did support the SMF as individual allies, including Malathi de
Alwis (2004). First were the widespread concerns that political motherhood reinforced gender essentialism and would ultimately backfire for the SMF by limiting their ability to stay organized in the public sphere. This is ironic because it seems like feminists fulfilled their own prophecy as their support may have buoyed the SMF to continue organizing. Second, many feminists were concerned with the role of the SLFP in founding the SMF and in arranging most of its activities,
291 which limited what the women could do. Finally, the use of ritual cursing turned off many feminists. It may have been out of worries that women engaging in religious practices cemented gender stereotypes about women’s connections to the spiritual, but it may have also been about respectability politics. Such ritual cursing in Buddhism is often looked down on by elites, who view it as part of ill-informed folk practice (de Alwis 2004). The class issue may very well have been central for at least some of the lack of feminist support. The majority of the
SMF’s membership came from working class women while Sri Lanka’s feminist movement has been composed of mainly elite women (Wickremagamage, 1999; de Alwis, 2001).
Without the support of domestic feminists, the SMF had a diminished chance of gaining support abroad. There were some Indian feminists who supported the SMF, having learned of it through regional networks, but no major feminists outside of South Asia appear to have taken an interest in the SMF, and no major international human rights organizations (de Alwis, 2001;
2004). The confluence of the domestic and international levels is critical. I further explore this issue in Chapter 8, focusing specifically on the domestic level and how decisions made here by feminists impacted transnational possibilities for the Mothers’ Front.
The Madres
At the beginning of their organizing, the Madres were silent as they circled the Plaza de
Mayo. This was due to the intense political repression by the military government, which had outlawed public assembly, free speech and political organizing (Bouvard 1994). In their silent protests, the women embodied the maternal stoicism associated with the Western tradition of the Virgin Mary, which promotes norms that women ought to suffer life’s injustices in quiet
292 acceptance. Likewise, the pañuelos, or headscarves, worn by the mothers of the disappeared were reminiscent of traditional renderings of the Virgin Mary who typically appears with her head covered (Katz 2001, Orsi 2001, Warner 2013). Diana Taylor (1997) argues that the Madres made evoking the Virgin Mary part of their strategy. It appealed domestically in the majority
Catholic country of Argentina, and internationally where the Judeo-Christian tradition predominates in the human rights sectors of NGOs and intergovernmental organizations such as the UN (Duvall 2011, Moorti 2011). While the Madres grew bolder over time, including making vocal demands at their weekly marches by 1978, in the earliest months of their organizing, they were silent, seeming to embody idealized demands of status quo femininity
(Bouvard 1994, Taylor 1997).
There is increasing awareness that silence should not be equated with disempowerment or passivity (Parpart & Parashar, 2019). Certainly, the Madres were not without agency when they circled the Plaza de Mayo to make demands of the government through the presence of their bodies and the haunting images of their missing children worn around their necks or held aloft. But this silent performance resonated with many because of its links to Christian tropes.
While the tactics of the Madres became increasingly angry and vocal over time, this was after the story of the group had become known to many outside of the country, such as among well- placed elites like Patricia Derian of the US State Department who became a major advocate for the group, promoting their cause in international human rights organizations even after her tenure in government ended (Bouvard 1994).
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I begin with a photo of the Madres, which resembles many of the images available of the group (Photo 5). I chose this image based on its availability under Creative Commons licensure and because it is emblematic of many photos of the Madres. These photos typically depict the women circling the Plaza de Mayo while holding banners and sometimes photos of the disappeared and sporting their white pañuelos.
Photo 5: Typical image of the Madres
"Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres de Plaza de Mayo)" by "Andrew" found in
"Creative Commons Mothers Plaza de Mayo" and labeled for noncommercial use.
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In this undated photo, the women appear serious, even resolute, as they calmly and silently protest, presumably in their regular weekly march around the Plaza de Mayo. Their white headscarves mark them as senior women, a common trope in many Western societies, so ingrained that Pinterest offers multiple ideas on how to create a “little old lady” Halloween costume in which a covered head is prominent (Rowland n.d.). Covered hair is associated with nearly all depictions of the Virgin Mary, thereby suggesting the Madres’s pure and maternal status, as well as connecting them with the Mater Dolorosa, an aspect of the Virgin Mary, which
I describe below (Warner 2013). The women’s outfits resemble housecoats, informal clothing articles meant to be worn around the house, not meant to draw attention, nor to show off the body, unlike many of the attractive, even sexy, house dresses available to women (Danese
2008). Likewise, the women wear no make-up. In these visible characteristics, their representation as housewives further suggests the women’s status as suffering. They have either no interest in or time for make-up or fashion, which are prominent aspects of Argentine beauty culture, widely pushed on women in societal codes of femininity (Sutton 2010). These characteristics fit well with self-sacrificial Catholic motherhood as women fully devoted to being mothers.
The staying power of the iconic images of the Madres speaks to not simply the group’s visibility and obvious politics of remembering, but as well to the transformation of domestic politics in Argentina, what some have called the “pañueloización” (“scarf-ication”) of politics.
Today, scarves of varying colors have come to represent specific political causes and many people flock to show their colors, sometimes for special occasions, such as Remembrance Day,
March 24th, which marks the start of the 1976 dictatorship, while others tie their scarves to
295 their pursues or bags, to show off every day. Furthermore, images and symbols of the Madres inspire today’s social movement actors, even if some feminists dislike the groups’ use of political motherhood and they are ready to commend the Madres for their work as human rights defenders (Conn 2018). Walking through Buenos Aires, visual markings of the distinctive white pañuelos pop up just about everywhere, in painted form on the outside of buildings and sidewalks, threaded or appliqued onto people’s clothing and even in streamers decorating a small marketplace in La Boca, one of Buenos Aires’s neighborhoods. People still gather weekly to watch and walk with the two lines of the Madres as the women cut the same path around the square that they have strolled week after week for over 40 years.
I consider the next four images in conjunction due to their emphasis on the symbolic use of pañuelos. The first two in this set depict the green pañuelos of Argentina’s abortion rights movement, a symbol adopted to honor the contributions of the Madres to Argentina’s human rights movement. The next two images portray the painted pañuelos that decorate parts of
Buenos Aires. These images were selected to show, in full, the abortion rights pañuelo (Photo 6) and how many supporters choose to display their political preferences through their fashion
(Photo 7), and to show how the painted pañuelos vary: resolute but serene (Photo 8) or eerie, even aggressive (Photo 9).
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Photo 6: Feminist green pañuelo
Photo credit: "Pañuelazo en Ciudad de México por el aborto legal en Argentina" by
"Protoplasma K" found in "Ciudad de Mexico/Mexico City" and labeled for noncommercial use.
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Photo 7: Use of pañuelos as both a political and fashion statement
Photo 8: Madres’s pañuelos painted around the Plaza de Mayo
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Photo 9: Pañuelo taggings in Palmero
It was in the fall of 1977 when the Madres decided that members should wear a white pañuelo, a scarf or kerchief, fashioned to resemble a cloth diaper, to help them feel closer to their children and to identify themselves to one another (Bouvard 1994, 74). Jennifer Schirmer
(1994) argues that activists such as the Madres who introduced the private sphere into the public sphere through political motherhood often rely on artifacts that represent daily experiences, such as the association of mothers who change diapers. Margarite Bouvard (1994) has remarked how the pañuelo symbolically opposed the military regime’s authoritarian use of force and violations of human rights, calling it “the most striking [of] nonviolent weapons” (p.
182). The pañuelo as a diaper was a visual representation of the sanctity of life and peace as well as an embodiment of motherhood. The women drew attention to the familial bonds of their children and later to all of Argentina’s disappeared by wearing it. For the Madres, the
299 family represented love and respect, values that were in opposition to the military regime’s use of torture and murder (Bouvard 1994).
The white pañuelo has become synonymous with the Madres (and Abuelas) of the Plaza de Mayo. Over the decades, white pañuelos have caught the imagination of artists, visual artists and poets alike. The Chilean poet and scholar Marjorie Agosín (1992) wrote “Kerchiefs,” found in her collection of poems dedicated to the Madres in Circles of Madness. In this poem, the speaker appears to be a member of the Madres who demands:
Give me a kerchief against injustice, give me a hand to stretch out so I may become a
solitary lament that covers you. Give me a kerchief against injustice, so that I may be a
white remnant of an absence… I want a kerchief against injustice so I can cover you,
dance with you on the winged banners of peace… (no page given).
In an untitled poem by Agosín (1992) in this same collection, she describes the pañuelos in mystical and feminized imagery:
Strangely, their kerchiefs seemed like wings or like the sound of falling rain transmuted
into mist, and this is how the witches of truth went about, slipping away and inventing
ingenious visions (no page given).
There is a sense of the pañuelo as a domestic symbol, evoking women’s private roles as mothers and wives in the home, as well as supernatural, which is suggested by the ghostly pañuelos worn by “the witches” (Agosín 1992, Pineda 2018).
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The pañuelo is arguably feminine due to the tie between women and headscarves (Conn
2018). Diana Taylor (1997) further stresses the feminine appearance of the pañuelo, which as a headscarf evokes the Virgin Mary. This was particularly true in the early organizing of the
Madres when the women’s appearance and performance most closely evoked the Mater
Dolorosa, or Sorrowful Mother, an aspect of the Virgin Mary. Through the women’s silence during their weekly marches, which lasted for about two years of their organizing, the Madres embodied the trope of the grieving Virgin Mary who silently mourns the death of her son
(Bouvard 1994, Taylor 1997, Warner 2013). According to Marina Warner (2013), the Mater
Dolorosa cult of the Virgin Mary arose “in Italy, France, England, the Netherlands, and Spain from the end of the eleventh century,” hitting its height in the fourteenth century, therein indicating its association with European Christianity (p. 209). Taylor’s interpretation of the
Madres as Mater Dolorosas suggests that discourses around maternal grief remain alive in
Western-influenced societies such as Argentina, which continually seeks to place itself metaphorically in Europe rather than South America, which was particularly true of the 1976-
1983 military dictatorship (Sutton 2010).
The headscarf evokes multiple interpretations dependent on context. In the West, when worn by elderly women, the headscarf reinforces an image of an “ideal victim” based around stereotypes of “little old ladies” who are linked with perceptions of purity, innocence and moral goodness (Van Wijk 2013, 160). In contrast, a similar scarf worn as a headband, wrapped around a wrist or tied to a purse or book bag as I witnessed in Buenos Aires suggests a rebelliousness and a desire to share one’s politics with the world. In contrast, another well- known construction is the headscarf as oppression when donned by Muslim women. In this
301 context, it is viewed as symbolic of women’s subordination, perceived as an article that women are forced to wear, whether by the state or by their families (Howard 2009, 11). In the context of white, senior women in Argentina, the headscarf serves as a symbol of the women’s elderly status, innocence of wrongdoing and suffering, with the latter linked with Western Christian understandings of the Virgin Mary.
In Photos 6 and 7, people sport the green pañuelo of the pro-choice movement.
Argentina’s pro-choice movement adopted a green pañuelo in honor of the Madres (Conn
2018). Photo 6 shows the scarf in full, where the white ribbon etched on it evokes the Madres’s pañuelo. Photo 7 shows the pañuelo prominently displayed on the individual’s backpack, where, nestled into a side pocket of the pack is a water bottle with images of the Madres.
During my fieldwork, I noted many, mainly young people, who tied their green pañuelos on their book bags or handbags, and few who tied them around their wrists as bracelets or used them in their hair as a headband. They literally wear their hearts on their sleeves. Photo 8, taken at the Plaza de Mayo suggests pañuelos that signify resistance but a certain calmness and whimsy through their uniformity in shape and placement around the square. However, in contrast, Photo 9’s pañuelo taggings by a street artist suggest aggression through the jagged edges of the scarves. Yovanna Pineda (2018) describes these pañuelos as haunting, “float[ing] above all the other graffiti on this wall, and appear like powerful ghosts.”
The next set of images that I analyze come from Online and are various popular cultural depictions of the group, which speak to how visible the group became not only within
Argentina but outside its borders. The first is an image of doll figures, toys available for
302 purchase of the Madres (Photo 10). The next is a stamp that was available for purchase on eBay and is significant because it was manufactured in Ecuador, showing the widespread influence of the women far beyond Argentina (Photo 11). Finally, this next section concludes with the movie poster from the Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo documentary (Photo 12).
Photo 10: Madres dolls
In Photo 10, the Madres are depicted in crocheted doll form. This visual came from an eBay seller “dixtoys” who sold the dolls under the description “Amigurumi MADRES ABUELAS
PLAZA DE MAYO 7" Crochet Doll Toy Human Rights Figure!” (Amigurumi MADRES ABUELAS
PLAZA DE MAYO 7" Crochet Doll Toy Human Rights Figure! n.d.). The webpage proclaimed the dolls “A MUST FOR ALL FANS !!” The photo represents two members of the Madres as elderly, hinted through the grey curls peeking out of their old-fashioned kerchiefs, as well as friendly,
303 through the open stance of their arms, friendly pink smiles and round noses. That I can purchase dolls representing the Madres speaks to the global visibility of the group, even as such merchandise is not widely or readily available outside of Latin America. Indeed, it does take scouting for these finds. Nevertheless, the group has achieved status with the likes of Angela
Davis, Huey P. Newton and other figures from social justice causes whose likenesses are featured in consumer products available through small-scale artisans.
It is unclear if the dolls were an official product associated with either of the branches of the Madres.128 The artist’s decision to create the dolls as a pair, shown in the photo as if linking arms, suggests how the Madres are not known as individuals but rather as Madres de Plaza de
Mayo in the plural sense. Although the Línea Fundadora branch has stressed its members as individuals more so than the Asociación branch, which has consistently sought to project collective power, both lines are wedded to collective action. This further speaks to the relationships members share with one another, an emphasis that the geographer Fernando
Bosco (2006) suggests has contributed to the group’s longevity. Another striking and perhaps intentional decision by the artist of the dolls was to represent the women as having brown skin.
Argentina’s indigenous and Afro-descendant population is low, as the country is a European settler society, and due to state policies, including military campaigns, which sought to rid the country of indigenous inhabitants (D. K. Lewis 2015, Warren 2009). Entrenched racism against
Afro-descendant and indigenous Argentines remains widespread (Sutton, 2010; Guano, 2003;
128 According to the Ebay page for dixtoys, which offers very little in terms of information, they are based in Argentina and have been a member of Ebay since 2013. I reached out to inquire but heard no response. While conducting fieldwork, I observed that the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo sold similar looking dolls from their official vending booth set up by the Plaza de Mayo during their regular weekly march, meaning this one available Online may have come from such official offerings.
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Garguin, 2007). That the white headscarves that the Madres wore have also been created with beige or brown fabric may simply mean that white fabric was unavailable to the artist.
Nevertheless, there are echoes of the brown skin used in a street mural in La Boca, which I later analyze, meaning that there may be something intentional behind this.
Photo 11: Ecuadorian stamp
Featured on eBay (Ecuador 2006, SC 1798, MNH VF, The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
association of Argentine mothers n.d.).
Photo 11 was found for sale on eBay in September 2018, a stamp available for purchase, released in Ecuador in 2006. It features a celebratory image of the Madres, with a product description labeling it an “association of Argentine mothers” (Ecuador 2006, SC 1798, MNH VF,
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, association of Argentine mothers n.d.). This image speaks to the ability of the Madres to travel beyond Argentina’s borders. Icons placed on postage stamps are usually significant to the country, akin to images used in a country’s currency. That Ecuador chose to highlight a non-Ecuadoran civil society group suggests that the Madres are seen to be
305 relevant to a high degree within Ecuador. Most of the women are smiling and looking upbeat.
There is a sense of the power of collective action, with no one woman emphasized over the others, with the group in full focus as united changemakers.
Photo 12: Film poster
Featured on Amazon.com (The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo 1985 U.S. Poster n.d.).
Photo 12 is silkscreen movie poster available for purchase on Amazon.com from the
1985 documentary Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, directed by Susana
Blaustein Munoz. The central figure is a senior woman who stares into the distance, with eyes appearing affixed to a target. Her dowdy, nondescript black coat shrouds her body completely, with not even a hint of its form beyond her shoulders. Her pañuelo allows only some of her gray hair to frame her deeply wrinkled face. Both her hands appear to rest on the shoulder strap of
306 her purse, which deepens the sense of resolve she exudes. This image is anything but a “frail old woman.” While femininity is often connected with weakness in gendered discourses of the
West, the Virgin Mary, which is hinted at in this image by the mother’s veiled hair and long dress, is an icon who projects strength and resolution despite her otherwise “submissive” aspects (Warner 2013). What is striking about this piece is the emphasis on the lone figure.
Typically, the Madres are shown as a group. This image portrays a lone fighter to highlight the individual. Nevertheless, the group is still there, in the background, behind the activist, thus supporting her.
The final images of the Madres come from a large street mural painted on a public wall in the neighborhood of La Boca in the south of Buenos Aires, a working class area where the tango arose in the multiethnic, multinational setting of the city’s earliest port in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This mural depicts members of the Madres as indigenous—a representation suggested by their brown skin and the construction of their facial features—as well as physically strong.
During fieldwork, I learned that the indigenous portrayal was a choice by the artist to underscore the South American identity of perhaps the neighborhood of La Boca or the
Madres, done purposefully to contrast the usual emphasis on European roots made by many
Porteños.129 As noted earlier, the indigenous and Afrodescendant roots of the country have been de-emphasized in national discourses, which also problematically conflate progress, modernity and civilization with constructions of Europe while Latin America is associated with
129 In this context, Porteños, which means those living in a port city, refers to those from the city of Buenos Aires.
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“dysfunction,” including “backwardness” and “barbarism” (Lewis D. K., 2015; Guano, 2003).
This binarism plays out in local constructions of democracy, with indigenous, Black and Brown people understood as naturally drawn to authoritarianism, therein hindering both development and democracy (Joseph, 2000; Guano, 2003). Furthermore, the woman warrior, or la guerra, is a noted archetype in many Latin American indigenous traditions and its use in this mural further reaffirms indigenous identity beyond strictly physical features. Likewise, a militant mother, as this armored mother in the mural is further contrasts with the predominant
European-derived ideal of “passive mothering” wherein women are confined to “the private sphere of the home and characterized by female sacrifice” (Morey and Santos 2014, 63). This mural acknowledges a long history of militant—also called combative—mothering , where Latin
American women both mother and engage in fighting themselves or support fighting (Morey and Santos 2014).
In the images below (Photos 13-15), one of the full image and two close-ups of the same mural, a member of the Madres yells in anger, raising her gigantic and muscular arm and fist while lunging forward as if to throw a punch. Uniquely, the figure wears not the usual baggy coat or housedress of most members of the Madres. Rather she wears a tight shirt, the sleeves rolled up, which prominently outline her ample breasts, chiseled abs and defined arms. Her swinging arm is purposefully enlarged to emphasize the motion of a punch.
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Photo 13: Full mural in La Boca
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Photo 14: Close-up of the mother’s face and torso
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Photo 15: Close-up of the mother’s fist
The artistic decision to represent the women of the Madres as brown, indigenous and muscular women warriors speaks to a very different portrayal of the women than the image the women themselves have typically sought by harkening to the Virgin Mary and dressing as plain housewives. The figure above appears to be wearing tight-fitting armor while engaged in combat, her mouth opened in a battle cry. Her stance is aggressive and unforgiving. The suggestion of being unforgiving speaks directly to the message of the Madres, which is to Never
Forgive, Never Forget, a call that they developed and refined over the decades of their organizing and contrasts with typical Christian motherhood tropes of forgiving and turning the
311 other cheek (Pineda 2018, Bouvard 1994). Nevertheless, the iconic kerchief with gray hair peeking out over a weathered face emphasizes that she is an elderly mother. Such depictions speak to the appropriation by activists of the Madres. These activists understand their heritage to Afrodescendant and indigenous people. This image is also a striking parallel of the more angry and vocal protests of the NMF and SMF.
Discussion
Visual analysis provides an important frame to help account for differentials in in/visibility and un/intelligibility of the Madres and Mothers’ Front at the domestic and international levels, the effects of which hold implications for each group’s international visibility and later remembrance. The visual representation of the Madres at the beginning of their organizing was consistent with Christian and specifically Catholic tropes, which gave the appearance of acceptance of maternal suffering as indicated by the women’s silence, as well as through their visual representation that invoked the Virgin Mary. In contrast, images of the
Mothers’ Front were inconsistent with idealizations of political motherhood in white, Western,
Christian-dominated contexts, including most Western based international human rights organizations.
Due to their status as non-Christian, the women of the Mothers’ Front were not immediately understood as “good mothers.” Rather the women of the Mothers’ Front likely appeared “foreign” to much of the international human rights community, where the influence of Christianity, unlike Hinduism and Buddhism, has had an indelible mark in terms of resonance and respect, which made the Madres immediately recognizable. As Malathi de Alwis (2001)
312 points out, Hinduism and Buddhism are often deemed irrational while Christianity is seen as a rational and “Enlightened” religion within global discourses. I argue that it was in part for this reason that the Madres found eventual success with their political motherhood framing among the international human rights organizations. Their early activism entailed solemn and silent marches around the Plaza de Mayo. Their covered heads and modest housedresses embodied
“good” femininity, understood by those in the West, of a quiet and modest motherhood.
Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge about faiths outside of Christianity within many international human rights organizations has negative consequences when social movements from societies in which many are not Christians draw on religious discourses that resonate in their domestic contexts. Abroad, these same discourses typically elicit few positive reactions, perhaps even raising negative reactions, although more likely, little to no reaction. Meanwhile, the Madres invoked the sorrow of the Virgin Mary after losing her son Jesus when they covered their heads and, with tears in their eyes, silently marched around the plaza, all of which conjured the Virgin Mary as Mater Dolorosa, as well as constructions of the Virgin’s idealized femininity, serene in the mourning over the loss of her son. This stood in contrast to images of the NMF and SMF whose look was unfamiliar to many outside of a South Asian context, and because both branches of the Mothers’ Front never performed their activism in silence. When the NMF engaged in their protests, they were loud and demanding in their displays of anger and grief (Kailasapathy 2012).
In the case of the SMF in particular, religious-based cursing gained them the greatest media attention domestically and allowed them to reach the general public within the
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Sinhalese community of Sri Lanka, through loud and violent language (de Alwis, 2001; 2004).
However, among international human rights organizations, such cursing was both unfamiliar and likely appeared aggressive, standing in sharp contrast to the quiet sorrow that the West often associates with “proper” feminine mourning as exemplified in the Virgin Mary’s stalwart sorrow. Wailing and cursing likely invoked Western stereotypes about Hinduism and Buddhism as “chaotic” religions, lacking in rationalism, and being overly emotional (de Alwis, 2001).
Feminist scholars have drawn attention to the conflation of emotionalism, embodiment, irrationalism and femininity as set against rationalism and order, notions that have been gendered masculine (Hutchison, 2016, p. 21; de Alwis, 2001). Christianity, which is portrayed as rational and orderly has also been seen as masculine because of this supposed rationalism. In contrast, Hinduism and Buddhism are deemed feminine because of their constructions as irrational (de Alwis, 2001). Such stereotypes portray Christianity as superior to other religions, notably the feminized constructions of Hinduism and Buddhism. In a global environment where these discourses remain prominent, evoking the Virgin Mary gave the Madres a critical edge over the Mothers’ Front in capturing international attention for their respective causes.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have shown how visual analysis helps to account for the disjunctures in in/visibility and un/intelligibility of the Madres and Mothers’ Front at the domestic and international levels in their respective receptions of political motherhood. The effects of these differentials hold implications for the politics of memory. The Madres remain integral to domestic politics and social movement actors both in Argentina and outside, while the history
314 of the Mothers’ Front has been largely forgotten in Sri Lanka, in terms of visual representation.
In addition to their lack of visibility at the international level, part of what has contributed to the forgetting by the group is their perceived short duration. In the next chapter, I challenge part of the critique of the SMF in terms of their “early” demobilization.
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Chapter 7
Recalling the Southern Mothers’ Front
Introduction
The domestic-level puzzle of differing reactions from feminists and other domestic actors in Argentina and Sri Lanka is intertwined with the global level. In the previous chapter, I suggested why the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres) were visible on the international level and how this contributed to their remembrance by Argentine feminists and human rights activists (Sutton 2010, Conn 2018). Conversely, in Sri Lanka, the emphasis has been on critiquing the Mothers’ Front, notably the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), for ending as an organization in 1994 (de Mel 2001, de Alwis 2001, 2012, 2013; Samuel 2006).130 Unlike the
Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF), which was understandably coopted in the challenging environment of a repressive government and the ethno-nationalistic authoritarianism of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north, the SMF saw many of their political aims achieved following the SLFP’s entrance into government in 1994. This opened new political opportunities to them. Yet the SMF as a national organization dissolved, puzzling many who assumed that the logical next step would be to keep organizing now that the political opportunity structure had widened (Pinto Jayawardena & Kodikara, 2002; de Alwis, 2001;
Samuel, 2006; de Mel, 2001).
130 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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Even as most—but not all—of the women ended their collective organizing with the
SMF and did not participate in other collective actions, many did engage in individual resistance in the private sphere. In this chapter, I explore reconsidering everyday conversation, when it hinges on political concerns, as political engagement, and if it is oppositional, as part of social movement resistance. Beyond political science, the findings from this chapter will be relevant for social movement scholars, sociologists, feminists and scholars from interdisciplinary fields such as queer studies, who are interested in social change.
Concerns that those mobilized through political motherhood may exit from collective organizing is due to its emphasis on women as mothers, which may pressure women to confine themselves to the domestic sphere or limit the issues women are perceived as having a legitimate say in (El-Bushra 2007, Moreno 2017, Stavrianos 2014, D. Taylor 1997, Shepherd
2010).131 Notably, none of these critics of political motherhood have distinguished top-down, or state-linked, political motherhood from a grassroots, or bottom-up, use of political motherhood as Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015) have. Carreon and Valentine made the case for emancipatory possibilities through a grassroots use of political motherhood. Even so,
Carreon and Moghadam emphasize women’s collective organizing as the focus. Emphasis on criticizing women’s exit from collective resistance may be an accessibility issue. The literature on women and armed conflicts has shown that women face gendered violences and take on additional burdens and responsibilities during conflicts and their aftermath (Assembly, 1993;
131 Laura Shepherd (2010) has also called attention to the fact that political motherhood may limit the kinds of issues women as mothers are perceived as legitimately having a say on, which inhibits women’s ability to fully participate in the public political sphere. I deal with this issue and others raised by feminists in the next chapter.
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Turpin, 1998; Plumper & Neumayer, 2006; Arostegui, 2013). Women may not have the leisure time to engage in collective activism and time is a critical resource linked to political participation (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995). Furthermore, this criticism misses findings in social movement literature that movements have lifecycles in which most undergo a drop off in activism regardless of the type of framing taken up, especially when movement demands are met (Tarrow 1989, Offe 1990).
In this chapter, I ask: To contribute to human rights and democracy movements, how long must one participate in public collective actions order to be considered active? Expecting women under the stress and trauma of losing a loved one and taking on new responsibilities due to the loss of a loved one to continue with public collective action is unproductive in terms of broadening political participation and unfair in terms of the larger political project of feminism. Feminist scholarship has emphasized that women are burdened with demands to be self-sacrificing for the benefit of others, or are pressured to “do it all,” often single-handedly
(Firestone 1970, Hochschild 1989, Moreno 2017). One aspect of feminism has been to dismantle the unfair expectations placed on women. Expanding the definition of activism can lead us to reassess the legacy of SMF. By including individual resistances in the private sphere— such as personal conversations if they entail political concern—is a shift that encourages political scientists, and more broadly all scholars of social movements and peace activism, to capture and analyze a greater range of political engagement. I am not arguing against making the public sphere accessible for marginalized groups. Rather I seek to bring the politics of individual resistance in the private sphere under the umbrella of activism to ensure that social movements are as inclusive as possible.
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The SMF was a critical part of the human rights movement in Sri Lanka from 1990 to
1994. Although the SMF disbanded, many former members continued to contribute to a counterpublic that sought to remember the reign of terror and the civil war more broadly, as well as promote transitional justice.132 Elisabeth Friedman (2017) defines counterpublics as “the places, spaces, or means” wherein marginalized people construct their identities and communities and strategize ways to transform society through the development of these alternative publics (p. 4). The narratives of loss spoken by former members of the SMF conceivably fed into this counternarrative that ran against the wishes of the state that sought to move on from the reign of terror.133 Through evidence from Kumudini Samuel, a well-known
Sri Lankan feminist researcher and activist who has written on both branches of the Mothers’
Front, I suggest that while the SMF disbanded, the counterpublic and human rights movement that sought to remember the enforced disappearances of the south did not disappear after the
SLFP came to power. The women formerly with the SMF engaged in conversations that were political and ran against the wishes of the state. The SLFP-led coalitional government, the
People’s Alliance, was sympathetic toward families of the disappeared but sought to move on from the period of state terrorism. I demonstrate this through an examination of President
Chandrika Kumaratunga’s election, a win owed in part to the SMF (de Alwis 1997, C. F. Torne
2017a, 191-193).
In this chapter, I first highlight important examples of former members’ continued participation in public collective action. For some women, their time with SMF inspired
132 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 133 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
319 continued political participation. Since many women, however, did not continue with public collective action organizing, it is upon these women that I focus. In the second portion of the chapter, I outline the method of feminist re-reading, then, in the third section, briefly review the social movement literature that has prized public collective action over individual forms of political activities. In the fourth section, I suggest that the collective versus individual debate relates to the public-private divide that has been disrupted by feminists. I suggest there is a less than distinct binary of collective-individual resistance. The fifth section constitutes the bulk of this chapter, which analyzes the impact of political conversations by the SMF in their social networks in conjunction with a selection of some of Kumaratunga’s speeches. Finally, I offer a brief takeaway that emphasizes the need for greater attention and appreciation to the politics of the everyday.
Examples of former SMF women moving into other kinds of political participation
Despite the scholarly emphasis on the disbanding of the SMF, some former members continued with civil society participation after 1994. While the SMF folded at the national level, many women continued with similar work—such as with a local SMF or SLFP chapter—or moved into other NGO work. This counters much of what the literature on the SMF implies, which is that when the SMF disbanded, it was the end of organizing (de Mel 2001, de Alwis
2001, 2012, 2013; Samuel 2006).134 Nevertheless, while not all the women did drop out of organizing, it does appear that most did so, which is the focus of this chapter.135
134 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 135 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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In Women and the Nation’s Narrative, Neloufer de Mel (2001) documented several instances of former SMF members’ continued participation in public political life through former members’ migration into new forms of political participation, and in some cases, continuing with a local chapter of the SMF. In 1999, de Mel interviewed women still active in a few remaining local chapters of the SMF. The post-1994 SMF was active deep in the south of rural Sinhalese country where the SLFP predominates electorally. This work consisted mainly of local SLFP party activities, most typically in securing electoral support for the SLFP. These remnants of the national SMF were concentrated in the district of Matara, the home base of
Mangala Samaraweera, one of the SLFP co-founders of the SMF who became part of the
People’s Alliance cabinet in 1994. Approximately 3,000 women continued with the SMF in the mid to late 1990s. These local SMF chapters did not coordinate larger efforts across the region but rather focused on activities in their individual towns, in association with their local SLFP chapter (de Mel 2001).
The SMF organizing in this period was different from the early 1990s activism when the group had the full support of the national SLFP, which provided transportation and financial resources. Not only was the SMF now small scale and localized, but activists had less ability to participate because of the lack of resources. One SMF member explained that the economic costs were now almost entirely borne by members. It was also mentioned that collective action outside the home was psychologically difficult for many of the women given their security concerns even under the new government, as they worried about their remaining children’s well-being. Many preferred to stay at home to keep an eye on these children for fear that the government or other forces might harm them (de Mel 2001, 259). Another difference between
321 pre- and post-1994 organizing was growing patron-clientelism. The SMF women of Matara were intimately attached to the SLFP and People’s Alliance, looking to the party for material resources such as housing and jobs. MP Samaraweera actively cultivated a patron-client network with the Matara Mothers’ Front, using them “as a political tool” through his patronage
(de Mel 2001, 267). To contextualize the situation, de Mel noted that women in Matara had few options for organizing besides the local chapter of the SMF, as there were few existing political groups or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the rural town.136
Other former members of the SMF moved into new avenues of political organizing outside of the SMF and SLFP. Significantly, this entailed middle-class women who were financially well off and living outside of isolated rural towns such as Matara, which gave them access to other organizations. Much of the post-SMF organizing by women who moved into other organizations were concentrated in the NGO sector, especially in the areas of human rights, development and counseling, often working on issues such as war widows and women heads of households. Some former SMF activists even moved into leadership positions in these
NGOs (de Mel 2001). Dr. Saravanamuttu, former president of the SMF, founded the Family
Rehabilitation Centre in August 1992 for treatment and rehabilitation of those who have experienced severe trauma due to armed conflict, natural disaster or domestic violence, along with their families. It is still active (de Mel 2001, FRC n.d.).
136 Unlike the NMF and Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, the SMF was not a self-founded and full-fledged civic organization since they were founded by members of the SLFP and constitute a corporatist group. This may have meant that they were used to looking for political organizing options to present themselves rather than to create opportunities for themselves. This is not a criticism of the women of the SMF, but rather a cautionary note about how being founded by a political party can affect one’s later choices. See Chapter 5.
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Finally, as noted by Samuel, some of the women formerly with the SMF participated in the government commission inquiries into the disappeared in the south.137 This constitutes another form of continued political participation. These commissions took place from 1995 until 1998 (C. F. Torne 2017). Although I was not able to access the official reports, other sources point to inclusion from mothers of the disappeared during the reign of terror. I quote from a 2010 report for the International Commission of Jurists, written by Kishali Pinto-
Jayawardena (2010):
A mother giving evidence before the Commission stated that her two sons who were
both in their early twenties were missing since March and September 1989 respectively.
The evidence revealed that the complainant’s daughter had been a SLFP activist and had
been a polling agent on behalf of the SLFP at the 1988 and 1989 elections. A family
closely related to them, were supporters of the UNP. Members of that family had
repeatedly threatened the witness that her son will be 'lifted' because of the daughter's
involvement with the SLFP. The incident had taken place around the Presidential
Elections time in 1988. The evidence suggested that the disappearance had been
instigated by this rival family with the assistance of para-military groups (p. 85).
This mother may or may not have been part of the SMF but it is a story that would be familiar to any mother of the disappeared. Former SMF members’ participation in the commissions points to their efforts to keep the memories of the disappeared alive. As I will suggest in the
137 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
323 next section, even those women who may not have participated in the official commissions may also be said to have contributed to remembering this period of Sri Lankan history.
Feminist re-reading
I now turn to the majority of former SMF members who did not stay active in public collective organizing. Using a feminist re-reading of the SMF’s post-public collective organizing to explore the constructed binary between collective and individual forms of resistance, I base my re-reading on the extant feminist literature that disrupts constructions of a distinct public- private divide. I argue that collective action is often construed as taking place in the public but suggest that individual resistance within the private sphere may lead to private collective action. I set my chapter in the vein of Sasha Roseneil’s Common Women, Uncommon Practices:
The Queer Feminisms of Greenham (2000), which is a feminist re-reading of the women’s anti- nuclear organizing at Greenham Common, a military base in the UK. Roseneil argues that while
Greenham has been understood as rooted in an essentialist maternal activism, there were strains of queer feminisms in the women’s organizing. The activists decorated the fence around the Greenham Common military base with baby diapers and other maternal symbols such as baby shoes, which linked their organizing to political motherhood. However, Roseneil worked not “to set the record straight” but rather “to queer the records” of the women’s organizing (p.
4, italics in original). Roseneil stressed that the women of Greenham were open to the multiplicity of meaning, sought fluidity and preferred the strange over any notion of fixed meanings, stability and the “normal.” While there was underling queer activism at Greeham, queer activism does not surface in the SMF. However, in a similar vein to Greenham, the
324 women formerly with SMF disrupted understandings of gender, of what mothers were
“supposed” to do, and disrupted constructions of public and private through the memories of the disappeared they shared in conversations of their daily lives. The “in-between-ness” of these conversations in the public and private challenge binary constructions of collective and individual resistances.
The method of re-reading sheds light on the politics of memory in social movement communities, such as domestic feminist communities and the general public of Argentina and
Sri Lanka. I explore what it takes to be remembered positively within domestic communities, particularly feminist communities, by suggesting that a bar exists for women’s civil society groups. First, a group must be visible so that there is even an opportunity to be remembered.
Being visible on the global stage may help civil society groups become, and stay, visible on the domestic level. In many respects, civil society groups acknowledged at the global level see their status bolstered at the national level by gaining resources and legitimacy through international support (Bob 2001, 2002). This was the case with the Madres, who first as a unified group and later as two branches, ultimately made its mark on Argentina’s general public and feminist movement after first capturing the attention of international human rights organizations
(Bouvard 1994, Conn 2018). The second factor which plays a role in the politics of memory is duration as an organization. Failure to stay active for an extended period when using political motherhood is a concern for many feminists who fear that political motherhood cannot sustain women’s civil society organizing for the long-term (El-Bushra 2007, Stavrianos 2014, D. Taylor
1997). Sri Lankan feminists were alarmed with the implications of the SMF’s organizing through political motherhood, fearing it may hinder women’s long-term political engagement (de Alwis
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2004). In disbanding, groups may easily be forgotten, written off for their inability to sustain for the long-term, even as what constitutes a long duration is up for debate. Moreover, disbanding
“too soon” does not mean that a group should be forgotten. Retaining the legacy of political motherhood movements holds critical implications for how women’s political participation is understood by within popular culture and among scholars.
The SMF received criticism from many progressive civil society activists and feminists for disbanding “early,” in part because many assumed that the SLFP electoral victory would encourage the women’s collective organizing (Samuel 2006, de Alwis 2012, 2013).138 While the
NMF has also been forgotten, it has received less criticism than the SMF, in part because of how difficult autonomous organizing was in the north where the NMF was caught between the repression of the Sinhalese-dominated state and Tamil militants, especially the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), forces that sought to prevent autonomous organizing by both direct and indirect violence (de Mel 2003, Samuel 2006, S. Thiruchandran 2012).139 For theoretical reasons, I focus on the SMF, whose former members had a chance to continue with organizing but chose not to do so.
I question why some (notably not all) Sri Lankan feminists have minimized the legacy of the Mothers’ Front when both branches contributed to empowering women and why the continued political work of many of the women formerly with the SMF has been largely ignored
138 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 139 Due to the repression of the LTTE, the main organizers of the NMF had to flee Jaffna, and in some cases Sri Lanka, for their own safety, while rank and file members had little to no ability to organize autonomously under the repressive rule of the Tamil Tigers (Kailasapathy 2012, S. Thiruchandran 2012).
326 in scholarship on the Mothers’ Front.140 Creating and recreating discourses of memory is a main task of any community, part of a process that allows community members to construct a sense of identity through story-making. The literatures of the politics of memory and transitional justice focus on the national community, especially the literature on transitional justice, which seeks to help countries collectively heal and/or “move on” from atrocities such as armed conflict (Antze and Lambeck 1996, Kirmayer 1996, Huyssen 2003, Barahona de Brito, González‐
Enríquez and Aguilar 2001, Barkan and Becirbasic 2015, Bakiner 2015). However, communities within the nation-state also generate their own politics of memory (Hamilton 2003). Narratives about the community help members to both understand themselves, their communities and their roles in the community. In terms of democracy, this storytelling is vital to creating and sustaining a robust and inclusive democracy since knowing your place furthers participation in politics. Constructing “[a] public sphere as a discursive platform for which resistance, participation, collective deliberation and decisionmaking” can be carried out is one way to promote and sustain democracy (Hernandez 1997, 25). This echoes democracy advocates who promote discussing political issues and exercising decision-making to sustain the vitality of democracies (Pateman C. , 1970; Davis, 1964; Mutz, 2006; Klofstad, 2011; Wolfe & Ikeda, 2010).
I focus on Sri Lanka’s feminists’ memory-making around the Mothers’ Front to challenge the widespread assumption by some scholars of social movements that individual and private resistance is insignificant or overshadowed by public collective resistance. I re-read former SMF
140 I do not use the term community to suggest singularly uniform or undifferentiated agreement among the feminist community. Like all communities, there are debates and a variety of contestations and differing points of view among feminists.
327 members’ post-public collective resistance that occurred as conversations among their social networks regarding their disappeared loved ones, which I learned about through my fall 2017 interview with Kumudini Samuel. I suggest that former members transgressed public-private distinctions through their individual resistance practices. Their conversations contributed to the counternarrative, or alternative public sphere, that offset the state’s memory of the reign of terror and may therein constitute a kind of collective private resistance. The reign of terror occurred under the government of the United National Party (UNP) when state forces retaliated against a violent insurrection by the Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna (People’s Liberation
Front) (JVP). The JVP began revolting against state forces and civilians in 1987 and the state retaliated with equally unrestrained violence against not only members of the JVP, but innocent young Sinhala men across the south. Violence by the JVP and state forces, which caught up civilians, lasted until 1991 and led to the enforced disappearance of thousands of young Sinhala men. This was the catalyst that gave rise to the SMF in 1990, which was co-founded by two MPs from the SLFP, the main political rival of the UNP (Samuel 2017, de Mel 2001). When a new government, the coalition of the People’s Alliance, headed by the SLFP, took over in 1994, the state ultimately sought to dismiss this period of terror in the south, including mentions of the enforced disappearances.141 Against the wishes of the state, women formerly with the SMF spoke about their disappeared loved ones, therein contributing to a politics of memory that contradicted the state and promoted human rights by “never forgetting” the reign of terror’s disappeared. This counternarrative lives on with human rights advocates who work to preserve the memories of the civil war’s disappeared and seek transitional justice to address the conflict,
141 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
328 most notably with the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared (ICES 2019, HRW 2018, R. Fernando,
Disappearances in Sri Lanka: 500 Days of Protests 2018).
The remembering by former members of the SMF of the reign of terror stands in stark contrast to the group’s forgotten legacy by the general public. However, this pattern of forgetting is typical of much of women’s peace organizing. In this sense, the forgetting of the
Mothers’ Front by the general public is not surprising, nor out of the norm as the case of the
Madres is (see Chapter 6). The Mothers’ Front fits well with other examples of women’s peace activism, such the previously mentioned Greenham women, a collective protest against nuclear weapons storage at the Greenham Common space in 1980s UK, and the US’s Women Strike for
Peace, a women’s group that organized against nuclear arms and the US war in Vietnam in the
1960s and 1970s. Both are little known outside of feminist circles (Swerdlow 1993, Roseneil
2000). There has been some general interest in the peace activism at Greenham Common. Over the last decade, the Guardian has run several pieces on the Greenham Common’s peace organizing and in September 2018, the playwright Beth Flintoff staged a play based on the women, entitled “The Greenham Cold War Experience” (Stead 2006, Kidron 2013, Jones 2016,
Tunnicliffe 2016, Sarner, et al. 2017, Thorpe 2018). The nearly total lack of general interest in the US’s Women Strike for Peace is more common. There have been no national explorations of
Women Strike for Peace outside of feminist circles. The continued popular cultural resonance of the Madres is a unique feature of remembering women’s peace organizing.
What sets the Mothers’ Front apart is its lack of legacy within the feminist movement, where memories around women’s peace organizing is typically retained. In terms of the Sri
329
Lankan feminist community, the NMF had support from Colombo-based, majority Sinhalese women’s organizations (Samuel 2003, 2006). Yet I was surprised that more was not written by these women’s organizations and feminist scholars about the legacy of NMF (see Chapter 4). As for the SMF, much of what feminist scholars have emphasized is its disbanding following the electoral success of the SLFP and its association with hegemonic nationalism (de Mel 2001, de
Alwis 2012, 2013, Samuel 2006). The SMF’s connection to hegemonic nationalism warrants extended discussion and critique, which I address in Chapter 8. While assessment of civil society groups is critical to improving activism, I argue that criticism over the branch’s “early” demise is unfounded to begin with, since social movement scholars stress that movements demobilize when they achieve their main aims, which the SMF did (Offe 1990, Basu 2015). The typical timeline for mass movement collective activism is quite short. Movements launch with a catalyst that sparks people into mobilization, which sometimes grows from a small number to hundreds, even thousands, over time. Then, a resolution to the problem either arrives or the movement drags on, seeming to make no progress. Regardless, most people demobilize, except for a core of the most dedicated. Most movements’ periods of collective action are not long- lasting, and often neither are organizations involved with movement causes, unless they take up new issues (Offe 1990, Basu 2015, Kitschelt and Rehm 2014).
However, I also argue that because many former members of the SMF continued to engage in resistance as individuals, they contributed to the counternarrative that challenged the state’s interpretation of the reign of terror as a closed case (C. Kumaratunga 2000). I suggest that the conversations had by the women with their social networks furthered the ongoing counternarrative to challenge the state’s official telling of the civil war. Samuel shared
330 with me that the state, regardless of the government in power, has worked to “move on” from the enforced disappearances during the war and since 2001, including the governments of
Chandrika Kumaratunga (1994-2005) and Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005-2015), co-founder of the
SMF.142 I focus on Kumaratunga’s government (1994-2005) when former members of the SMF were likely the most active. Even in the early 1990s, many with the SMF were quite elderly.143
Kumaratunga’s speeches from this era demonstrate that the government sought to move on and leave the reign of terror behind the country.
I also challenge constructions of women’s “appropriate” actions in organizing for peace
(Wibben, et al. 2019, 94). For example, the case of women activists in the Liberian civil war has been widely praised, championing the women for using their collective distress to end the armed conflict. However, in the celebration of this “appropriate” peace activism—rooted in political motherhood—many women’s participation has been obscured. Although a collective effort, credit has been given to Leymah Gbowee, who was highlighted in the 2008 documentary
Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a film that makes the rounds of conflict zones to inspire other women. Gbowee was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her peace activism, which effectively ignores the collective work of thousands of women. The Liberian case further ignores how the end of fighting does not lead to full peace. Although the armed conflict has ended in Liberia, the postconflict period has not ended systemic violences, particularly those against women (Wibben, et al. 2019, Whetstone 2017). Many considered it “appropriate” for the SMF to have continued organizing rather than disband. The purpose of this chapter is to
142 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 143 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
331 provide nuanced analysis for lessons learned that can be applied to future situations of armed conflict and postconflict and women’s organizing. I seek to acknowledge the human rights work performed by the SMF as well as recognize how their later individual resistance also helped further a counterpublic that challenged the state’s preference for forgetting.
Debating collective and private actions in social movements
A debate among scholars of social movements and activism has grown over what constitutes movement work. Collective action in the public sphere works to draw attention to movement causes and has been understood as the main task of social movements. This is because the aim of movement actors is to see changes in policymaking. Demands for such changes can be achieved most efficiently by directly pressuring officials to make changes, or by convincing the broader public of desired policy changes (Ferree, et al. 2002, Kriesi 2014).
Protests grab people’s attention and efficiently convey movement demands through chants, signs and other visual representations, most notably as bodies in the streets (Taylor and Van
Dyke 2004).
However, over recent decades, there has been a call to expand understandings of social movement activism to include everyday acts of resistance performed by individuals (Hernández and Rehman 2002, Sen 2017, Cox 2018, Budgeon 2001). Yet this call remains troubled by those who point out that individual resistance is less effective and efficient at meeting movement goals compared to collective actions—most notably public protests—so that everyday acts of resistance may empower individuals but notes that this foregoes broad agendas for social change (Kelly 2015, 83). Related are growing concerns that “slacktivism,” or digital activism
332 done online, requires too little of people to constitute activism (Dennis 2019). However, actions in public spaces are not feasible for everyone. Many must spend most of their time working to make ends meet and/or care for family members. Resources such as time and money are regularly linked with political engagement, with greater amounts increasing the possibility of how active in civic organizing you can be (McCarthy and Zald 1977, Edwards and McCarthy
2004, Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995). Others have disabilities that prevent them from leaving the home or hospital to engage in public protests. In some countries or parts of the country, there may be no opportunities for public collective actions due to the threat of violence or an individual may find themselves a political minority—with no locals sharing their aims—with whom they might organize alongside. Notably, not everyone has the means to afford to travel to join a protest. For these reasons and more, if the bar for social movements is public protest, many will be left out of social movement activism.
Much of the debate about what constitutes social movement activism centers over collective versus individual actions. However, an underlying aspect of this debate is how some actions take place in the public sphere and others in the private sphere. Many would suggest that the individual resistance taking place in the private sphere is an especially ineffective means of promoting social change. Yet if many individuals engage in the same form of resistance in the private sphere, this may constitute a sort of collective action. It is a different kind of collective action from the typical public protest in that it is unintentional. Nevertheless, it offers those with many responsibilities or who face other barriers that prevent them from engaging in regular street protests, the opportunity to participate. By expanding what constitutes social movement work, scholars of political science and social movements can
333 capture a wider range of activities that are inherently political and that lead—if in a less than direct way—toward changing policy outcomes. Even if acts of individual resistance or collective private actions are not as efficient as gaining attention from the government and the general public, these avenues offer a wider path of political engagement for many types of people.
Contextualizing the Public-Private Divide
Feminist scholarship has disrupted a hard public-private divide by suggesting an ambiguous construction of public and private. I build on the work of Latin American area studies scholars of women and gender who have analyzed how Latin American women have sometimes politicized their gender identities, often by bringing their private roles into public spaces through gendered performances. After making these connections, I suggest that any hard delineation of individual, private, public and/or collective resistance misses how all aspects are integral to social movements and interwoven with one another.
Discursively, women have long been associated with the domestic or private sphere and men with the public sphere, with the former construed as nonpolitical, or outside of politics, and the latter seen as the exclusive site of politics (Benhabib 1998, Davidoff 1998,
Hawkesworth 2012, C. Pateman 1988). The gendering and severing off from one another of the public and private spheres has been roundly debunked in feminist scholarship as ideological
(Fraser 1998, Hernandez 1997, Gal 2004). Instead, feminist scholarship generally views the public-private as blurred rather than divided. Mary Dietz (1985) claims that the view of the family as cut off from the public sphere was a political decision conducted in the public sphere where society collectively chose to view the public and private as separate. All social processes
334 were at one time public, including the notion that the family should be cordoned off from the state, as promoted in political liberalism (Benhabib 1998, Dietz 1985). Feminists more often view the public and private spheres as “mutually constituting,” unable to exist without the other (Peterson 2017, Davidoff 1998, C. Pateman 1989, Burgess 2016, 141).
Another way that feminists can be seen as transgressing, and in that sense, queering the public-private binary, is through the well-known assertion that the “personal is political,” which emphasizes that politics if understood as power relations, operates within the household as well as outside it (Honig 1998, Young 1998, 441, Hernandez 1997). Until feminism, the domestic sphere was deemed beyond “the realm of [state or legal and social] justice,” meaning that oppressions inside the home were ignored, as doing so would break norms around privacy, which derive from liberalism. Proponents of the political philosophy of liberalism seek to sever the domestic sphere from the state as a way to protect civil rights, such as the right to privacy
(Benhabib 1998, 87, Young 1998). As noted by Iris Young (1998), arguing that the personal is political does not necessarily break distinctions between the public and private spheres of social life but rather dispels the notion that only the public is political.144 The personal as political asserts that all issues qualify for public discussion, even those issues that happen inside the home (Benhabib 1998). In claiming this, feminists complicate the notion of public-political as equivalent to private-nonpolitical.145
144 Nancy Fraser (1998) further points out that feminists seek privacy as much as anyone. 145 In a work in progress paper, Rina Verma Williams and I are exploring how the “political is personal” too, showing how women’s private roles can open some women’s political opportunities.
335
One of the most productive ways of viewing the public-private divide comes from feminist scholars Nancy Fraser and Adriana Hernandez. Fraser (1990) has argued for the notion of multiple publics, smaller more community-specific public spheres, some of which serve as
“counterpublics” that challenge dominant points of view and produce ongoing discussions and conflict (p. 61, 66). Conceiving of these multiple publics as “training ground[s]” for engagement with the larger society, Hernandez (1997) suggests that smaller publics are critical to strengthening democracy by preserving marginalized points of view in community discussions
(p. 56). Such community discussions allow practice in political discussion before conversing with the larger general public. Bringing subversive narratives into the broader public sphere challenges hegemonic interpretations, which deliberative democracy scholars suggest can bring about a better understanding of political issues through the introduction of new ideas and differences (Fraser 1990, Hernandez 1997, Mutz 2006, Walsh 2011).
For example, Hernandez claimed that in the first two decades of their organizing, the
Asociación branch of the Madres was critical to generating a counterpublic that contested
Argentina’s early post-transition governments, which sought leniency for the former military dictatorship as part of the politics of forgetting the period of state terrorism. As discussed in
Chapter 3, until 1995, Argentina’s government and the general public sought to put the period of state terrorism behind them (Bouvard 1994, Gates-Madsen 2016). Hernandez believes that the Madres’s opposition to the government and mainstream of Argentine society was critical to strengthening Argentina’s democracy. Bouvard (1994) has made the same argument, suggesting that it was work by the Madres that kept the memory of the period of state terrorism alive until this perspective became one of the major points of view in Argentina.
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While the Asociación branch of the Madres146 was unpopular with the first two post-transition governments and the general public in this period due to the subversive counternarrative they nursed through their political work, now that Nunca Mas (never again) has become the dominant politics of memory among the political Left in Argentina, both branches of the
Madres once again have a large base of supporters as they did during the end of the military dictatorship. However, from the late 1980s until the start of the “memory boom” around the period of state terrorism in 1995, which continues in Argentina’s “postboom” Nunca Mas phase, the group existed as a counterpublic, outside the mainstream of Argentine politics
(Bouvard 1994, Gates-Madsen 2016, 7, Werth 2010, Vaisman 2014, Sutton 2018).
I will show that the individual resistance of some former SMF members performed in the in-between space of the public and private spheres—social networks—like the public collective organizing of the Madres, contributed to a politics of memory that challenged the forgetting that both Argentine and Sri Lankan governments sought in the respective aftermaths of the period of state terrorism and the reign of terror. While speaking as individuals, the women’s combined efforts perhaps even constitute collective private resistance since so many engaged in this effort. In the case of Sri Lanka, the Mothers’ Front’s legacy continues with the ongoing work of a counterpublic against official discourses of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Feminist scholarship criticizes constructions of the public and private spheres as distinct, opposed and gendered. I argue that transgressing the collective and individual resistance binary broadens, but also complicates, or radicalizes, former members’ activities after the SMF
146 As noted in Chapter 4, the Línea Fundadora branch of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo was likewise building this same counternarrative, but did so in a quieter, more behind the scenes kind of way (Agosín 1990).
337 disbanded. Counternarratives conducted individually and in “private” that exposed the violence of the state, precluded any meaningful notion of peace, democracy and transitional justice, and so contributed to a collective counternarrative that promoted human rights in Sri Lanka. The private sphere as a jumping-off point for women’s political participation is a major theme in
Latin American area studies, to which I now turn.
Reflections on political motherhood from Latin American gender scholars
Latin American area scholars of women and gender studies have explored in-depth the politicization of femininity and maternal discourses and the role of the private sphere as a site of politics (Alvarez 1990, Barrig 1991, 1998, 2001, Bunster-Burotto 1994, Bayard de Volo 2001,
2004, Kampwirth 2002, Power 2002, Lind 2005, 2012). Throughout the region, political motherhood has played a role in many de facto feminist groups, including the Madres, and catalyzed some feminists (Vargas 1988, 137, Bayard de Volo 2001, Franceschet 2004, Howe
2006, Carreon and Moghadam 2015). Political motherhood proved useful under the widespread military authoritarian regimes in the 1960s and 1970s throughout the region, and it continued to be widely deployed during the regional transitions to democracy over the 1970s through the
1990s. Women played a substantial role in the political opposition against Latin American military dictatorships, often through the politicization of femininity and women’s responsibilities in the domestic sphere (J. S. Jaquette 1989, 1994, Alvarez 1990, Safa 1990,
Waylen 1996).
During the military dictatorships, some women became involved in human rights movements, including the Madres. Others participated in urban poor economic survival
338 movements or organized as feminists (p. 185-187). Feminists in the region found easy connections between the public and private under authoritarianism and through these connections, played an important part in many of the democratic movements that helped Latin
American transition (J. S. Jaquette 1989, 1994). In this period, the Chilean feminist Julieta
Kirkwood provocatively demanded, “democracia en el pais y en la casa” (democracy in the country [or nation] and in the house) linking the problems of the public sphere to the private sphere (Kirkwood 1986, 14). In Central America, women participated in the political opposition as part of armed guerilla movements, frequently through a combative political motherhood, in which they fought on behalf of their children’s interests (Berkman, 1990; Kampwirth, 2004).
Some women involved in human rights and urban poor movements initially entered activism through participation in community organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church, in which women’s roles as wives and mothers were stressed and the sorrowful mother Virgin Mary was women’s role model, who was devoted to her family (J. S. Jaquette 1989, Alvarez 1990).
By the 1980s and 1990s, many countries were transitioning to democracy as well as opening, or further opening, their economies to global capital infiltration, part of what
Marianne H. Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan (2000) refer to as global restructuring. Latin
American feminism has since coalesced around the impact of gender on development and global capitalism (Lavrin 1998). Economic restructuring, which had begun under military dictatorships, broadened under newly democratized regimes. It entailed cutting back on state services, which were increasingly privatized, and service work was pushed onto the NGO sector and community-based groups (Lind 2005). Socioeconomically disadvantaged women organized around their linked roles as mothers, housewives and consumers to demand help from the
339 state as prices increased and social services shrank (J. S. Jaquette 1989). Through what has been termed “militant motherhood,” women demanded an end to rising food prices and sought redistributive economic policies by “strategically invok[ing] essentialist notions of gender and national identity,” publicly performing their maternal duties of caring for their families (Lind
2005, 115, Alvarez 1990) While the earliest use of militant motherhood initially portrayed women as outside of politics, suggesting that women were caring for their families, this politicized form of motherhood has evolved into the view that political participation is a valid and necessary part of women’s maternal duties in Latin America (J. S. Jaquette 1994, 224,
Sutton 2010).
In the 1970s and 1980s, Latin American feminists such as Virginia Vargas (1988) focused on scholarship and activities that pivoted around the understanding “that the private is political” (p. 140). Feminists stressed the importance of the “democratization of personal relationships” as much as democracy in government (p. 140). Additionally, feminists sought to ensure that events and matters in the private sphere were recognized as important as anything taking place in the so-called masculine public sphere by “redeeming the private sphere as an area of struggle for social change” (p. 140). Vargas echoes the writings of the Chilean feminist
Julieta Kirkwood who promoted women’s transformation of “oppression from within,” meaning that the daily experiences of discrimination that women endured could move them to politicization through feminism (Lavrin 1998, 259). The activism of Latin American women that protested the military governments’ human rights abuses and promoted democracy as well as the activism to survive the neoliberal state are resistances that have sought “to intervene in and renegotiate various boundaries between the public and private” (Marchand and Runyan
340
2000, 157, D. Taylor 1997). These resistances are rooted in women’s performances of femininity, especially around maternal duties to care for their families.
Amy Lind (2005) points to the paradoxes of political motherhood, which resulted in both benefits and drawbacks in terms of women’s rights. Women become engaged in the public sphere as participatory citizens, which helped to integrate their issues into state institutions.
Women’s activism relies on conservative gender norms, yet these same norms are challenged as the women advocate for themselves in the public sphere. Other drawbacks to political motherhood included increased burdens on women given the state’s retreat. Lind’s study on
Ecuadorian women in the 1990s points to how women were burdened with further responsibilities. While they gained skills in running organizations and learned to lobby and protest the state, most women were volunteers or poorly paid workers at NGOs and community-based organizations, without access to unions. The women ran needed services such as childcare, which made it untenable for some women not to work for free or low pay, meaning that they could not organize for workers’ rights. Maruja Barrig (1998) notes other concerns regarding political motherhood. Women leaders in NGOs and community-based groups, many of whom are elected to their positions, may grow increasingly separated from the rank and file members, focused more on navigating state bureaucracy than providing services.
Women leaders often recognize the growing resentment against them, both for their increased influence and their apparent disconnect from their communities. Many women manage this using political motherhood, arguing that they are helping the larger family of the community.
Barrig notes that this “amplified motherhood” may be the only way for women to justify their
341 roles as leaders, which makes political motherhood the singular means of women’s legitimate participation in leadership (p. 109).
Judith Butler ([1990] 1999) has argued that gender is socially constructed through people’s daily practices or performances. Diana Taylor’s (1997) analysis of Argentina’s period of state terrorism builds on gendered performativity to understand the “acts” or performances of the military dictatorship, Argentine citizens and the Madres under the military regime. Taylor’s insights of the Madres’s gendered spectacles explore how the group performed for the state and the general public to draw attention to the disappeared. Taylor suggests that the women were “trapped in bad [gender] scripts” (p. 183) due to their use of political motherhood, which she argues prevented them from breaking free of constricting conservative gender norms and taking on issues that did not directly relate to women’s maternal duties. From her perspective, the Madres were like the conservative right-wing military regime that ruled during the period of state of terrorism since both promoted gender differences among women and men.
In contrast to Taylor (1997), others such as Lind (2005), Barrig (1998) and Bouvard
(1994) suggest that while conservative gender norms are in part reinforced by women who employ political motherhood, there is also a political transformation women undergo by participating in protests and other collective activities. Bouvard (1994) argues that the Madres fundamentally transformed their own lives, which before the loss of their children had left them largely uninterested in politics. They left their homes and entered the streets where they protested against the state, shifting mothering from the private to the public sphere. Jennifer
Schirmer (1994) viewed the Madres as bringing the realm of the domestic into the public sphere and argued that this disrupted binary assumptions about the divergence of the public
342 and private spheres, nature and culture, family and the state, order and disorder and even the notion of assertive masculinity and passive femininity (p. 207).
The paradoxes of political motherhood that come out of Latin American area studies on women and gender offers important theoretical insights. This literature draws connections between public and private spaces and is interested in uncovering how useful political motherhood is to women’s political empowerment. Such findings are important in considering the implications of the Mothers’ Front. A major point of departure is that the actions that I explore in this chapter were not part of public collective organizing. Instead, my focus is the gendered performances of women who elected to forego public collective organizing and conducted their resistance through conversations about their disappeared loved ones.
Individual resistance: Speaking (private) truth to power
In this section, I interweave insights from feminist scholars and activists on what constitutes the public and private spheres to explore the separate constructions of collective and individual resistances, which suggests a hierarchy that prioritizes collective over individual resistance and public resistance over private resistance, either implicitly or directly (Nussbaum
2007, Bosco 2006, Gamson 1990, Giugni 1999, Dail 2018, Wallerstein 1990). Nancy Fraser
(1990) suggests that “political participation is enacted through the medium of talk” (p. 57).
Building on this, I argue that the daily conversation of women formerly with the SMF focused on the memories of their disappeared children is a form of activism, despite involving no public collective action. Women relying on political motherhood to engage in public collective action has been used to challenge the notion that conservative women, often labeled “traditional,”
343 lack agency. But this has perpetuated an emphasis on public collective action as a movement standard, which overlooks women’s agency in terms of private and individual resistance
(Bouvard, 1994; Schirmer, 1994; Basu, 1998; Bejarano, 2003; Mahmood, 2001).
Public collective action is of primal importance to social movement organizing and creates a powerful symbol that brings attention to movement causes from the general public and political elites to influence policymaking that favors a movement’s demands (Benford 1997,
Keck and Sikkink 1998, McAdam 1996, Edwards and McCarthy 2004). Yet individual resistance is an agentic and political act, as well as a necessary component of collective action. Like the perceived public-private divide, which is mutually constituted, the apparent collective- individual resistance divide needs to be fully transgressed or queered since they are not a perfect binary. Collective resistance entails individuals coming together to engage as a group.
Yet individuals acting alone may institute, unintentionally, a collective action through their combined individual actions. Notably, former SMF members’ individual private resistance was informed by their previous public collective resistance, and with so many women apparently engaged in these conversations, this may constitute private collective action.
Understanding that collective and individual resistances overlap suggests that some acts of individual resistance in the private sphere can influence the general public and the state. In this section, I perform a feminist re-reading of actions taken by those former SMF members who, following the organization’s disbandment in 1994, no longer participated in collective, public actions but engaged in individual resistance in the private sphere. I use this method to highlight how these private gendered performances kept alive the memories of the
344 disappeared by women who regularly spoke of their missing children with those whom they interacted with regularly. This was a political act in post-1994 Sri Lanka since the government wanted the women to “move on” from the reign of terror.147 Yet this work was not the public collective organizing that I had expected. I anticipated that many of the women formerly with the SMF would have moved into organizing with other groups after the dissolution of the SMF, or that some might decide to enter office, inspired by Chandrika Kumaratunga as the country’s first woman president. I thought it unlikely former SMF members would disengage from politics as many have worried happens with women mobilized through political motherhood (El-Bushra
2007, Stavrianos 2014, D. Taylor 1997).
Just as the public-private divide is transgressed through feminist lenses, so too is the case with the collective-individual resistance divide, resulting in an understanding that collective resistance is rooted in participants’ individual resistance and vice versa. For example, that the women of the SMF first came together in public protest as the SMF was due to their initial individual resistance. When the SLFP founded the SMF, the women who joined had already begun to individually resist the state for conducting enforced disappearances. Like the women who went on to form the Madres, those who joined the SMF had already made the rounds at police stations, military encampments and other state facilities in search of their missing loved ones, doing what they could to see to their return.148
I learned of former members’ individual, private resistance from Kumudini Samuel during my fieldwork in Colombo in September and October 2017. Samuel explained how the
147 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 148 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
345 former members regularly spoke of their disappeared and/or murdered children, despite the government’s desire for the women to stop these discussions. No scholarly works on the SMF mention the efforts of these former members after the national SMF disbanded in 1994. I believe that the women’s individual resistance to the state is missing from the literature because these actions were conducted within the women’s social circles, not in public spaces where the women would have been visible to the general public and political elites or even scholars of politics. Movements aim to alter policy by gaining the attention of the public and political elites to push for changes, which is most often accomplished through public, collective action (Benford 1997, Keck and Sikkink 1998, McAdam 1996, Edwards and McCarthy 2004,
Kriesi 2014). However, I argue that if collective and individual resistances are viewed as interconnected, then the individual resistance by former SMF members fed into the public sphere by sustaining a counterpublic that kept resistance to the state ongoing in a similar, although smaller-scale way, to the resistance by the Madres following Argentina’s transition to democracy in 1983. The Madres’s politics of memory around the period of state terrorism from the mid-1980s through the 1990s constituted a counterpublic, which since the mid-1990s has evolved into one of the mainstream views in Argentina among the political Left (Bouvard 1994,
Gates-Madsen 2016, Werth 2010, Vaisman 2014, Sutton 2018).
Although quieter, the private resistance of former SMF members contributed to an undercurrent of the ongoing counterpublic in Sri Lanka, which refuses to let the civil war’s tragedies disappear from public memory and demands both transitional justice and an end to ongoing human rights abuses (ICES 2019, HRW 2018, R. Fernando 2018). This counterpublic, made up mainly of human rights organizations and progressive journalists in the public sphere,
346 stands in stark contrast to the government and many citizens who seek to memorialize a hyper- masculine, hegemonic nationalism that paints Sinhala-Buddhism as emblematic of Sri Lanka and valorizes the Sri Lankan military, which continues to engage in both direct and indirect violence against minority populations (ICG, 2017; SLA, n.d.; de Mel, 2007; Groundviews, Breaking Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State, 2017; Uyangoda, 2018). This form of remembering has included the Sri Lankan government’s representation of a muscular
LTTE to showcase itself as the even stronger vanquisher and has entailed the construction of various war memorials attesting to the strength of Sri Lankan military forces. LTTE militia sites and the home of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, were for a time made into hasty tourist locations—sometimes without nearby mines being cleared—where the LTTE was presented as a terrorist organization that abused the Tamil community (Hyndman and
Amarasingam 2014). The 2019 election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, former Minister of Defense during the final stages of the civil war, to the presidency, and the return of co-founder of the
SMF and former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa now as prime minister, indicates that Sinhala-
Buddhist nationalism will continue its reign as the official discourse, recalling the war as the heroic defeat of the LTTE by the fearsome Sri Lankan military (Ramachandran 2019).
The importance of conversations
In speaking with both Samuel and the leftist activist Brito Fernando, who was an organizer with the SMF in the early 1990s, I came to understand that the majority of former
SMF members had not moved into other political groups after 1994.149 Moreover, I never came
149 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
347 across any examples of former members running for office, which I had thought a possibility.
However, Samuel stressed that most of the women had continued with “political work” as she termed it, but not in the sense of public organizing. Rather, their political work took the form of speaking about their disappeared loved ones in their daily conversations with those whom they regularly interacted with. I was struck by the description of this as political, which Samuel explained was tied to the fact the People’s Alliance, the coalition government led by the SLFP and headed by Chandrika Kumaratunga, ultimately sought to “move on” from the enforced disappearances that took place over the reign of terror (1987-1991), a move that echoed the transitional period in Argentina (Bouvard 1994). Highlighting instances of mass enforced disappearances is not something that governments typically linger on, as it reflects poorly within the international community.150
Fernando, with much disappointment, stated that most former SMF members did not move into other forms of organizing after the demise of the SMF. Fernando’s disenchantment with the decision of women of the SMF to disengage from collective organizing is representative of many progressive voices in Sri Lanka who mourned what they saw as a foregone opportunity by the SMF when the SLFP entered government as the main party in the
People’s Alliance coalition. Fernando mentioned that former SMF president Dr. Saravanamutti tried in vain to encourage the women of the SMF to stay active in civil society organizing, urging them that there was still work to be done. The regret in Fernando’s voice was palpable as he described how the women chose to return home.151 Unlike Samuel, Fernando either did not
150 Despite this, enforced disappearances have not ended in Sri Lanka (R. Fernando 2016, Groundviews, One Year in Kilinochchi: Tracking State Commitments against Protests by Families of the Disappeared 2018). 151 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
348 know of or did not view, former members’ conversations about their disappeared loved ones as political work.
Yet through a politics of memory that kept their disappeared children alive in their tellings and re-tellings of the reign of terror, former members of the SMF—through private gendered performances—were set somewhere between the private and public spheres. These women spoke regularly about their missing but not forgotten loved ones in ordinary conversations with their families, friends and neighbors, and anyone who would listen in the spaces of their daily lives—homes, markets, religious sites, and all the spaces that make up daily living. Such actions provided a boost for a politics of memory in Sri Lanka that echoes the on- going work of the Madres and other Argentine human rights groups associated with Nunca
Mas. While such individual resistance did not produce the same level of the politics of memory as in Argentina, which is today a mass effort to ensure ongoing and future respect for human rights by preserving the memory of the period of state terrorism, the contribution of former
SMF members in speaking truth to power in their social circles was a form of the women’s continued political participation and a contribution to progressive politics that furthered democracy and human rights. This is as much a part of the legacy of the Mothers’ Front as the
NMF’s feminism, which has been positively remembered by feminists in Sri Lanka (de Mel 2003,
S. Thiruchandran 2012).
Evidence
Like her mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga relied on political motherhood to access public office during her 1994 presidential election, although
349 in far less aggressive form compared to Bandaranaike who relied on Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism.152 To do this, Kumaratunga associated herself with the SMF, portraying herself as a tragic maternal figure for having lost her husband and father to political violence (Samuel
2006). Yet over her time in office, Kumaratunga also adopted her mother’s trope of “projecting herself as a Sinhala Buddhist mother,” who would protect the (Sinhalese-Buddhist) nation through self-sacrifice (Samarasinghe 2012, 352). In contrast to the militant nationalist cast of
Bandaranaike, Kumaratunga read the mood of the populace and—taking a cue from the SMF— emphasized the need to resolve the ongoing civil war through dialogue rather than arms during her presidential campaign (Samuel 2006).
Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government—a coalition government led by her party, the
SLFP, known as the People’s Alliance—moved quickly to launch a series of commissions that investigated enforced disappearances, one of the main aims of the SMF (C. F. Torne 2017).
However, after having done this, the People’s Alliance was ready to move on from the issue of the disappeared during the reign of terror, which had impacted Sinhalese citizens. The focus of
Kumartunga’s presidency was on ending the political conflict between the government and the
LTTE and promoting development, both of which were to enhance Sri Lanka’s international standing (Schaffer 1996). On the few occasions when Kumaratunga referred to the reign of
152 Vidyamali Samarasinghe (2012) argues that Bandaranaike was a hegemonic mother of the nation, portraying herself as a modern Queen Viharamahadevi. Viharamahadevi is a historical figure dating back to the fifth century CE, said to have been the “dutiful daughter” of a Sinhalese Buddhist king, willing to sacrifice herself for her “country.” Viharamahadevi also gave birth to the warrior Gamini, who defeated the Tamils, the enemy of the fifth century Sinhalese kingdom. Viharamahadevi was a “Spartan Mother” who encouraged her son to fight the enemy, even joining him in battle to offer her war-making expertise (p. 351). The unfortunate construction of Tamils/Hindus as the eternal enemy of the Sinhalese Buddhist kingdom/state likely contributed to the increased hostilities between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities in the 1970s when Bandaranaike served as prime minister.
350 terror, it was to emphasize that this was a closed period where justice had been brought for those affected by the violence. In a speech of over 7,800 words, “President Chandrika
Kumaratunga’s Speech in the Parliament after the Presentation of the Constitution Reform Bill on August 3, 2000,” Kumaratunga mentions only this on the reign of terror in brief, insisting:
Our Government took a number of steps to end the terror that prevailed in the South at
that time no sooner we were elected in 1994 itself and we introduced new legislation to
achieve that task. We took action to punish the offenders and we are taking such action
even now according to law.153 Because of this, democracy and human rights have been
restored and consolidated in all areas of the country except the North and East (C.
Kumaratunga 2000).
Kumaratunga suggests here that human rights and democracy were fully restored in the south thanks to her government, therein signaling her desire for Sri Lankans to put this behind them.
In 1995, Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance was focused on achieving a political solution to the conflict with the LTTE since Kumaratunga was elected largely on this promise. During the
1994 presidential campaign, much of the Sinhalese population sought an end to the conflict, which had been ongoing at this point over a decade; more so among the Tamil community, who had borne the brunt of the war. Likewise, because Kumaratunga promoted devolution154 for the Tamil community, and avoided direct Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, she gained popularity
153 It is unclear what Kumaratunga meant by this remark as no criminal charges were ever sought against perpetrators, which I elaborate on below (C. F. Torne 2017, B. Fernando 2017). 154 Devolution in this context refers to the process of moving increased decision-making power to the provinces. It was a shift away from a unitary, or centralized government, to a federal system that would provide greater regional decision-making to give Tamils greater say over their own affairs. As it stands, state bureaucrats in the provinces carry out policies decided by the central government (Kailasapathy 2012, Oberst, et al. 2014).
351 among the Tamil and Muslim communities (Schaffer 1996, Guneratne 2013). Furthermore, the international community was eager to see progress in peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. During her first full year in office, Kumaratunga received considerable praise from the international community for her peace efforts (Schaffer 1996).
As indicated in both international and domestic speeches, ending the civil war and promoting development was the focus of Kumaratunga’s presidency throughout her time in office, which ended in 2005 (S. Fernando 2018, C. B. Kumaratunga 1995, C. B. Kumaratunga,
Address to the UN World Summit For Social Development - March 12, 1995 1995, C. B.
Kumaratunga 2004, C. B. Kumaratunga 2005, C. Kumaratunga 2000, Reuters 2001).155 However, the effort for peace was severely complicated in 2001, when she joined forces with, in her words, “the devil” out of a lack of political options, bringing the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) into the People’s Alliance, a party decidedly against devolution and one of the instigators of the reign of terror (Reuters 2001).
Upon winning the election in 1994, Kumaratunga was eager to begin government investigations into the violence related to the reign of terror, to provide some justice for survivors of enforced disappearance and families of the disappeared and murdered, which was a campaign promise and one of the most sought-after demands of the SMF (de Mel 2001). On
30 November 1994, commissions into the reign of terror in the south were launched, as well as commissions into other enforced disappearances in the north and east, just weeks after
155 Despite the SLFP’s history of socialist economic policies, the People’s Alliance under Kumaratunga leaned into neoliberal development, working to privatize government-owned facilities and promoted foreign investment, all in the effort to promote Sri Lanka’s image abroad (Schaffer 1996).
352
Kumaratunga entered office on 12 November (C. F. Torne 2017). This was likely because the
United National Party (UNP), the long-time rival of the SLFP, was the head of the government during the reign of terror and was responsible for a great deal of the violence associated with this period.156 Although the reign of terror began with the anti-government insurrection by the
JVP, whose members attacked not only members of the police and politicians but also civilians, the UNP government led unrestrained violence that ignored the rule of law as police and other state forces launched attacks against citizens who had no association with the JVP along with members of the JVP. Rather than working through the criminal justice system to hold members of the JVP accountable for violence committed, immediate retribution that included enforced disappearance and killing was widely practiced (de Alwis, 2001; de Mel, 2001).
The government investigations into the reign of terror were politically expedient for
Kumaratunga and the SLFP since it reinforced a negative image of the UNP for crimes committed against Sinhalese citizens, the main base of both parties’ electoral prospects (ICG
2007). Nevertheless, it was not apparently useful for Kumaratunga and her government to linger on the reign of terror after the commissions had fully wrapped up in 1998 (C. F. Torne
2017). Notably, the commissions’ findings were published for the public, but few copies were made available, making it largely inaccessible. Few people in Sri Lanka ever knew of the commissions as there was little promotion of the investigations and their findings, not even
156 In terms of the disappearances in the north and east, much was attributed to the LTTE, although government forces were also blamed (C. F. Torne 2017).
353 among those who had testified at these commissions, which had included some former SMF members (C. F. Torne 2017).157
While the investigators recommended providing economic compensation to those who had survived being disappeared and for families of the disappeared, as well as criminal accountability for perpetrators, the Kumaratunga government made no efforts to hold individuals accountable for carrying out these crimes. This was because it would have entailed filing charges against state security forces (C. F. Torne 2017). Both the military and police are given great respect by much of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, as they are viewed as protectors of the state (de Mel, 2007). It would have been politically detrimental for the SLFP to be involved in such an effort as the SLFP relies on the majority Sinhalese Buddhist vote (ICG
2007). When investigators gave Kumaratunga a list of at least 1,000 names of perpetrators responsible for committing violence, she was warned by her uncle, then working in the Ministry of Defense, that if she pursued charges against these individuals, that she would lose the support of the Sri Lankan army.158 By this point, the People’s Alliance was using the military to fight against the LTTE while simultaneously pursuing devolution for greater autonomy for the
Tamil community through Parliament, meaning that the army was a force that the
Kumaratunga needed on her side (Malik, et al. 2009).
Through the government commissions into enforced disappearance, particularly the commission investigating the reign of terror, Kumaratunga sought to paint the UNP in a negative light but then was ready to move on. This was in part due to the complications of
157 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 158 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
354 accountability of state security forces when the government needed its armed forces to continue with its war against the LTTE. Moreover, prosecuting members of the military and police forces would have likely cost the SLFP votes from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. It was also likely because Kumaratunga felt her political legitimacy was increasingly tied to ending the armed conflict, which her government was pursuing through both the military defeat of the
LTTE and securing devolution for the Tamil community. As Malathi de Alwis has stressed,
Kumaratunga was in many ways indebted to the SMF for her election in 1994.159 The group’s main demands were commissions to exonerate their disappeared loved ones of guilt, find them if alive and provide economic compensation for those who had suffered during the reign of terror, as well as end the conflict. In conducting the commissions and dispensing reparations,
Kumaratunga’s government appears to have felt this campaign promise was fulfilled. To linger on it would have only served as a distraction from resolving another campaign promise, sought by the majority of Sri Lankans, for an end to the civil war, which at the time of the 1994 election was in its eleventh year (Schaffer 1996).
The peace talks that began in January 1995 between the People’s Alliance government and LTTE broke down that April as the LTTE sought greater concessions from the government than the government was willing to give. The LTTE then carried out several attacks against both state and civilian targets to the embarrassment of the People’s Alliance. Nevertheless, the Sri
Lankan government continued its efforts to give more autonomy to the Tamil community through devolution. However, by this point, LTTE attacks had emboldened Sinhala-Buddhist
159 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
355 nationalists, which included some of the country’s most senior Buddhist monks, an influential political constituency, against any form of devolution (Schaffer 1996). Devolution was never popular among many Sinhalese Buddhists who feared it would lead to a Tamil-Hindu takeover.
This perspective views Sri Lanka as a lone respite for Buddhism, surrounded by a hostile, Hindu- dominated India. Although the Sinhalese Buddhist community constitutes over 70 percent of the population, many Sinhalese fear being overtaken by minority communities (Groundviews,
Breaking Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State 2017, Uyangoda
2018).160 While the People’s Alliance argued that devolution was a worthwhile compromise to end the war, many in the Sinhalese community viewed devolution as a concession to the LTTE, a sentiment that was in full force even as the government officially revealed its devolution plan in summer 1995 (Schaffer 1996).
From the start of her presidency, Kumaratunga was unable to work with the UNP in
Parliament, which led to problems in implementing her devolution plan since the People’s
Alliance did not hold enough votes to pass the plan without UNP support (Schaffer 1996). By
2001, Kumaratunga’s popularity was waning, in part because of another aspect of her electoral success in 1994: the campaign promise to lessen the powers of the presidency, which had been greatly expanded under UNP rule in 1977. The People’s Alliance refused to make any reductions to executive powers until devolution was passed. With no other option, the People’s Alliance brought the JVP into their coalition during the 2001 Parliamentary elections (Schaffer 1996,
160 During the civil war, the emphasis of danger to the Sinhalese community was put on the Tamil community, which is majority Hindu. Now this fear has turned toward the Muslim community (Hashim 2013, Fuller and Rizwie 2019).
356
Reuters 2001, Hill 2013). This likely gave Kumaratunga even less reason to emphasize the reign of terror due to the JVP’s instigation of the violence.161
Brito Fernando notes that the Sri Lankan human rights community has generally been fearful of discussing the reign of terror, as well as the issue of enforced disappearances.162
Indeed, the point of such crimes is often not to punish the individuals who endure enforced disappearance, but rather terrorize into silence entire populations. Out of fear, people will seek to disassociate themselves from the disappeared and families of the disappeared, not wanting to be caught up in any of this violence themselves (D. Taylor 1997). Additionally, many may be willing to look the other way if they believe that enforced disappearances and other forms of violence will protect them from perceived terrorism or promote economic growth (Sheinin
2012). While Sri Lankan’s human rights movement is strong, it is small in numbers and there has remained a good deal of understandable fear in speaking about this period due to the terror it inflicted on the population.163
While the evidence for counterpublics is typically found in media sources such as newspapers, magazines, and increasingly, internet blogs and Twitter accounts (Friedman 2017),
I argue that conversations also contribute to a counterpublic. In this case, the fact that former members of the SMF continued to speak of their disappeared loved ones is all the more critical since Fernando points out how many were fearful to do just this.164 Likewise, Nancy Fraser
161 It is remarkable that despite the JVP’s violence against ordinary citizens that it was so quickly brought back into the fold of mainstream Sri Lankan politics (Hill 2013). Its position as a Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist party is the likely reason for this. In contrast, the LTTE, a minority party promoting Tamil nationalism, also guilty of violence against civilians, was never afforded such an opportunity to reform. 162 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 163 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 164 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
357
(1990) characterizes counterpublics as counternarratives, meaning that there is no more important contribution to a counterpublic than a conversation, a literal narrative that supported remembering the reign of terror as opposed to forgetting it. While Kumaratunga claimed that the reign of terror human rights abuses were “resolved,” many former women of the SMF likely did not find this to be the case since they did not want to stop recalling this traumatic past (C. Kumaratunga 2000). These women chose to continue discussing their lost loved ones, which, as Samuel pointed out, was exactly what Kumaratunga’s government sought to move on from with its focus on the issue of ending the civil war.165
There has been a sense of regret by many Sri Lankan progressives that the women of the SMF did not continue to engage in public collective activism for a longer period (de Alwis
2012).166 Malathi de Alwis commented in my interview with her that the impetus for organizing was lost by the SMF, although she acknowledges their large-scale efforts and their politicizing of religious spaces. De Alwis points out it was due mainly to the SMF’s lack of autonomy from the SLFP that left them adrift, supporting other findings on state-civil society relationships regarding political motherhood (Carreon and Moghadam 2015). According to Brito Fernando, who was an ally with the SMF and remains a prominent human rights defender in Sri Lanka, once the compensation for families of the disappeared was expended by the government, none of the organizers could keep up “the spirit of the mothers” to continue organizing. Fernando
165 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. Likewise, in retrospect, Kumaratunga’s decision to pursue both military attacks on the LTTE while working to promote devolution for the Tamil community seems contradictory. It was likely that she felt both were necessary, perhaps as a way to placate Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalists while trying to make good on her campaign promise to end the conflict. 166 Malathi de Alwis, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka. Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
358 said that the president of the SMF, Dr. Saravanamuttu, tried to impress upon the rank and file members to keep organizing even after this compensation came, but that most of the members chose to forego it.167 For Pinto Kishali Jayawardena and Chulani Kodikara (2002), it was more of a puzzle that the SMF failed to keep organizing when the SLFP came into government. They suggest that the women stopped organizing right at the height of possibility.
I highlight the continued contributions of former members of the SMF through individual resistance (although in Chapter 8 I critique their significant failure of hegemonic nationalism). The purpose of this chapter is to find what can be applied to future situations of armed conflict and women’s organizing. As participatory democracy scholars have emphasized, by regularly engaging in political work, the values of democracy are appreciated, meaning that any involvement in political participation will have lasting effects on its participants (Pateman C.
, 1970). Although many of the former members of the SMF may not have continued with public collective action, this did not mean that they failed to remain politically active and to contribute to human rights causes and support for democracy. Their gendered performances as conversations with their loved ones, friends and neighbors may not have been overtly in the public sphere, but they did reach the counterpublic that ran against the wishes of the state that sought to move on from the reign of terror.
167 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
359
Analysis
As noted, Samuel constructs conversations of former SMF women remembering their disappeared loved ones as political work.168 This opens possibilities for understanding the women’s continued contributions after public collective organizing had ended. Viewing ordinary conversation as a form of activism crosses not only the political science literature on political participation and social movements but also participatory and deliberative democracy.
Participatory democracy promotes participation among ordinary people to exercise decision- making over their lives, which is thought to develop and deepen their appreciation for democracy (Davis, 1964; Pateman C. , 1970). Deliberative democracy stresses the notion that deliberation, or debate, matters to a healthy democracy, suggesting that in discussing issues— or sitting back and watching experts discussing the issues—people scrutinize their assumptions and analyses to become better informed (Mutz 2006). In this chapter, I have suggested what constructing conversation on political issues within our social circles might mean for activism.
By conceiving talking as participation—something that the literatures of participatory democracy or deliberative democracy generally do not—I suggest that former members of the
SMF who spoke of the memories of their disappeared children, even if “only” among their social circles, were activists since they kept resistance and a counterpublic alive.
The literature on deliberative democracy, as its name suggests, prioritizes deliberations, specifically those that highlight multiple perspectives, with the objective to help citizens clarify political issues. This body of literature has generally assumed that deliberations are best held in
168 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
360 state institutions or other public forums such as the media, and in a structured manner (Fishkin
1997, Searing, et al. 2007, 589, Gastil 2008). The majority of the deliberative democracy literature emphasizes the public nature of political dialogue, noting that casual, everyday conversation does not generate the kind of political discussion intended in deliberative democracy because ordinary conversation often takes place among those who share the same beliefs (Searing, et al. 2007, 590). Deliberative democracy is focused on bringing out differing views to challenge preconceived opinions and generate critical thinking. This is thought to occur mainly in the public sphere where citizens can hear from those outside their social circles (Mutz
2006). However, critical voices suggest that “deliberative conversation” and even non- deliberative conversation of the mundane are integral to democracy’s vitality (Mansbridge
1999, Mutz 2006, Gastil 2008, Klofstad 2011). I take this a step further by viewing conversing on political issues as a form of activism.
After 1994, the remembering promulgated through the social circles of women formerly with the SMF was a resistance not of public protest but rather a subversive political discourse against the hegemonic narrative of the state, part of a counterpublic that challenged the state’s desire to move on from the reign of terror that had gripped southern Sri Lanka from 1987 until
1991. It further allowed the women to continue to practice activism. It is unclear what level of impact these everyday conversations had on the counterpublic that works to remember the civil war and the period of the reign of terror in particular. My purpose is to call attention their performance as a part of political participation. At the very least, the women provided a form of individual resistance that bolstered a counternarrative that challenged the mainstream view
361 that all was well (in the south) and that the reign of terror could be forgotten.169 That Sri Lanka still has work to do to in coming to terms with not only the reign of terror but the entirety of the civil war means that the political work of former SMF members was no small feat
(Groundviews, Breaking Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State
2017, Uyangoda 2018). While most of the women formerly with the SMF have passed away, their legacy should not be forgotten, both in terms of their collective action during the reign of terror and in their efforts to preserve the collective memory of this period.
Women’s burdens affect their ability to engage in collective resistance. The political participation literature indicates that resources such as leisure time, level of education and income affect the ability of people to participate politically, with higher levels of each of the three correlated with increased political involvement (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995,
Kitschelt and Rehm 2014). Likewise, the sub-branch of social movement studies known as resource mobilization theory stresses the importance of resources such as time and money in carrying out social movement work (McCarthy and Zald 1977, Edwards and McCarthy 2004).
Moreover, women suffer additional burdens, responsibilities and vulnerabilities due to their gendered status in situations of political violence and armed conflict, including war’s aftermath
(Assembly, 1993; Turpin, 1998; Plumper & Neumayer, 2006; Arostegui, 2013). Most of the women once with the SMF had significant struggles following the reign of terror. Although the government gave some compensation to families of the disappeared as a symbolic gesture, it did not provide women with long-term economic support and for many of the women, this was
169 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
362 the first time they had to financially provide for themselves or work for pay outside the home
(Samuel 2006).170 This also does not touch upon the likelihood of their ongoing trauma due to losing a loved one to enforced disappearance.
A politics of memory that challenges the state’s version of events is intent on impacting political outcomes. The politics of memory literature suggests that memory and identity are integral to our self-understandings and to the larger collective of the community—whether that community is a movement, an ethnic group or a country—and are inherent to transitional justice (Antze and Lambeck 1996, Kirmayer 1996, Huyssen 2003, Barahona de Brito, González‐
Enríquez and Aguilar 2001, Barkan and Becirbasic 2015, Bakiner 2015). While the Madres continued to engage in public and collective gendered performances to promote their vision of a politics of memory that preserved the memories of their disappeared children, to suggest that women of the former SMF did anything less is a mistake, even if this pursuit took the form of individual resistance in private. I question the solely private nature of this work since women formerly with the SMF promoted their politics of memory on the enforced disappearances through conversations with family, friends and neighbors, meaning such actions cannot be viewed as either strictly individual or collective resistance but rather an “in-betweenness.” The women’s individual gendered performances—speaking about their disappeared—fed collective resistance to the state’s narrative that wanted to “move on” from the enforced disappearances of the south. It was a critical counterpublic that called into question the state’s politics of memory.
170 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
363
Despite contributions made to movement causes through individual resistance, social movements continue to prioritize public protests. Although scholars, activists and practitioners are working to make public spaces as inclusive as possible, there may always be those who can never physically leave their homes and others, like former SMF members, who may have too many responsibilities to engage in regular collective actions (Hamraie 2018, Kingston 2014,
Priestley, et al. 2016). How can we ensure that such individuals have access to political engagement? By constructing avenues outside public protest as activism, activism becomes more accessible. For example, denigrating online activism as “slacktivism,” or denying the importance of ordinary conversations ignores the impacts that these individual forms of resistance make in terms of shaping political attitudes—both of those performing this work and of those whom they come into contact with (Dennis 2019, 3, 15-16). Such influence is ultimately collective since it reaches beyond the individual.
Conclusion
Through a feminist re-reading of collective and private resistance, this chapter argued for the importance of ordinary conversations among family, friends and neighbors when such conversations contribute to what Nancy Fraser (1990) terms “counterpublics,” or critical counternarratives that challenge hegemonic discourses, to supporting democracy and human rights. Through this re-reading, we can reassess the legacy of SMF and appreciate that while the
SMF as an organization disbanded, many of its former members remain mobilized through individual resistance. These women’s resistance—whether individual or collective—contributed to a counterpublic that promoted a politics of memory of the war period and prevented the
364 total normalization of the reign of terror. By making the case for former SMF members, activism becomes more inclusive. The SMF came at a time when the political opposition and the Sri Lankan human rights community were constrained by the political violence of the UNP government (Samuel 2006). To write off the SMF because they ended “early” not only misunderstands the lifecycle of social movements—that when desired changes happen, mass movements usually demobilize or enter period of non-engagement with collective action—it promotes an unnuanced legacy of the SMF that fails to appreciate what the group did accomplish in terms of human rights through their individual resistance.
To conclude, I suggest that democracy and political participation in Argentina and Sri
Lankan are both better off thanks to the work of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front because these movements worked to preserve the memory of the disappeared. As Argentine human rights activists today argue, by remembering the period of state terrorism, they work to assure that nunca mas, never again, will there be the kinds of crimes against humanity carried out for years in Argentina with the tacit approval of the international community. The legacies of both branches of the Mothers’ Front include both positive work as well as significant weaknesses.
Positively, former members of the SMF kept the flame of memory alive through repeated stories of disappeared loved ones.171 This work continues today with other members of the human rights community and progressive left, including the current Tamil Mothers of the
Disappeared (ICES 2019, HRW 2018, R. Fernando, Disappearances in Sri Lanka: 500 Days of
Protests 2018). In the next chapter, I examine troubling links between political motherhood and
171 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
365 hegemonic nationalism, which entails warranted criticism of the SMF and raises flags about the links between political motherhood and the mother of the nation trope.
366
Chapter 8
Political Motherhood and Feminism
Introduction
Over the previous three chapters, this project has looked at how activism is remembered by domestic human rights and women’s rights movements. In this chapter, I explore the role of both domestic and transnational feminists and how their interventions, or noninterventions, influence the duration, visibility and remembrance of political motherhood groups. Broadly, feminism is an analytical and prescriptive project that seeks both to understand and to end structures and systems of hierarchies (Mahmood 2005, 10). There is a long-standing feminist discussion over how to end hierarchies, including whether to emphasize or to downplay connections between women and caring. This disagreement often centers around the social role of mother (Randall 1987, 323-324). Minimally, women are burdened with caring and domestic labor that goes unvalued—or at least undervalued—as it is often deemed as natural, and therefore unskilled. In contrast, men have historically been tasked with the valued work of public affairs (Waring 1988, Barker and Feiner 2004, Hawkesworth 2012). At the heart of this debate is whether to alter structures and systems to value caring or, instead, to sever women’s connections from caring. This debate encompasses political motherhood, a form of political participation in which women represent themselves as mothers.
Some feminists fear that political motherhood may be detrimental to women’s long- term political participation because it emphasizes their private roles as mothers and wives.
While it buys women temporary access to the public sphere by justifying their actions as socially acceptable, political motherhood may make it easy for women to be forced back to the
367 domestic sphere since mothers and wives’ “proper place” is the home (D. Otto 2006, El-Bushra
2007, Charlesworth 2008, Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011). Other feminists, such as Rohini
Hensman (1996), suggest that rather than understanding caring “as a source of oppression to be eliminated from the practice of women…that [caring instead be a value] affirmed” among all people (p. 69). Sara Ruddick (1995), a well-known maternal feminist, emphasizes that the nurturance, peacemaking and relationship-building skills cultivated by mothering are linked with peace politics. Ruddick suggests these skills help toward creating a peaceful and caring society. Likewise, Jean Bethke Elshtain (1982) has claimed that familial relationships should be replicated in the public sphere to develop a kinder society. Most recently, Mai’a Williams (2019) has argued that mothering, rooted in caring, is the only way for humanity “to survive into the
22nd century” because only caring leads to the collective political will to dismantle the myriad hierarchies of dominance that define our world (p. 7).
In this chapter, I delve into women and caring through an examination of the Northern
Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), criticized by some feminists for their use of political motherhood, which some have argued led to their cooptation—respectively—by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) (Samuel
2006). Sri Lanka’s feminists made an intentional collective decision to forego support for the
SMF through women’s rights organizations, although as individuals many feminists, including
Malathi de Alwis (2004), were allies of the SMF. For this reason, the SMF provides an excellent case to explore the overlaps and disagreements that arise from maternal and feminist approaches to activism, which are by no means mutually exclusive. I also discuss connections between feminism and the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres), whose evolution over time
368 has seen a shift from criticism by many feminists both within and outside the region of Latin
America in the late 1980s and 1990s, to many who embrace the Madres as figures connected to the feminist movement (Snitow 1989, Feijoo 1994, Howe 2006, Conn 2018). This chapter also explores the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and its accompanying Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. UNSCR 1325 was launched in 2000, the result of lobbying by international human rights and women’s organizations with support from UN member states, including “Bangladesh, Canada, Jamaica, Namibia, the Netherlands” and the UK, and prominent feminist researchers such as Carol Cohn (S. Anderlini 2011, 19-20,
Tryggestad 2009, 539-540, S. Basu 2016, 255, Cohn, Kinsella and Gibbings 2004, 130). Some feminists have criticized the WPS agenda for essentializing women’s role as limited to peacemaking through feminized, often maternal, language, among other criticisms (D. Otto
2006, 118).172
UNSCR 1325 has impacted women’s situations in armed conflicts in some positive ways, even as international soft law, which means it is recommended by the UN that countries adopt it, but is not required that countries implement it.173 UNSCR 1325 provides leverage for women’s greater participation in peace talks, peacebuilding and peacekeeping, and it both highlights the importance of taking gender into account in armed conflicts and the need to
172 Other criticisms include ignoring women’s participation in armed conflict and forcing women, despite structural gender barriers, to be the “agents of their own salvation” (Shepherd 2011, 511-512, Cook 2016). There are also concerns that the resolution’s focus on women marginalizes more vulnerable populations, including sexual and gender minorities, and that it harms men, who must live up to hypermasculine expectations that they are not victims (Hagen 2016, Cook 2016). Finally, while UNSCR 1325 has provided pathways for women to engage more often and in a greater capacity in peace processes, it has most often been as token representatives with little influence (Anderlini, Tirman, et al. 2010, 24, Coomaraswamy 2015, 40). 173 In contrast, international conventions are considered legally binding if ratified. This makes pressuring states to follow through on their legal obligations in international conventions easier than working with soft law.
369 protect women from gender-based violence (Tryggestad 2009, 540-541). Moreover, civil society actors can use UNSCR 1325 to demand women’s inclusion in peace talks and related postconflict reconstruction. Jill Irvine (2013) points to women’s groups using UNSCR 1325 to force the UN to include more women in UN-sponsored postconflict activities. Additionally, there has been a buildup of a transnational network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society organizations (CSOs) to support women’s peace activism, amassing over the two decades since 1325’s launch, that supports the WPS agenda.
The transnational network based around the WPS agenda, which in contrast to previous transnational women’s peace networks, is better funded in part because UN member states are supposed to fund efforts for addressing gender concerns in security matters through National
Action Plans (NAPs), which the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security monitors.
The WPS agenda’s critical problem is its lack of accountability in terms of implementation
(Basu, et al. 2020). In addition to monitoring—and pressuring—the WPS agenda, the Working
Group also informs the UN of civil society’s perspectives regarding women and security. While funding for WPS issues is not as extensive as peace advocates and activists would like, it represents an institutionalized way to promote women’s peace activism that comes with at least some budget and plenty of rhetorical support for promoting peace efforts (Basu, et al.
2020). As of 2020, only 43% of UN member states—representing 83 countries—have developed
NAPs. OF these 83 countries, only 28 have an allocated budget to support the implementation of their NAPs (NGO Working Group on Women 2019, WILPF 2020). The NGO Working Group on
Women, Peace and Security also seeks donations to support promoting women’s peace activism through the TIDES Foundation (TIDES 2020). Additionally, through its commitments to
370 gender mainstreaming, the UN provides aid specifically to address gender, peace and security for the most economically vulnerable or fragile states. However, this aid amounts to very little in terms of actual monies. In 2012, only 2% of aid intended for states in need was spent on WPS matters (Coomaraswamy 2015, 373). 1325—and its ten follow-up Security Council resolutions— alongside dozen of NAPs, constitutes “a vast normative infrastructure of significant ambition but questionable impact” (Basu, et al. 2020, 3).
As noted, UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda have largely been implemented through
NAPs. This reliance on the national level has led to slow implementation of 1325 and its principles. Moreover, the actions outlined in these documents are often far-removed from local practicalities where conflicts are concentrated (Medepalli 2019). However, NAPs have been an intermediate step and indicate at least a rhetorical commitment to promoting women in security and peace issues since 2000. Likewise, although 1325 and the WPS agenda focused initially on “participation, protection and prevention,” its focus has expanded into “relief and recovery and normative framework” and “transitional justice and countering violent extremism” (Basu, et al. 2020, 6) The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security in part works to push philanthropic organizations to pursue greater resources toward women and peace and pressures UN member states to implement NAPs. In 2015, Argentina launched its
NAP, which outlines its commitments domestically, regionally and at the international level to promote women’s political participation and to include gendered perspectives within security related matters (WILPF, National Action Plan: Argentina 2015). Sri Lanka does not have a NAP and under the current administration, it seems unlikely that one will be developed soon. NAPs have been useful for members of civil society as yet another mechanism to demand action from
371 governments and the UN However, in being institutionalized, a once radical agenda of is now
“business as usual” and NAPs from global North countries—which tend to be more outward directed—have become yet another means of coercing agendas in the global South (Basu, et al.
2020).
In addition to the budgetary and institutional rhetorical support for WPS, developments in technology, such as the Internet, have also strengthened women’s peace organizing transnationally by making both communication and travel easier and less expensive than it once was (Keck and Sikkink 1998). I will suggest that an institutionalized transnational network such as what now exists to serve the WPS agenda that is dedicated to supporting women’s peace activism might have substantially bolstered both branches of the Mothers’ Front had it existed in the 1980s and 1990s. I point specifically to the transnational level as I think there is an obligation on the part of the international community to support human rights efforts in civil society, particularly in terms of assisting with funding those civil society groups that are struggling financially to stay active.
I further suggest that helping to support the duration of political motherhood movements is important to developing political transformation. The example of the Madres shows that over time, women mobilized through political motherhood may move from embracing conservative gender norms to promoting progressive politics in the broadest sense.
This is not to say that women’s participation must be progressive to “count” as one focus of this project is to promote the legacy of the SMF, despite its very notable flaws. This project has focused on the overlapping influences of duration, visibility and remembrance in the legacies of the Madres. In Chapter 5, I suggested three major reasons why the durations of the NMF and
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SMF were shorter compared to the ongoing Madres. To recap, these include differences in a) the domestic political opportunity structure, b) organizational structures and choices and c) international support given international political opportunities. Domestic political opportunities were the most available to the Madres and the SMF. However, the SMF was limited through its corporatist links with the SLFP, part of its organizational structure.
Furthermore, organizational decisions around maternal framing limited the SMF since they relied exclusively on a maternal emotionality frame. While this helped the SMF—and NMF and
Madres as well—to gain sympathy, a maternal authority frame was necessary to portray the women as legitimate political actors. In terms of international support, I suggest that was made possible by how visible each group was to international human rights organizations, which I explored in Chapter 6. I argued that the Madres’ greater resonance at the international level compared to the Mothers’ Front was due to their use of Christian tropes, which advantaged the political opportunities available to the group at the international level where many working in international human rights organizations are familiar with Christianity.
With the issue of duration in mind, in this chapter, I argue that within certain parameters—as outlined in domestic and international political opportunity structures and organizational structures and choices—political motherhood’s accessibility and expedience may be a jumping-off point for women’s continued and evolving political participation. In particular,
I suggest that if there had been more support for the SMF, the group may have experienced a longer duration as a national organization, which could have given space to members to evolve their political thinking. Such support did not need to be international, as I suggest greater support from domestic feminists may have also encouraged the SMF’s continued evolution of
373 political thinking. This chapter is also a call to bring maternal feminism into the fold of contemporary feminism, which has fallen out of favor since the 1980s with the rise of poststructural and postmodern feminisms, which are concerned with maternalism’s ties to gender essentialism (Butler [1990] 1999, Tong 2013). As Penny Griffin (2015) argues, feminism includes many embodiments and understandings that may not ever align. It is this fragmentation that provides possibilities. I argue that there are possibilities for women’s empowerment in political motherhood and that maternal feminism, which may more easily connect with peace and justice in comparison to some forms of political motherhood, could move postconflict societies forward in pushing for positive peace and transitional justice. In turn, political motherhood can provide for feminism an understanding that the very power relations that keep violence in place and reduce the maneuverability of women activists may account for why women turn to political motherhood as a strategy. It also shows that for some women, motherhood may provide an important avenue for their politicization and political empowerment.
In this chapter, I first overview the method of the counterfactual. The second section explores feminist understandings of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. In the third section, I apply counterfactual analysis to three counterfactuals regarding the Mothers’ Front. These include the name of the group and whether collective domestic feminist support for the SMF might had made a difference; if UNSCR 1325 had been in effect by 1980 rather than 2000; and finally if the
SMF had been invited to the 1995 peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE. I focus primarily on the role of the WPS agenda in transnational networks, which given the funding and mandate of UNSCR 1325 and its attendant resolutions at the UN (list), carries a
374 certain level of responsibility in supporting peace movements. In the fourth section, I engage with a discussion of the debate among feminist scholars and activists of whether to support or to disengage from connections made between women and caring. I conclude by arguing that while UNSCR 1325 and related discourses found in maternal feminism for peace that reinforce links among women, motherhood, caring and peacemaking generate problematic gender essentialisms, these same discourses provide windows of opportunity for women’s political participation. In the course of engaging with such opportunities, women will inevitably transform their understandings of gender norms through the practice of organizing. This can take root even more efficiently if feminists support political motherhood movements, helping activists to see a range of possibilities through feminist and progressive interventions.
Method
This chapter relies on the method of counterfactual. Proponents of counterfactuals such as Jack Levy (2008) claim that any argument concerning a historical event suggests that if conditions had been different, the result would be a different outcome. Thinking through historical “what ifs” supports theory development and normative and logical thinking by considering the implications of a counterfactual argument. Counterfactuals require specific articulations and justification of their plausibility, meaning that they should have at least theoretically been possible.174 Best practices suggest that the alternative world of the counterfactual mirror as closely as possible historical events except for one different condition
174 For example, Levy (2008) suggests a counterfactual exploring what the US might have been like in the 1960s if Abraham Lincoln were president is pointless since there is no possibility that Lincoln could have ever served in the 1960s (p. 634).
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(Levy 2008). In other words, the counterfactual method is best deployed through a “minimal- rewrite-of-history” (Tetlock and Belkin 1996, 23, Levy 2008).
Counterfactuals assist in “historical understanding” and theoretical considerations, making them ideal for interpretive projects such as this (Tetlock and Belkin 1996, 16). I use the counterfactual method to further our understanding of the feminist debate regarding women’s caring labor, specifically in terms of women’s maternal peace activism. Given the long history of women’s peace organizing at the international level dating back to 1915, I suggest that a counterfactual regarding the earlier implementation of UNSCR 1325 and its attendant transnational network of gender, peace and security organizations is feasible (Tickner and True
2018). I consider what might have happened if UNSCR 1325 had been in operation by the early
1980s, specifically in terms of supporting Sri Lankan women’s peace activism with the NMF and
SMF. While some feminists are concerned over linking women to peace, such connections provide some space for women to contest, particularly in global civil society where such stereotypes are widely accepted and praised (Aharoni 2017). I also consider two related counterfactuals: if the Mothers’ Front had relied on different names that did not stress motherhood and if the SMF had been included in the 1995 peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.
Feminist views of the Madres and Mothers’ Front
Although I focus this chapter on the Mothers’ Front, feminism is an important question for the Madres as well. Many feminists in the 1980s and 1990s were critical of the Madres for relying on political motherhood, arguing that it meant that the group remained confined by
376 conservative gender norms born through a gendered citizenship that marked them by their maternal status and/or rendered them politically naïve (Snitow 1989, 49, Feijoo 1994, Jaquette
1994, Taylor 1997). The reality is more complex than whether the group simply upholds a conservative interpretation of motherhood or defies it. The Madres generally support the values of caring, yet also engage in less than stereotyped behavior, most notably in their mantra of “no forgiveness,” and are unafraid to speak their minds when conservative gender norms would suggest that they should hold their tongues (Bouvard 1994, McCay 2017).
Adriana Hernandez (1997) has argued that those who criticize the Madres for not rejecting motherhood reinforce a universalized Woman subject who stands outside of any particulars (p. 50). Such a construct exists nowhere, as feminists of color have argued since at least the Combahee River Collective (Collective 1977, K. W. Crenshaw 1990). Instead, women exist as historical subjects, with a multitude of particularities, some of which may be constructed through women’s identification with motherhood. To argue that women should look beyond defining themselves politically as mothers denies their agency in constructing their experiences (Hernandez 1997, Mahmood 2005). Likewise, feminist scholarship stresses that universal citizenship obscures the particulars of all citizens, who retain identity markers in the public sphere. Universal interests are typically conflated with the dominant hegemonic social group’s interests, and ignore the interests of marginalized groups, marking them as special interests (Young 1998, Landes 1998, Philips 1998, Hernandez 1997). By representing themselves as mothers, the Madres put forward their perceived interests. While it is valid to say that much of what the Madres have supported is situated in conservative gender norms, the Madres also engage in behavior that many find inappropriate for senior motherly and grandmotherly
377 figures, including yelling and making violent threats, as well as simply being disagreeable and advocating no forgiveness for perpetrators of the period of state terrorism (McCay 2017,
Bouvard 1994). What I suggest then is that political motherhood can be subversive in terms of some gender norms.
Over time, feminists, both within Argentina and beyond, have come to respect the work of the Madres, while others even argue that the group supports feminist precepts, if not in name, then in action (Howe 2006, Sutton 2010, Conn 2018, Carreon and Moghadam 2015).
Those who support the group understand that the women of the Madres work to create a more caring society, which the group describes as a pursuit for justice through accountability for the past as well as respect for human rights and democracy (Bouvard 1994, Sutton 2010, Bevernage
2012). Yet the Madres have not shied away from ideas that contradict nurturance, most obviously in their demand for “no forgiveness” for perpetrators (Bouvard 1994). Furthermore, the Association’s leader Hebe de Bonafini threatened violence against former President
Mauricio Macri when he was in office and has been convicted of bribery for stealing state funds, none of which fits with feminine respectability (McCay, 2017; Bio, Court Indicts Hebe De
Bonafini On Charges Of Defrauding The State., 2017). This suggests a violent political motherhood done on behalf of peace and justice.
In Sri Lanka, feminists have been—and remain—ambivalent about the Mothers’ Front, offering no set take on the group’s legacy. Unlike the Madres, the Mothers’ Front did not capture the attention of those outside Sri Lanka, meaning that feminist analysis of the Mothers’
Front has been largely confined to Sri Lanka. Criticism against the SMF for their hegemonic nationalism deserves sustained discussion. Criticism of the NMF, such as by Kumudini Samuel
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(2006), that they were coopted due to political motherhood is less convincing since the branch faced oppression by two forces, the LTTE and the Sinhalese-dominated state. The difficult political opportunity structure made organizing autonomously difficult in the north.175 Likewise, the group railed against gendered expectations, promoted women’s rights and remained autonomous until being taken over by the LTTE (de Mel 2003, Kailasapathy 2012). Such factors align well with many feminist values. However, there was a disagreement among NMF’s rank and file and organizers over criticism of the LTTE, wherein rank and file members believed that the LTTE should be supported since the Tamil community was under attack. Ultimately, the
LTTE brought the NMF under their control, but the organizers of the NMF disbanded officially rather than submit to the LTTE. However, many of the rank and file stayed on under the LTTE, indicating support for the LTTE, rather than criticism that the leaders of the NMF engaged against the LTTE (Kailasapathy 2012).
According to Neloufer de Mel (2001), the SMF remains “the most visible and potent women’s protest movement in the history of post-colonial Sri Lanka” (p. 239). Their organizing encompassed grassroots women’s participation, no small feat in a country in which elites dominate not only the women’s movement but civil society more generally. However, after the
SLFP, which organized much of the SMF’s activities, took the reins of government in 1994, women with the SMF disbanded (de Mel 2001, 239, 244, Wickremagamage 1999,
Wickramasinghe 2001). Kumudini Samuel (2006) has suggested that political motherhood led to
175 The NMF existed autonomously for three years, a major achievement in the oppressive environment of northern Sri Lanka. In the mid to late 1980s, the north was defined by extreme state repression against autonomous organizing and growing militantism that led to dominance by the LTTE. The LTTE controlled the north from 1987 until their defeat in 2009. During their authoritarian rule, there were no guarantees for freedom of speech or assembly (Thiranagama 2011, Kailasapathy 2012). See Chapter 4.
379 both branches of the Mother Front’s cooptation by the LTTE and SLFP, respectively, by reinforcing conservative gender roles and failing to challenge gendered structures in society, the state and social movements. Samuel acknowledges that organizing of the NMF and SMF was facilitated through political motherhood, which provided both branches with a certain amount of protection from most direct hostility for at least a time. It was likely that without political motherhood, neither branch of the Mothers’ Front stood a chance of organizing in the repressive political environments they were each situated in. As mothers of the disappeared, members of the Mothers’ Front were seen by much of the public as having legitimate grievances against the state for having taken their children, which also provided the women with the moral authority to demand peace. However, Samuel argues that in relying on motherhood, gender norms remained status quo. In the long-term, neither branch was able to challenge power structures in Sri Lankan society, whether that was in state structures, including political parties—most specifically the SLFP—or in movements such as the Tamil independence movement, which was increasingly dominated by the LTTE.
According to Malathi de Alwis (2004), Sri Lanka’s feminist community collectively chose not to support to the SMF, although they did support the NMF as part of solidarity politics, and individual feminists supported the SMF. Women’s groups in Colombo are majority Sinhalese by virtue of the larger numbers of Sinhalese located in Colombo. Feminist support for the NMF reflected solidarity with an oppressed minority experiencing both direct and indirect violences from the state (Samuel 2006). Likewise, the NMF regularly advocated for gender equality, including women’s control over their bodies, aligning with many feminists’ priorities (de Mel
2003). Sri Lankan feminists were more critical of the SMF’s use of political motherhood, arguing
380 it reinforced heteronormativity and gender essentialism, a growing concern by the 1990s as compared to the 1980s in terms of the development of feminist scholarship (de Alwis, 2001;
2004). Moreover, the SMF disavowed feminism, which understandably did not create rapport between feminists and the SMF. Yet this disavowal of feminism may have been a strategic move to avoid the typical criticism feminists receive in Sri Lanka, such as being Western, anti- male and anti-family. Such accusations would likely have distracted from the issue of the disappeared (de Alwis 2004).
There were additional concerns by feminists and others on the political left that the
SMF’s use of religious curses linked them to the irrational, which supported stereotypes of women as emotional and naïve (de Alwis, 2001). However, in terms of the politics of respectability, the SMF’s use of cursing could be also constructed as a challenge to some gender
(and class) norms. De Alwis (2001, 2004) and Nelfouer de Mel (2001) chronicle the anxieties of political intellectuals in Sri Lanka who viewed the use of cursing as unrespectable. While such cursing is widely practiced in Sri Lanka, those of higher socioeconomic status tend to look down upon it as superstitious (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988). Such cursing—in which members of the SMF called upon higher powers to punish and kill the individual they held responsible for their disappeared children, President Ranasinghe Premadasa of the United National Party—was a form of what de Mel (2001) refers to as “folk justice” (p. 250). The elite president of the SMF,
Dr. Saravanamuttu, worked to dissuade rank and file members from this view of justice, arguing for the legal system to deliver “appropriate” justice on those responsible for enforced disappearances (de Mel 2001). Violence and revenge are not typically considered ladylike and women are often shamed for it (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015). For this reason, religious cursing
381 helped to break down some gender norms. Although the women were shamed by the government—understandable given that it was the target of the women’s cursing—as well as from intellectuals, including feminists and others on the political left, the general public was supportive of the women’s anger. They deemed such behavior justified for mourning mothers, at least mourning mothers of the hegemonic group (de Alwis, 2001). It is also a question of whether revenge represents transitional justice and expansive understandings of peace, which I discuss more fully below.
This brings us to the most salient criticism of the SMF: its existence as an exclusive,
Sinhalese Buddhist organization and its connections to ethnic nationalism, specifically of
Sinhala-Buddhism (de Mel 1996, Samuel 2003, 2006, de Alwis 2012). As a group, the SMF was uninterested in including Tamil women (de Alwis 2004). This was tied to the SMF’s sponsorship by the SLFP, a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist party that relies on hegemonic nationalism as a voting strategy and its electoral base of working and middle class Sinhalese Buddhists (de Alwis
1998, Samuel 2006, ICG 2017). Despite the usefulness of political motherhood in creating space for women’s involvement in the political sphere, in wartime as well as in times of economic and political uncertainty, “the figure of the mother becomes a central signifier of racial and cultural values, national pride and purity… intrinsically connected [to] a nation’s honour” (Samuel 2003,
167). Neloufer de Mel (1996) recognized that although political motherhood provides women with “authenticity,” which is useful for women’s participation in public life, it also often limits women, forcing them to represent themselves in an ethnically or nationally “legitimate” manner (p. 169-170).
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Political motherhood’s validity then may lie in connections to ethnonationalism through the mother of the nation trope, which exerts gendered expectations on women to represent the ethnic or national community. Both the LTTE and SLFP appropriated women’s activism for their own purposes through understandings of the mother of the nation (de Mel 2001, Pinto
Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002, Samuel 2003, Kailasapathy 2012). Feminist scholarship on motherhood speaks to the ways that motherhood has inspired some feminists and raised flags for others, particularly in terms of its connections to the mother of the nation trope. The mother of the nation trope is undoubtedly unjust and against positive peace, and often even negative peace. It represents violent political motherhood most often for violence.
It is critical to unpack understandings of peace—whether negative peace (simply the absence of war) or positive peace, which is understood to include the end of all forms of structural violences—or the lack of peace entirely, as well as transitional justice in the context of political motherhood. Arguably, the SMF is best understood as combining aspects of both peaceful and violent political motherhoods for negative peace, as well as for violence. The SMF sought both the end of enforced disappearances and the armed conflict, which represented the effort for negative peace. To pursue this, the SMF engaged in violence in by seeking violence against the perpetrators of enforced disappearance, showcasing a violent political motherhood done on behalf of peace. I suggest that this violence was just. Too many discourses around the politics of memory and transitional justice focus on reconciliation and forgiveness. As
Christopher Colvin (2003) describes the case with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, the future of South Africa was built atop of those who suffered the most under the Apartheid regime who were expected to forgive these travesties so South African
383 democracy could take root. Those who committed heinous crimes against humanity confessed and received no punishment for these acts. Those who experienced these violences were made to tell their painful stories and received no compensation for it other than redeeming the country through their own suffering and grace (p. 159). What most SMF members sought was accountability for the horrors their children experienced.
However, the SMF also ignored (at least collectively) the issues of minority women— including Tamil women in the same position as themselves, with disappeared children—simply because these women were not Sinhalese (de Alwis, 2001; 2004). Transitional justice requires accountability for past horrors and redress (where possible) for those who have suffered. The
SMF sought these mechanisms of transitional justice for themselves but not for the people of the country as a whole. Whether that is based on neglect or on nationalism that precludes inclusivity with those outside of one’s ethnic community, this is an effort that can only be understood as both violent and against transitional justice. Transitional justice for some cannot be legitimately labeled transitional justice. It does not serve positive peace that seeks equality of economic, social and political rights.
That political motherhood may easily slip into the mother of the nation trope that promotes ethnic or national exclusivity is a critical concern, particularly in the context of an armed conflict based in ethnonationalism. Maternal feminism, which is linked with peace politics through an emphasis on nurturing and caring, may be a vehicle to prevent slippage into mother of the nation thinking when women’s activism is based on political motherhood
(Ruddick 1995, Reardon 1993, 1996). Despite the extensive diversity found in feminism, all feminisms are tied to the pursuit of justice (Dhamoon 2013). Although feminism does not
384 always get it right—as I discuss later in this chapter—the desire for justice serves as a guide in feminist thinking and action. Mutual learning between political motherhood and feminism is enriching for both in the context of women’s participation in social movements. While a maternal feminism for peace—notably distinguished from the maternal feminism associated with the British empire that promoted white Anglo women’s superiority (Devereux, 1999, p.
178)—may prevent the nationalism and religious fundamentalism that can arise in some cases of political motherhood, political motherhood offers maternal feminism a wake-up call to the use of violence that can serve peace. While other feminisms have recognized the need for violence, maternal feminism hesitates to engage anything but nonviolence or caring labor so as to remain “nurturing” (Ruddick 1995, Reardon 1993, 1996). Those who engage in political motherhood may be more comfortable with engaging in the sometimes necessary violence needed to bring about peace.
To sum up, while the politics of memory of the Madres has evolved over the decades, leading to a wider appreciation among feminists for their work—especially younger generations—this has not been the case in Sri Lanka, where many have not heard of the group, or don’t know it well (Sutton 2010). I suggest that the legacy of the Mothers’ Front could be known better domestically and internationally if certain conditions were different, including the space for political motherhood and maternal feminism among feminists. It is to these conditions that I now turn.
Counterfactuals in naming, UNSCR 1325 and peace talks
The counterfactual method allows scholars to imagine how history might have turned out differently if certain conditions were altered and it provides an opportunity for reflection on
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“historical understanding” (Tetlock and Belkin 1996, 16, Levy 2008). I use three counterfactuals to imagine how events might have turned out differently for the Mothers’ Front’s duration, visibility and remembrance. First, I consider what may have happened if either the NMF or SMF had operated with a name other than the Mothers’ Front. Second, I reflect on the implications for Sri Lankan women’s peace activism if UNSCR 1325 had been implemented decades earlier or if the previous Women’s League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) chapter—a transnational feminist network established initially in 1915—had remained active in Sri Lanka during the civil war. Finally, I consider what may have happened if the SMF had been invited to participate in the 1995 peace talks between the Sri Lankan government under the coalitional government the
People’s Alliance led by the SLFP, and the LTTE.
Counterfactual 1: Naming
The first counterfactual looks at the naming of the two branches of the Mothers’ Front and includes consideration of what domestic feminist support at a mass level may have meant for the SMF. As indicated by the former president of the NMF, Sarvam Kailaspathy (2012), the decision to go with the Mother’s Front was not foregone. Both the Women’s Front and
Women’s Coalition were possibilities. However, as Kailasapathy put it, the group “wanted…a simple name that people could say easily and identify as their own” (p. 100). After a week of brainstorming on a name for their group, they settled “unanimously” on the Mothers’ Front (p.
100). Why Mothers’ Front was perceived as more their own than Women’s Front is not clear.
Perhaps since missing children catalyzed the movement, the term mother seemed most fitting.
Kumudini Samuel (2006), who was not a member of the NMF but an ally, has argued that the
NMF was able to organize in a difficult political environment through political motherhood. By
386 calling themselves the Mothers’ Front, the women sent a message that they were not political actors but instead mothers seeking the return of their children. Since the demands of their first march centered on disappeared children, the women received widespread sympathy, including from a Sinhalese army commander who purposefully kept his troops away from the group’s march on Jaffna, allowing the NMF’s first major action to proceed uninterrupted by state forces
(Kailasapathy 2012, 101-102).
As the NMF’s organizing continued, it became increasingly obvious that the group was obviously political, particularly when members asserted women’s right to birth control, arguing that both the state and Tamil militants should adhere to nonviolence and going against the feminine respectability codes expected by the LTTE for Tamil women (de Mel 2003,
Kailasapathy 2012). It is likely their name as the Mothers’ Front allowed the NMF to deflect much of the hostility against them—that is until their political demands were too political, particularly when they criticized the LTTE.
In terms of the SMF, Malathi de Alwis (2004) has documented how the Colombo feminist community was divided over supporting the group due to its use of political motherhood. Some feminists were doubtful whether political motherhood empowered women, concerned that this mobilization limited women’s agency and were concerned about motherhood as promoting heteronormativity (de Alwis 2004). Such concerns fit well the growing move away from maternal feminism with the poststructural and postmodern turn in the early 1990s (Tong 2013). Other concerns by Sri Lankan feminists revolved around the role of the SLFP in the SMF, since SLFP organizers conducted most of the group’s activities and controlled much of their decision-making. Some feminists sought to support the SMF, believing
387 that feminists needed to stand with grassroots women taking on a human rights-abusing government. These feminists hoped that political motherhood could serve as a strategic mobilization since Sinhalese society respected mothers, giving the SMF leeway that most human rights groups were not in the repressive environment of southern Sri Lanka in the late
1980s and early 1990s. These feminists suggested trying to understand why women resonated with political motherhood rather than write off SMF members as inadequate in their political thinking. With feminist support, the SMF may have built their maternal engagement into even greater subversive activism (de Alwis 2004).
It is unlikely that a “Feminists’ Front” could have mobilized the vast numbers of women who were catalyzed into the SMF. Sri Lanka’s women’s movements in the 1990s had not adequately focused on economic concerns, ethnic-based discrimination and other issues as part of the women’s movement, which left ordinary women disconnected from feminism
(Wickremagamage 1999). Even if a Feminists’ Front had garnered enough members to collectively challenge the state’s human rights abuses, there is a high probability that the group may have been denigrated by the general public due to a long-standing discourse in Sri Lanka, and much of the developing world, that feminists are anti-men and anti-children, and even disloyal to their communities (de Alwis 2004, Narayan 1997, 25). A feminist mobilization for the
SMF might have meant drastically less widespread participation from grassroots women.
Moreover, rebutting mothers’ love was difficult for the SMF’s political opponents. The most the government could do was accuse the women of being failed mothers who improperly raised their children (de Mel 2001). Armed conflicts are rife with nationalism, particularly ethnic conflicts such as the Sri Lankan civil war. To be perceived as anti-Sri Lankan at this time—a likely
388 link many would make if the group used the term feminist—would have been a grave mistake that would have limited the group’s political maneuverability. As it was, the entirety of the human rights movement was largely paralyzed by government restrictions. The SMF was one of the few groups that could operate with some ease in this environment, which was mostly attributable to their use of political motherhood (Samuel 2006).176
Another consideration is if the SMF had adopted the term Women’s Front rather than the Mothers’ Front. There are both left and right-leaning organizations that use the term women in Sri Lanka, meaning that the term women is not exclusively associated with women’s rights organizations (NPCSL 2005). Unlike the NMF, which considered the term Women’s Front, there was never a time that Women’s Front was considered by the co-founders Mahinda
Rajapaksa and Mangala Samaraweera. Rajapaksa, who had the inspiration for the group, adopted the term Mothers’ Front after learning of the Madres during a UN Commission on
Human Rights meeting. Rajapaksa specifically sought a mothers’ group (de Mel 2001). The term
Women’s Front might not have been controversial in the way that Feminists’ Front may have been. However, because the SLFP had a women’s wing and the SMF was founded by SLFP MPs
Rajapaksa and Samaraweera, there was not only the influence of the Madres’s organizational name but also possible concern over distinguishing the new group from the SLFP’s women’s wing (NPCSL 2005, de Alwis 2004). Since the purpose of the SMF was to organize the mothers of the disappeared and the SLFP’s women’s wing focused more broadly on SLFP issues, it was not seen as a good fit to fold in the mothers of the disappeared, particularly because the SLFP also sought to portray the SMF as a civil society group and not part of the SLFP (de Alwis 2004).
176 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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It is debatable if the SMF had received the kind of mass feminist support that the NMF had if this would have impacted the trajectory of the SMF’s duration. As a counterfactual, I suggest that it may have possibly made a difference. Efforts by individual feminists, including
Malathi de Alwis, an ally of the SMF, and the president of the SMF, Dr. Saravanamuttu, sought to push the SMF women’s continued engagement in organizing even after 1994, and de Alwis in particular promoted more inclusive understandings of peace and justice among the members of the SMF (de Alwis 2004). Yet this did not apparently translate into a desire to continue organizing, nor did it result in the kind of political motherhood that supports positive peace and transitional justice on the part of the SMF. Notably, de Alwis was one person. Had there been a greater collective effort of engagement by feminists, this may have provided further opportunities for an evolution in SMF members’ thinking. As a collective, feminists decided that the SLFP connection and the group’s reliance upon political motherhood were problematic enough that they should not support the SMF. This was a valid decision, particularly given the
Sinhala-Buddhism to be found among some members of the SMF (de Alwis 2004). However, it is possible that feminists and the women in the SMF may have both gained something through a mutual engagement.
To sum up the first counterfactual, I suggest that if the NMF or SMF had gone with a different name than Mothers’ Front, this may not have necessarily enabled either branch to continue organizing as long as they did. If anything, alternative names might have eroded both branches' ability to organize as effectively as they did. Particularly in the case of the NMF, the reliance on the term mother gave the group an aura of being non-political in a dangerous political environment. With it, they could more effectively protest both the state for its violence
390 against Tamils and the LTTE’s admonition against Tamil women’s control over their sexuality and reproductive preferences.
In terms of the SMF, I argue that any reference to feminism may have likely led to far fewer participants. At the same time, growing numbers of feminists by the 1990s were concerned with connections between political motherhood and heteronormativity, including in
Sri Lanka (Butler, [1990] 1999; DiQuinzio, 1999; de Alwis, 2004). Likewise, there was still a practice of categorizing women’s activism into feminist and non-feminist concerns, defined strictly as either ending gender hierarchy or helping women better than their lives in ways that did not impact gender hierarchy. This meant that “women’s issues” were often conceived in limited ways, to be about women’s reproductive rights or violence against women. Women’s concerns with ethnic prejudice or economic struggles were not yet widely understood as part of feminism (Molyneux 1985). This has changed, with the growing depth of feminist knowledge that recognizes how gender interacts—or is impacted by—a myriad of factors, including race, class, sexual identity, among others (Crenshaw, 1990; Butler, [1990] 1999; Tong, 2013).
Counterfactual 2: UNSCR 1325
The second counterfactual that I consider is UNSCR 1325. This resolution began with a
1999 campaign by the British NGO International Alert to both protect women from violence in armed conflicts and to promote women as peacemakers. The campaign was entitled “Women
Building Peace: From the Village Council to the Negotiating Table,” which gathered momentum when Bangladesh submitted a resolution at the UN, with what became the basis of UNSCR 1325
(S. Anderlini 2011, 19-20). Through pressure from women’s civil society groups, UNSCR 1325 was adopted by the UN in October 2000 (Anderlini S. , 2011, p. 21; Resolution 1325, 2000). In
391 this counterfactual, I consider what might have been different for both branches of the
Mothers’ Front if 1325 had been in existence 20 years earlier, in 1980. The earliest harbinger of an international soft law resembling the aims of UNSCR 1325 did not arrive until 1982 with the
UN Declaration on the Participation of Women in Promoting International Peace and
Cooperation. This was not a legally binding law (Vickers 1993). However, considering that the
WILPF had been lobbying for women’s roles in peacemaking at the international level since
1915, it is not out of the realm of possibility to consider something akin to UNSCR 1325 existing in the 1980s rather than 2000 (Tickner and True 2018). There is a long history of women’s peace organizing and efforts to translate this activism into institutional policy at the international level (Runyan 1988, Bunch 2001).
If UNSCR 1325 and its attendant WPS agenda had been launched by 1980, might both branches of the Mothers’ Front have been better supported by transnational allies in a way that could have transformed their ability to continue organizing? As noted, the NMF and SMF reached out to the UN and Amnesty International to garner international support for their respective causes (Mothers' Padayatra 1984, de Alwis 2004). Unlike a name change that would have identified the group as something other than mothers, I suggest that a transnational network dedicated to women’s peace activism might have substantially bolstered both branches of the Mothers’ Front simply through financial support and promoting their cause at the international level, which would bring in further material support.
While the UN and official conflict negotiating teams continue to regularly dismiss participation by ordinary women in peace processes, or only include some women as token representatives, there are several NGOs supporting women’s involvement in peace processes,
392 which might have supported Sri Lankan peace activists if such networks had existed in the
1980s and 1990s (Anderlini, Tirman, et al. 2010, Coomaraswamy 2015).177 After the passage of
1325, there was a proliferation of transnational groups that focused on the WPS agenda. The
NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security began in 2000, followed by the
Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights in 2002 and the Nobel Women’s Initiative in
2006, all three of which seek to build global communities around women promoting peace and bolstering women’s security in armed conflicts (NGO Working Group on Women 2019,
Consortium on Gender 2019, Initiative n.d.). Organizations such as Global Network of Women
Peacebuilders, founded in 2010, build coalitions of women’s peace groups in “Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East and Arab World”
(GNWP, About GNWP 2019, IPB 2019). Such networks are tied to UNSCR 1325.
177 While UNSCR 1325 has provided pathways for women to engage more often and in a greater capacity in peace negotiations, it has most often been as token representatives, with a focus on simply having a women or two present rather than ensuring women’s access as full members of negotiating teams (Anderlini, Tirman, et al. 2010, 24, Coomaraswamy 2015, 40). In conflicts in Aceh, Colombia, Liberia, Palestine/Israel, Sri Lanka and Uganda, principles of UNSCR 1325 have been promoted and sometimes implemented. Yet women are still often entirely excluded from peace processes. For example, in Aceh, a province of Indonesia, women were not included in the 2004 peace talks, with only male representatives from the Free Aceh Movement rebel group and Indonesian government invited. Despite third party negotiators’ acknowledgement of the role that women played in promoting peace, women were not deemed a legitimate party to a peace treaty. Entrenched in UN and other officials’ conceptualization of negotiations is that only those who have taken up arms should be involved in peace talks. While women’s groups, and civil society more generally, are stakeholders in any peace process, they are still frequently considered peripheral in settling grievances among armed groups (Anderlini, Tirman, et al. 2010). South Africa’s peace talks offers an example of a more successful case of women’s participation, although notably taking place before the implementation of UNSCR 1325. During the 1990-1993 peace talks between the Apartheid government of the National Party and African National Congress (ANC), in the process to create the 1993 interim Constitution, women’s groups were a force, although they were marginalized in talks. However, women’s groups united across party lines through the Gender Advisory Group to ensure that sex equality was included in the 1993 interim Constitution. Once this was achieved, women’s groups stayed organized to develop the Women’s Charter (completed in 1994) through the Women’s National Council, which proclaimed South African women’s rights. Women’s groups also saw to the creation of the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE), which works to end gender oppression (Deveaux 2006). This suggests that women’s inclusions in peace talks would have been a possibility even without the launch of UNSCR 1325.
393
Additionally, there are longer-standing organizations such as MADRE, which began in
Nicaragua in 1983, and now serves women globally. However, MADRES did not operate in Sri
Lanka in the late 1980s and 1990s. Likewise, the WILPF, founded in 1915 and with a presence in
Sri Lanka, had lost touch with local groups by the Sri Lankan Civil War (MADRE n.d., Goishabib
2019). Inclusive Security, an organization that advocates for women’s roles in conflict resolution and politics more broadly, was founded in 1999 (Security n.d.). It preceded UNSCR 1325 but came after the Mothers’ Front. Today, networks promoting WPS appear increasingly robust.
Most are connected to one another by the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and
Security, which represents a coalition working to promote gender, peace and security through
UNSCR 1325 (NGO Working Group on Women 2019). Notably, too, much of the peace work done around the WPS agenda has been facilitated through the wide-spread use of high-speed
Internet, which did not yet exist in the 1980s and 1990s when the Mothers’ Front operated.
Recognition by transnational organizations such as the Global Network of Women
Peacebuilders or Inclusive Security can go far in amplifying the causes of women’s peace groups by facilitating connections among transnational human rights networks that include
International Alert, which has long been focused on women and peace, as well as other well- known organizations such as Amnesty International, and with governments and intergovernmental bodies such as the UN (GNWP 2018, S. Anderlini 2011). Likewise, these global networks connect national groups focusing on WPS to one another. The most critical of these is the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security whose 18-member coalition partners with some 200 civil society groups in over 50 countries, representing a deep web of transnational peace activism. Serving as a bridge between groups on the ground and UN
394 policymakers, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security works to hold UN bodies and countries around the world accountable to their UNSCR 1325 commitments (NGO Working
Group on Women 2019).
I stress these networks thinking that those working in this area share a responsibility to support women’s peace organizing and because gaining international support was key for the duration of the Madres. This support came from women’s groups in Europe that supplied the
Madres with funds to set up an office and sent other material and symbolic support. It also featured well-connected elites who championed the group, most notably the Carter
Administration’s under-secretary of human rights Patricia Derian, who regularly advocated for the Madres in the US and at the international level (Bouvard 1994, Mellibovsky 1997).
Transnational civil society links now in place thanks to UNSCR 1325 have made it easier for women’s peace groups to organize today to achieve global resonance and obtain resources that can keep them active. At the time of both branches of the Mothers’ Front, this network was not yet in place. While the Madres found transnational connections due to North American and
European feminist interest in Latin America, the timing of solidarity feminism and more widespread feminist space for maternalism, the Mothers’ Front did not find the same resonance in the 1980s and 1990s as explained in Chapter 6 (Keck and Sikkink 1998, Snyder
2018).
Nevertheless, given the lack of widespread resonance of the current Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared—who are working to draw attention domestically and internationally to enforced disappearances associated with the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war—within international human networks, the lack of Christian symbolism of the Mothers’ Front may still have faced less
395 visibility internationally as compared to the Madres. Although not widely known among international human rights organizations, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have met with those working at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and their efforts were recently featured in a piece by Human Rights Watch (PD 2019, TGTE 2019, HRW 2020). The People for
Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), an NGO in Washington, DC established in 2005 has undoubtedly helped to promote the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. PEARL advocates for
Tamil rights to self-determination in Sri Lanka and outlines its mission as working to influence policymakers in DC, the European Union, and the United Nations on Tamils in Sri Lanka in the areas of accountability, militarization and memorialization (PEARL, Mission n.d., PEARL, Key
Issues 2020b). PEARL’s page on the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared calls on citizens of the
West to contact their local representatives to draw attention to Sri Lanka’s disappeared. They also feature a four-minute video summarizing recent enforced disappearances and what the
Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have been doing (PEARL, Justice for Tamil Families of the
Disappeared n.d.). Yet there is no coverage of the Tamils of the Disappeared within major
Western newspapers as there was with the Madres when they first were organizing, again pointing to the lesser resonance of a political motherhood movement that does not rely on
Christian symbolism (see Chapter 6).178
Unlike the Mothers’ Front—both branches of which called for an end to the civil war— there is no ongoing armed conflict in Sri Lanka. Perhaps it is for this reason that none in the
178 A search of The New York Times, The Times and the Guardian was conducted over February 2017 to present, with no direct mentions of the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared or their alternative name, Association of the Families of the Disappeared. There is a 2018 photo essay in the Guardian on Sri Lanka’s post-conflict era. One photo is a woman with the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, although it is captioned as “Mutthan [the name of the woman] is among the families in Kilinochchi who are protesting against the government, demanding resolution for relatives of the disappeared” (Valle 2018).
396
WPS transnational networks have picked up the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared since this political motherhood movement is not advocating for women’s participation in peacebuilding but rather seeking accountability for enforced disappearances. However, this fits with transitional justice and would, therefore, be a part of postconflict peacebuilding. Notably, Sri
Lanka’s Visaka Dharmadasa and the organization she founded—the Association of War Affected
Women (AWAW), which has used political motherhood to overcome ethnic divides in the country—did gain the attention of some in these networks (Samuel, 2006).179 AWAW has been supported within Inclusive Security and the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, although its support appears to be considerably less compared to that given to women’s peace activists in Africa and the Middle East (IS, VIDEO: When Her Son Went Missing in Action, She Reached
Out to the Enemy 2017, GNWP, Association of War Affected Women (AWAW) n.d.).180
More recently, due to UNSCR 1325, there has once again been a rise in maternalist discourses at the international level. This has been critiqued by some feminist scholars as essentializing women as well as unfairly burdening women with the responsibility to create peace among warring factions and to sustain peace and stability in postconflict societies (D.
Otto 2006, Charlesworth 2008, Shepherd 2011). Yet the new rise in maternalism has also furthered women’s political participation in peace activism and postconflict societies. One of the most well-known recent examples was the 2003 ending of a 14-year civil war in Liberia
179 Visaka Dharmadasa, interview with the author, 27 October 2017. By Skype. 180 For a sense of the African focus, the front page of Inclusive Security spotlights three Rwandan women, two Liberian women, one Sudanese woman and one Libyan woman under “Women Making an Impact” spotlight. Alongside were two Pakistani women, an Afghan woman and one Syrian woman, so there was some South Asia coverage, although all three are directly tied to concerns around terrorism (IS, Women Making An Impact n.d.). The Global Network of Women Peacebuilding likewise shows a concentration of its member organizations in the Middle East and Africa (both North and Sub-Saharan) (GNWP, GNWP Activities & Partners n.d.).
397 where women peace activists using political motherhood pressured the rebel and government factions into sitting down to peace discussions. Ultimately, the women used their maternal authority to pressure the factions into signing the peace agreement that ended the conflict.
Liberians were on the ground doing the organizing work but received support through transnational networks that garnered them material and symbolic aid (Whetstone 2017).
Filomina Steady (2011) stresses that in postconflict West Africa, women have had greater leadership roles thanks to political motherhood and its associations with peacefulness and lack of political corruption. This includes Liberia’s postconflict president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who is Africa’s first democratically elected woman head of state. Both Johnson-Sirleaf and Leymeh
Gbowee, the civil society activist who inspired much of the peace organizing during Liberia’s civil war, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. Both are part of Inclusive Security’s Women
Waging Peace Network—now housed at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for
Peace and Justice—and Gbowee is active in the Nobel Women’s Initiative (IPJ n.d., Initiative n.d.). Such spaces have allowed the women to continue with peace activism in the postconflict period, in Liberia and transnational spaces.
I suggest that if UNSCR 1325 had been in place by 1980, the WPS network might have helped to ensure greater global resonance of both branches of the Mothers’ Front’s causes.
Notably, the current Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared example undermines this supposition as they have received no support (from what I can ascertain) from those working in the area of
WPS. The Madres attracted international attention due to the timing of their catalyzation in the late 1970s when many feminists outside of Latin America had taken an interest in the region and at a time when the global feminist movement was keen to support women’s groups on the
398 ground. By the late 1980s and early 1990s as the Mothers’ Front was organizing, feminist mobilization had shifted to institutional work at the state, the UN and other intergovernmental organizations (Alonso 1993, Bunch 2001, Walby 2011). This transition likely contributed to the
Mothers’ Front’s requests for international support falling on deaf ears. However, if the group had mobilized when UNSCR 1325 was active, they may have found a space for organizing at the international level. This opportunity may have provided resources for the Mothers’ Front, both in financial and emotional support, that would have made continued collective organizing more feasible.
Although UNSCR 1325 promotes essentialized views of women as maternal peacebuilders, women peace activists are benefitting from these discourses in terms of gaining access to the public sphere and connecting with supporters. While most examples are not as successful as the women who helped to end Liberia’s civil war, the linkages that peace activists find through Inclusive Security, the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders and the NGO
Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, which includes under its umbrella Amnesty
International and has regular access to the UN, serve as windows of opportunity for peace activists.
The NMF offered an ideal example of maternal peace activists. The group stood against both the violence of the state and the increasing violence perpetrated against ordinary Tamils by Tamil militants. The NMF worked to address the physical and symbolic violences faced by the Tamil community in Sri Lanka but also the growing authoritarianism of the LTTE who believed that they were the only “true” representative of the Tamil community. Likewise, the
NMF had a clear feminist orientation, with a focus on gender equality. The activists offered a
399 nuanced take on the Sri Lankan Civil War with balanced critiques of the Sinhalese-dominated state and Tamil militants and promoted women’s bodily autonomy. If WPS transnational networks had been in place in the mid-1980s, the NMF may have been an ideal face for maternal peace due to their progressivism. Moreover, the NMF’s biggest issue was the physical harm that they faced in their positioning against the state and against the LTTE, which from
1987 onward ruled the north with an authoritarian bent that used violence against those it viewed as traitors. If transnational feminist communities had been in place, NMF activists could have found themselves in a similar position to the Madres, almost untouchable by their political opponents through their transnational connections. The Argentine government recognized it could not harm members of the Madres without incurring worldwide condemnation once word spread about the Argentine mothers of the disappeared (Bouvard 1994). If international support for the NMF had existed, the group might have been given similar untouchability by not only the Sri Lankan government but the Tamil Tigers.
Although self-proclaimed non-feminists, the SMF had transnational appeal since they promoted an end to state abuses and championed Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidential campaign promise of peace talks with the LTTE (de Alwis 2004, Samuel 2006). Likewise, supporting Kumaratunga, a woman running for president, is likely something that many supporters of the WPS agenda might have stood behind. If a transnational advocacy network focused on amplifying women’s voices championing for peace in armed conflicts had existed in the early 1990s, the SMF could have benefited enormously. With contacts outside of Sri Lanka and new resources, the SMF may have found a reason to stay active after Kumaratunga’s election in 1994. They may have received financial resources, which had all but dried up after
400 the SLFP entered government in 1994 (de Mel 2001). Having become used to taking direction from SLFP organizers, a transnational network might have helped the women of the SMF to stay active by having resources and a space to exercise their own creativity and decision- making.181 Likewise, after the UNP lost the 1994 presidential elections, the SMF effectively lacked major security concerns. Transnational support in terms of economics might have been useful, with many SMF members having to leave organizing to improve their financial situations.182 With financial support, the group might have been more likely to keep organizing, especially if it helped pay the bills.
Despite the tangible benefits of transnational support, there is a substantial body of research that suggests these same global networks can also ignore local needs, or even justify violence in the name of peace. Several feminists and other critical scholars have noted that global North situated donors typically drive local agendas in community organizations and
NGOs in the global South (Deo and McDuie-Ra 2011, Autesserre 2014, Chishti 2002, Farrell and
McDermott 2005). This results in hierarchical dynamics that frequently ignore locals’ agenda preferences in favor of donors’ understanding of local needs (Vogel 2006, Benessaieh 2011,
Meyers 2014). Likewise, given the widespread distrust in Sri Lanka of civil society organizations with connections abroad, global linkages may not have been the most strategic move for the
SMF (Wickramasinghe 2001). Even the Madres has had to contend with the backlash of global support, although they had full control of how they used money and resources from supporters. Under the first democratic government following the dissolution of the
181 Even so, there are widespread issues with outsider “experts” and funders smothering local preferences and decision-making, which could easily have happened in this case (Deo and McDuie-Ra 2011). 182 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
401 dictatorship, the Asociación group was openly critical of the government. In response, the head of government, President Alfonsín, decried the Madres of the Asociación as “international
Marxists” as a way to portray the group’s perspectives as foreign-derived and falling outside of so-called Argentine values (Bouvard 1994, 156).
Finally, although the SMF was ethnically homogenous and failed to account for Tamil and Muslim women’s interests, it may have been that support from transnational networks, like support from domestic feminists, the group might have evolved away from hegemonic nationalism. Much of the SLFP’s lack of interest in recruiting Tamil and Muslim women to the
SLFP was tied to the fact that the SLFP is a Sinhalese-majority party. Their voters are not generally Tamils and Muslims, which lessened the SLFP’s incentive to focus on any but
Sinhalese women’s needs. In fact, their long-time voting strategy has been appealing to Sinhala-
Buddhist nationalism (ICG 2007). Malathi de Alwis (2004) notes that some of the Sinhalese women in the SMF held prejudiced views of Tamil women, but that others felt sympathy with minority women and recognized that they shared the issue of enforced disappearances (p.
131). With support from transnational networks, or from domestic feminists, both of which are drawn to cross-ethnic projects that work to overcome ethnic tensions, the SMF may have been able to overcome any resistance to minority women’s issues in their group and to become an inclusive organization.
While there is no way to be certain that the earlier passage of UNSCR 1325 and the development of its attendant transitional networks of organizations dedicated to WPS might have been key to ensuring the longevity of the Mothers’ Front, I think that both the NMF and
SMF might have benefitted from this kind of support if they had received it. It may have created
402 opportunities for resources for the NMF and SMF and could have bolstered some sense of personal security for members of both branches, which was continually a primary concern, especially for NMF members, who were doubly at risk from both the state and LTTE militants.
For the SMF, I think that transnational support may have encouraged a move away from
Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, particularly after the SLFP entered government and largely dropped the SMF. Notably, groups such as the Association of War Affected Women (AWAW) have used political motherhood to overcome ethnic divides both during the civil war and now in the postwar context, in part due to the group’s transnational connections through UNSCR
1325 (Samuel 2006).183
Counterfactual 3: Peace talks
The final counterfactual that I consider is also linked to UNSCR 1325, through its promotion of women’s participation in peace talks. I consider what might have happened if the
SMF, who were integral to Kumaratunga’s election to the presidency, had been invited to participate in the 1995 peace talks that the new government began with the LTTE. Part of
Kumaratunga’s campaign promise was to begin talks and offer autonomy to the Tamil community, which had been a significant part of her presidential campaign (Guneratne 2013,
Malik, et al. 2009). While UNSCR 1325 may have upped the chances of the SMF being invited to the 1995 peace talks, there were already examples of women’s inclusion in peace talks with the
South African case, meaning that even without UNSCR 1325, this would have been a possible thought (Deveaux 2006). This could have been suggested by domestic feminist groups as well.
183 Visaka Dharmadasa, interview with the author, 27 October 2017. By Skype.
403
However, given their concerns about the SMF’s nationalism, they have thought it better that the SMF not attend peace talks.
As Kumaratunga took office, the SMF disbanded, which led to significant criticism of the group by some feminists and human rights activists (Samuel 2006, de Alwis 2012).184
Admittedly, with the SLFP in office, this provided an array of new political opportunities for the group. However, it may have been that the women of the SMF were unsure of the next step. As emphasized in previous chapters, the SMF’s connection with the SLFP limited the women’s opportunities to design and implement their own political actions, except for religious cursing.
The limiting of most opportunities through the SLFP organizers arranging most activities may have hindered the development of the women’s political efficacy. With the party doing so much for them, the women had few chances to develop organizing skills such as learning from their mistakes and successes (see Chapter 5). An invitation to the peace talks in 1995 might have been an opportunity for some of the women to engage in a new activity (peace talks) if the
SLFP—particularly Kumaratunga—had thought to include them and been willing to urge them toward this. It may have necessitated that the SLFP provide continued financial support in terms of transportation costs.
The 1995 peace talks represented a window of opportunity for the SMF as a concrete next step in their organizing. It may have been possible for the women to have envisioned themselves contributing to peace talks if this idea been brought up. Notably, UNSCR 1325 had not been passed by the UN General Assembly, so there was no widespread notion that women ought to be included in peace talks. It is not something many might have considered at this
184 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
404 point in 1995. But if it had been, and representatives of the SMF had participated, the SMF might have then stayed organized for longer and possibly found a new means of political engagement through the participation in peace talks. Notably, in the 2002 peace talks between the government and LTTE, women were included, although no grassroots women, such as those with the SMF, participated (Bandarage 2010). Further, the inclusion of women in the 2002 talks was problematic in the sense the women were confined to the Subcommittee on Gender Issues
(SGI), which could only give recommendations, having no enforcement mechanism (Harris
2004).
SMF members were used to SLFP organizers telling them what to do for most of their activities. I suggest that if the Kumaratunga government had requested the presence of the
SMF at the 1995 peace talks, at least some members of the group might have stayed organized, seeing this opportunity as a way for them to continue to contribute to issues that they cared about. As noted by Brito Fernando in my interview with him, the SMF president Dr.
Saravanamuttu encouraged the women to move onto other issues.185 The 1995 peace talks represented a continuation of the SMF’s aims, which included ending the war. Yet since the group was co-founded by two SLFP MPs and because the group had always taken instructions from SLFP organizers, the women may have been unsure what to do next in a way that aligned with their aims. The SLFP could have shown SMF members how they could stay active and continue to contribute collectively to the issue of peace since the party had insisted on taking charge of most of the group’s activities. If Kumaratunga had invited the SMF to participate in the peace talks—and especially if she had given the group leeway in deciding what they
185 Brito Fernando, interview with the author, 22 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
405 believed were the best outcomes for the talks and actively sought their input—I think that the
SMF might have begun to develop an agenda for itself to continue engaging in civil society activism. At the very least, it would have been an opportunity for their continued organizing.
Counterfactual wrap up
In these three counterfactuals, I suggest that if certain historical conditions had been altered, the NMF and SMF may have stayed organized beyond 1987 and 1994 respectively. I do not think that a name avoiding the term mother might have altered the outcomes of the NMF or SMF. If transnational support had existed, it may have provided the impetus for local Sri
Lankan feminists to support the SMF. Vice versa, greater support from Sri Lankan feminists may have helped to bring in transnational feminist networks, which could have provided funding to sustain the SMF after the SLFP stopped funding the group. Buy-in from domestic feminists may have led to more nuanced thinking among women of the SMF, which could have allowed their political motherhood to serve as a jumping-off point for continued and evolving political participation. Perhaps the SMF’s organizing may have become increasingly inclusive over time. I think that if UNSCR 1325 had existed at the time of the NMF or the SMF, transnational WPS networks might have been able to serve the two branches with symbolic support and particularly with material resources. Moreover, widespread domestic feminist support for the
SMF may have been particularly beneficial in terms of moving members’ political development.
With such support, there is no telling how the two branches may have evolved.
With transnational support, conceivably the NMF may have been able to withstand the
LTTE’s rise through the security offered to activists in becoming well-known outside of Sri
Lanka, as happened with the Madres. In terms of the SMF, if UNSCR 1325 had existed or if the
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Kumaratunga government had invited representatives of the group to the 1995 peace talks, there is again a possibility that the group might have stayed together. Another alternative would have been if domestic feminists had offered ideas to the SMF for continued organizing.
Members needed a purpose after playing a role in electing Kumaratunga that aligned with their political aims. Another issue was that the group required resources from the SLFP or another source to continue. An option could have been transnational support or support from domestic women’s groups. With it, the two branches may have evolved into long-standing branches just as the Línea Fundadora and Asociación branches of the Madres have.
Women and Caring
I suggest that the accessibility and expedience of political motherhood can be a jumping-off point for continued and evolving political participation for women, which could shift to a maternal feminism. Although political motherhood is rooted in women’s caring roles, this does not necessarily preclude such political organizing from being “radical.” I argue that the benefits of political motherhood and its wide appeal and strategic usefulness in politically challenging environments can provide a productive intervention point for feminists (both domestic and transnational) to move political motherhood to maternal feminism or at the very least away from the mother of the nation trope. Women’s collective action is a step forward in critical thinking because it indicates that women understand that their problems are structural and that mass mobilization is an effective means of letting their political outcomes become known (Kaplan, 1982; Nathanson, Maternal Activism: How Feminist Is It?, 2008). However, maternal feminism is largely out of favor among most academic feminists. The reasons for this are valid, with political motherhood criticized for nationalist, xenophobic, heteronormative and
407 gender essentialist connections (Enloe 2000, Peterson 1999, DiQuinzio 1999). I address two overlapping problems in accusations against political motherhood: (1) xenophobia, rooted in either nationalist or religious fundamentalism; and (2) gender essentialism, which is linked to heteronormativity and transphobia. I conclude by suggesting how support from feminists can move women inspired by political motherhood to at least progressive forms, if not feminist forms, of political motherhood.
Intersectional, anti-imperialist, antiracist and decolonial political motherhood
It is the case that political motherhood’s connections to the mother of the nation trope may link it to xenophobic fundamentalism. Yet political motherhood is not the only form of political participation with such problematic links. In the past—and currently—are strains of feminism that promote similar issues including ethnocentrism and militant nationalism (Farrell and McDermott 2005, Mohanty 1988, Ware 1992, Spelman 1988, Daniels 2016). The most egregious recent case was when the Feminist Majority Foundation—one of the top US feminist organizations—supported the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 because a military invasion would “save” Afghan women (Zakaria 2016, Farrell and McDermott 2005). Sheryl
Sandberg’s Lean In “movement,” which urges women to do more to advance their corporate careers, is a hegemonic feminism that promotes at the very least, class privilege. Given the overlap in the US among racial and class issues, the Lean In movement is racially blind (Daniels
2016, 45-46). In response to these problems, calls are made for altering the kind of feminism academics, activists and advocates support, to one that is intersectional, anti-imperialist, antiracist and decolonial. This minimally entails working against multiple oppressions based on
408 structures of imperialism, racism and neocolonialism (K. Crenshaw 1989, Lugones 2010, Farrell and McDermott 2005, Zine 2004).
I suggest the same approach to political motherhood. If some women find political motherhood empowering and appealing, then focusing on how to make political motherhood serve positive peace and justice is a better approach than discouraging women from deploying it or deciding not to support them, as in the case of SMF. Saba Mahmood (2005) has argued that feminists should not assume that they know what is best for others. For many women, the values that they associate with motherhood have brought them authority and respect.
Likewise, while political motherhood may not allow all socially conservative gender norms to be challenged, its deployment nevertheless allows some norms to be challenged, most notably women’s involvement in the public sphere (Kandiyoti 1988). I think that feminists working both domestically and transnationally, as well as other advocates of women’s rights, can and should find ways to encourage women’s use of political motherhood where it furthers women’s political participation and simultaneously works to change the minds of those who promote nationalism, heteronormativity and similar problematic stances. If feminists approach political motherhood with the understanding that they will also learn from political motherhood activists, then rather than an instance of forcing ideas upon others, feminists and maternal activists will likely find areas of overlap and mutual transformation through engagement with one another.
The most troubling aspect of the SMF was its indirect violence against Tamils and
Muslims, constituted through the group’s priorities that failed to account for minority women’s concerns. While I had speculated that it was political motherhood in ethnic conflicts that
409 produced this problem, evidence from other ethnically divided societies has shown that political motherhood can help to overcome ethnic divides (M. Anderson 2016, Whetstone 2017,
George 2010). As noted, the Association of War Affected Women (AWAW) has used political motherhood to overcome ethnic divides in Sri Lanka both during the civil war and now in the postwar context, which is in part due to the group’s transnational connections through UNSCR
1325 (Samuel 2006).186 This supports the main contention of Counterfactual 2. I think that it was mainly the influence of the SLFP that led to a widespread lack of concern for anyone but
Sinhalese women among the SMF and contributed to ideas that many already had, which was that to be Tamil was to be a terrorist (de Mel, 2007; de Alwis, 2004). As noted, the SLFP and its main rival the UNP have both relied on Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism as a voting strategy to gain majority Sinhalese support (ICG 2007). But NGOs such as the Global Network of Women
Peacebuilders and Nobel Women’s Initiative work to promote cross-ethnic contact as a means of achieving peace. Likewise, there are domestic groups in Sri Lanka including the Women’s
Education and Research Centre and the Centre for Women’s Research that promote cross- ethnic contact. Organizations such as these, working both transnationally or domestically, can structure opportunities for interactions among diverse women. As argued by Malathi de Alwis
(2004), many Sinhalese simply were not aware of Tamil women’s issues but interactions such as these might have rectified this situation.187 If the women had the opportunity to interact with
186 Visaka Dharmadasa, interview with the author, 27 October 2017. By Skype. 187 There was a strong current of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism among the SMF, which led some members to view all Tamils as “terrorists” but this was by no means all SMF women (de Alwis 2004, 131). Notably, the political environment in the south has promoted ignorance among the Sinhalese since the Sinhalese-dominated state used the media to promote itself as saviors of the Tamil community, who were portrayed as suffering exclusively from abuse by the LTTE (de Mel 2007).
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Tamil and Muslim women collaboratively, I think that the SMF might have been better equipped to overcome hegemonic nationalism.
To reiterate, I agree that even progressive versions of political motherhood must be interrogated, since many inadvertently uphold the politics of respectability, which links to hegemonic nationalism and/or religious fundamentalism, with the SMF as a case in point.
Blatant racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, heteronormativity and ethnocentrism must be confronted and condemned. There is no place in feminism, maternal or otherwise, for groups such as Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty, which works against the rights of immigrants and migrants, the KKK or Hindu fundamentalists, even if such organizations promote women’s participation in politics (Juffer 2011, A. Basu 1998, Blee 1991). However, motherhood’s links to the values of caring make it a source of inspiration for many who desire a more just world. The possibilities for political motherhood to serve as a jumping-off point for continued and evolving political participation are ripe. It may lead to maternal feminism and from there to ever- evolving strains of feminism.
The Madres serves as a strong case through their evolution over the decades. Most of the women were unaware of the political situation in Argentina until their children were disappeared. Initially, each mother was concerned with locating their own missing child. Over time, as the women learned more about the military government and realized its culpability in the widespread enforced disappearances, the women’s political engagement grew to include advocacy for human rights and democracy (Bouvard 1994). In the decades since their catalyzation, the Madres have stood up for abortion rights, grassroots political participation and economic justice while continuing to promote a politics of memory that preserves the period of
411 state of terrorism and seeks justice against perpetrators of human rights abuses (Sutton 2010,
Burchianti 2004, Bevernage 2012, Wilson 2016, G 2018). Their work inspires younger generations, from the founding of Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio
(Children for Identity and Justice, against Oblivion and Silence) (HIJOS), to other young feminists and human rights defenders today (Bouvard 1994, Conn 2018).188 Political motherhood initially mobilized the women of the Madres, provided them strategic cover under a dangerous military regime and brought them international sympathy. It has continued to inspire its members, now active for over 40 years. This is notably exceptional for any social movement.
As Michelle Carreon and Valentine Moghadam (2015) point out, political motherhood used from the bottom-up by women activists serves as a de facto feminism for those who engage with it, by promoting these activists’ access to the political sphere. Alternately, Sara
Howe (2006) suggests that it was the Madres’ reconstruction of motherhood that transformed their organizing against the state into feminist work. According to Howe, the Madres—despite reinforcing women’s connections to motherhood—also “challenged the very meaning of that motherhood” (p. 46). The group did this by moving their mothering into the public sphere and collectively organizing as mothers, making motherhood itself an act of political resistance. It is a feminist concern that women not be forced into an affinity with motherhood, yet for some women, solidifying their links with motherhood has enhanced their political participation in social movement and other political work (Orleck, 1997; Nathanson, 2008). The Madres
188 The HIJOS organization is associated with the Madres. About 70 young people from Cordoba founded the group in 1995, inspired by the Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo. Within a year, it was a well-known, national level group with 500 members spread out across the country. It remains active today (Feitlowitz 1998, Seidel 2011, A Time to Fight: HIJOS Speaks Out for the Disappeared of Argentina 2013).
412 suggests how progressive this participation might be, given the kinds of priorities that the
Madres (as two branches) engage in today, which includes support for abortion rights and economic justice. The paradox is that political motherhood movements have to endure long enough to reach this stage. Much of this may simply be out of the hands of activists at the national level given the lack of domestic and international political opportunities, with the NMF case in point for the lack of domestic political opportunities. Under these circumstances, partnerships outside the country may become critical to support local groups.
Conservative gender norms
Confronting gender essentialism, which links to not only binary stereotypes about women and men but also to heteronormativity and transphobia, can be a significant problem for maternal mobilization. Political motherhood relies on women’s representations of themselves in their roles as mother and wife, which are linked with conservative gender norms.
However, I suggest that political motherhood may serve as a jumping-off point for feminist activism due to its connections to caring. Political motherhood can also move women into radical organizing (or just learning how to organize at all), which challenges conservative gender norms. Likewise, the potential benefits of political motherhood and its broad appeal and strategic usefulness in politically challenging environments provide an intervention point for feminists since women mobilized by political motherhood recognize the need to engage collectively (Kaplan, 1982; Nathanson, 2008).
Tammy Kaplan’s (1982) scholarship on Spanish working-class women’s mass protests in the early 20th century is relevant to this discussion. Women’s mobilization in Barcelona in 1918 occurred as the prices of food and other necessities skyrocketed during World War I. Women
413 embraced their roles as mothers and wives with the duty to provide food for the household. Yet with the rising costs, women could not fulfill these obligations. Working class women engaged in public protest, demanding that the government provide basics for themselves and their families. While the women accepted the gendered division of labor, they led a revolution that pitted them against the state. Kaplan argues that conservatism around women’s understanding of their duties is a boon for feminism, which desires social justice. “[W]omen’s most conservative self-image could potentially convince them to demand that states place life above other goals” (p. 565). Or as Mai’a Williams (2019) puts it, “Mothering had shown me how to show up every day for another human being” and was part of what inspired her activism in
Egypt’s Arab Spring and protests against the oil pipeline at Standing Rock (p. 192). Even if a political motherhood movement does not transform into a maternal feminist movement, a shift to supporting positive peace and justice is what ultimately matters.
Adrienne Rich (1976) argued that motherhood functions both as a top-down institution driven by patriarchal demands and as women’s bottom-up experience, or what she calls “the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children” (p. 13 italics in original). This suggests that motherhood can be reconstructed from a constraining institution to feminist practice. The motherhood studies scholarship associated with the
Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI) is indebted to Rich’s theorizing as well as to Sara Ruddick (1989), an antimilitarist feminist, whose Maternal Thinking emphasizes the skills and critical reflection required to perform motherwork, making the case
414 that mothering is neither natural nor easy.189 While women have widely been constructed as inherently peaceful, even as this has never accurately reflected all women’s actions, Ruddick argues that the tasks of mothering provide the opportunity for mothers, who are mostly women, to develop a peace politics.190 Motherhood scholars express frustration with the broader feminist movement in North America, which they perceive as overlooking the empowering aspects of mothering and women’s lives as mothers (O'Reilly 2016).191 For motherhood scholars, women who are mothers are impacted by patriarchy both as women and as mothers to the point that nonmother women have more in common with nonmother men than they do with women who are mothers (O'Reilly 2016, 2, 42).
Since the postmodern/poststructural turn, many feminists have complicated political motherhood, challenging work by maternal feminists that the price of purchase for political motherhood may be too high to justify it, despite its appeal to some women.192 In many authoritarian, repressive and/or securitized environments, gender binarism and hyper- masculinity predominate, which can limit women’s political participation, especially if women
189 Andrea O’Reilly’s Matricentric Feminism (2016), which calls for a mother-focused feminism that places mothers, not children, at the center of feminist analysis is largely inspired by Rich and Ruddick (p. 14-32). 190 Links made between mothering and peace are widespread (Wu 2013, Steady 2011, Carreon and Moghadam 2015, Karman 2016, Aharoni 2017, Tickner and True 2018). 191 O’Reilly surveyed National Women’s Studies Association conference proceedings, women and gender studies journals and women’s studies syllabi and textbooks to claim that while motherhood studies scholars regularly cite mainstream feminist work, feminists do not engage with motherhood studies. See O’Reilly (2016) chapter 4 and Appendixes B, C and D. O’Reilly refers specifically to the Canadian-based motherhood studies MIRCI and matri- centric feminism. 192 There were certainly earlier negative feminist readings of mothering, most notably the radical thinker Shulamith Firestone (1970) who was adamant that severing women from mothering was necessary to end patriarchy. Firestone argued that “[t]he heart of woman’s oppression is her childbearing and childrearing roles” (p. 81). Amber Kinser (2010) notes that Firestone was representative of a small but vocal group of feminists in the 1960s and 18970s who viewed mothers as “a sellout to the dominant ideology of the nuclear family and the heterosexual system” (p. 23). Yet queer mothering examples indicates that motherhood can be as a queer as anything else (Gibson 2014, Epstein-Fine and Zook 2018, Martin-Baron, Johns and Wills 2020).
415 themselves rely on discourses that reinforce gender stereotypes (D. Otto 2006, Charlesworth
2008, Hawkesworth 2012, Noonan 1995, Elshtain 1995, Peterson 2010). Both binarism and hyper masculinity discourses saturated Argentina and Sri Lanka at the time of the catalyzation of the Madres and Mothers’ Front. Argentina’s military dictatorship promoted a clear distinction between “good” and “bad” women. The former included nationalist women who minded their maternal duties and supported the regime, while the latter included women who took up arms and/or protested against the regime, as the Madres did (Taylor 1997). In Sri
Lanka, the LTTE promoted good women as those who upheld “proper” Tamil respectability by dressing in “traditional” saris, giving birth to and raising children and/or fighting for the LTTE
(de Mel 2003, Maunaguru 2009). It required unquestioning loyalty to the LTTE (Kailasapathy
2012). Similarly, the government of Sri Lanka promoted gendered notions throughout the civil war, which stressed military soldiers as masculine heroes who would “save” Sri Lanka from the
LTTE terrorists (de Mel, 2007). Using discourses steeped in historical accounts of Sinhalese kingdoms’ defeats of Tamil kingdoms, Sinhalese women were expected to support the
Sinhalese-dominated government’s war against Tamil separatists by giving their children to the state (Samarasinghe 2012).
Laura Shepherd (2010, 2011) has raised concerns that motherhood limits maternal activists’ say to only certain issues perceived as relevant to their caring roles, and that it further puts the onus on women to resolve conflicts and ensure postconflict stability since they are
“naturally” peaceful. Concerns around gender essentialism’s ties to UNSCR 1325 have also been raised by Dianne Otto (2006) and Hilary Charlesworth (2008) who argue that in the long-term,
416 moves that reinforce links between women and caring may be detrimental to women’s political participation.
While these feminists appear to understand political motherhood in binary terms in relation to feminism, Kaplan (1982) offers a nuanced assessment that finds connections among those who resonate with conservative gender norms and those who do not. Rohini Hensman
(1996) and Julie Stephens (2011) similarly argue for valuing caring and peace as relevant to all individuals and societies. If, as feminists such as Iris Marion Young (1998) claim, democracy is the expansion of participation by various marginalized groups from racial, ethnical, religious and sexual minorities to women to those with disabilities, then mothers can be one more group in this process if there are women who wish to represent themselves as mothers. To suggest that political motherhood inhibits women’s political organizing due to its connections with status quo gender norms implies that motherhood is the opposite of feminism. This dualistic thinking obscures how maternalism and feminism have considerable overlaps and that some feminists identify as maternal feminists. A survey of past literature reveals how feminist understandings of women and caring have shifted over the decades and that motherhood continues to be the basis for some women’s revolutionary aspirations (Williams 2019). This can provide space for activists to engage in critical thinking about their roles in societies, even moving from maternal nonfeminist activism to maternal feminist activism. This evolution can happen through interventions by feminists working domestically or transnationally or can come about without any interventions whatsoever if activists are organized for a lengthy period of time.
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Nevertheless, other criticisms of political motherhood related to conservative gender norms need to be addressed. One of the most concerning is that in projecting maternal authority, middle class values around respectability are reproduced, which reinforces hierarchies that privilege women from the hegemonic social group (Currans 2017). The politics of respectability should alarm critical thinkers who recognize the systems of oppression within respectability discourses that typically promote heteronormative, racial, ethnic and/or religious oppressions (Enloe 2000). However, even in reproducing respectability discourses in their political participation, women exercise agency that subtly shifts conservative gender norms.
Saba Mahood (2005) examined Egyptian women’s participation in the Islamic Revival movement that has swept much of the Muslim-majority world since the 1970s. Many feminists puzzle over why women choose to engage in a movement that works against “their ‘own interests and agendas’” by actively placing themselves in a subordinate position to men (p. 2, 5-
6). Mahmood argues that feminism’s historical roots in Western thinking link it with the political philosophy of liberalism, which values individualism and freedom. For this reason, many feminists view resistance as the only form of agency. Mahmood challenges this binary conception of subordination or cooptation, and resistance wherein resistance is constructed as women’s only form of agency. Instead, Mahmood argues for understanding agency apart from progressive politics and further questions the notion of resistance, asking whether a person can ever consider their own will or desire apart from the contextual factors that make up their reality (p. 31). For Mahmood, agency is better understood by contextually relevant views of what constitutes agency by those whose lives are being explored (p. 34).
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What Mahmood suggests is that women working towards social changes, even changes that reinforce women’s subordinated gender position to men, are engaged in acts of agency.
Conflating agency singularly with actions that “resist the dominant male order,” dismisses some women’s political participation (p. 6). Furthermore, regardless of the aim of their participation,
Mahmood argues that women do alter some conservative gender norms when engaged in agentic acts. In Mahmood’s study, Egyptian women in the Islamic Revival movement cultivated the religious practice of piety. However, in doing so, they had to contend with varying authority structures. These included the institutions of the family, most notably their fathers or husbands, and the state. Even as the women sought to practice “shyness,” which is associated with conservative gender norms regarding femininity in piety politics, the women also openly criticized their male relatives if they found them lacking in piety, such as failing to regularly attend mosque activities. This was a challenge to conservative gender norms in that women, who ought to be practice shyness and respect authority figures by holding their tongues, shamed those they should by all accounts of prescribed femininity expectations be quietly submitting to. While Mahmood concedes that the women’s political work could be read as sometimes reinforcing conservative gender norms while other times undermining these same norms, she suggests such a binary reading does not do justice to the women’s larger purpose, which was ultimately to uphold conservative gender norms.
Mahmood’s study aligns with the argument made by Michelle Carreon and Valentine
Moghadam (2015) that when deployed by women’s groups, political motherhood results in a de facto feminism in the sense it “effectively challenges women’s subordination” through their participation in the political sphere (p. 21). The distinction once made between nonfeminist and
419 feminist women’s activism through practical and strategic gender interests is not analytically useful when taking an intersectional approach to feminism, which understands how a myriad of factors are entangled with gender, just as gender is inextricably linked with other aspects of people’s lives (Molyneux 1985, K. W. Crenshaw 1990, Hankivsky, et al. 2012). Similar to
Mahmood, Deniz Kandiyoti (1988) has pointed out that even embracing conservative gender norms, women attain some power for themselves. Yet the very act of taking conservative gender norms into the public sphere or challenging authority figures, women inevitably challenge these conservative gender norms. Certainly not all women who engage with political motherhood, or promote other forms of conservative gender expectations, move into arguing for women’s access to abortion as the Madres have. However, even a small start can move women forward in new directions.
Mahmood’s insight is relevant to interpretations of the SMF. Many Sri Lankan feminists criticized the women of the SMF for exiting civil society following the election of Kumaratunga, implying that the women failed to be agentic (de Alwis 2012, de Mel 2001, Samuel 2006). As discussed in Chapter 7, when movement actors achieve political aims, most decide to end their participation since their main goals have been met; this is a normal part of movement lifecycles
(Tarrow 1989, Offe 1990). Likewise, in contrast to the Madres and the NMF, the SMF was not self-founded but instead were a corporatist group founded and led by politicians and organizers with the SLFP (de Alwis 2004). Carreon and Moghadam (2015) argue that top-down political motherhood—meaning it is linked with state institutions—can either improve women’s lives or confine them. I suggest that the link with the SLFP was detrimental to the SMF’s long-term
420 collective organizing since members had so few opportunities to gain organizational skills or to feel a sense of political efficacy.
The SMF’s only action undertaken by rank and file members was their religious protesting, which was widely criticized by Sri Lanka progressives as “irrational” (Samuel, 2003; de Alwis, 2001, p. 218; 2004, p. 128). While I think that if the SLFP had helped members to develop their own actions and to make organizational decisions that the group might have stayed organized, members of the SMF nevertheless exercised considerable agency. They protested at a time when the majority of human rights actors were too afraid to do so and they took on state forces, most famously in their ritual cursing (Samuel, 2006). Moreover, SMF members challenged conservative gender norms by standing up to the Sri Lankan government.
Mahmood (2005) has argued that it is not the place of feminists to tell others how to live, nor can feminists presume to know what will bring others fulfillment (p. 36, 38). As Anwar
Mhajne and I (2020) have suggested, the respect that some women receive as mothers is rewarding. Mahmood encourages feminists to seek to understand those whose preferences differ from their own (p. 198-199). I argue for a mediated space that would not write off women who uphold conservative gender norms but instead engage critically with such women, asking why they embrace these values. Middle class respectability upholds gendered heteronormative codes, class, race, religious and ethnic structures. Even so, various forms of political motherhood engage with these connections differently. For example, the work of the
US group the Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty differs fundamentally from that of the Madres and the NMF. The Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty actively organized against the rights of immigrants and migrants, whom they conceived as “parasites” taking away resources from
421 their own (white/Anglo) children by simply being in the US (Juffer 2011). The anti-immigrant and anti-migrant group sought to confine caring to limited groups—native-born, white people—while the Madres and NMF sought to expand caring society-wide by promoting positive peace and equality (Juffer 2011, Bouvard 1994, Kailasapathy 2012).193
The SMF falls somewhere in between the Madres and NMF on the one hand, and the
Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty on the other. While the SMF’s ties to religious fundamentalism and nationalism left out Tamil and Muslim women, unlike the Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty, which organized to promote violence against others, the SMF organized on behalf of their own interests. Although the SMF failed to be inclusive through this neglect, they did not organize to actively harm Tamils and Muslims as the Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty organized against immigrants and migrants. There is considerable room for critique of mother activists if their organizing supports the politics of respectability, which it often does. However, feminists must make distinctions between hate-based organizations such as Mothers Against Illegal Amnesty and the Madres and the NMF who seek positive and transitional justice. The SMF, which lies between these poles, had the potential to transform into an inclusive group. By making interventions, feminists, of either domestic or international stripe, can help promote values of intersectionality, anti-imperialism, antiracism and decoloniality, which can contribute to further upending conservative gender norms.
193 This is so even as the Madres have been happy to see perpetrators of violence punished (Bouvard 1994).
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Mutual engagements
There is no guarantee that activists inspired by political motherhood will identify as feminists. Nor is this the only good option in promoting women’s political participation. Yet universally discouraging women inspired by political motherhood is a bypassed opportunity. I argue that instead of dissuading activists inspired by political motherhood, that more feminists recognize both the appeal and expedience of political motherhood, viewing this form of participation as an opportunity for continued and evolving political participation. Political motherhood holds the potential to transform into a maternal feminism that calls for a caring society. The potential benefits of political motherhood and its wide appeal and strategic usefulness in politically challenging environments provide an ideal intervention point for feminists to move political motherhood to maternal feminism. Contemporary feminism reflects the important understandings of queer theory and trans studies—beginning with Judith Butler’s
Troubling Gender—which has made it incumbent upon all of us that these insights become widely accepted so that queer, nonbinary and other gender and sexual minorities cannot simply live, but live full quality lives. I suggest that bringing maternal feminism back into the contemporary feminist fold does not negate the project of queer, nonbinary and trans rights. I make the case that maternal feminism can bring more people into the fold of feminism. Once there, active engagement on the part of feminists can further progressive causes.
Penny Griffin (2015) went on a search for feminism in Western popular culture. While many young people in the West today may articulate “I’m not a feminist but…”—a denial of identification with feminism while supporting strains of what it stands for—and there is significant hostility against feminism, Griffin made the hopeful discovery that “feminism is
423 embodied” in “vibrant but fragmented” places in Western popular culture (p. xvi, 161) This ambiguous fragmentation may not “count” as feminism to some since this is so widely encompassing. However, Griffin argues “that feminism means many things does not…mean that feminism means nothing at all” (p. 162). I suggest that there are certain aspects of the SMF and other groups using political motherhood that feminists can appreciate. There is always room for critique, but fragments of feminism, such as women’s political participation, are an important jumping-off point for feminist intervention.
Political motherhood likewise has something to teach feminism, in part by encouraging contemporary feminism to re-embrace maternal feminism. Additionally, political motherhood reminds feminists that many women’s political participation may be ignited through an identification with motherhood and that this is not an inherently bad thing. If the personal is political, then women’s daily experiences are an important starting point in developing a political—if not a specifically feminist political—consciousness that can lead to a transformation in political thinking and women’s regular engagement in politics. Finally, that political motherhood may link with violence is a lesson for maternal feminism, which too frequently has sought nonviolence as the only option for peace activism (Ruddick 1995, Reardon 1993, 1996).
While there are times for nonviolence, in situations of profound injustice for those who are marginalized have a reason to engage in violence and this may result in more positive forms of peace since accountability may render some kind of violence (Meckfessel 2016).
Both political motherhood and feminism are always becoming and always shifting in their given contexts. Through a process of mutual learning, each can benefit from the other.
What constitutes an organic political transformation is recognizing that political interplays
424 among multiple kinds of thinking by women organizing as mothers in civil society may derive from either political motherhood or feminism or some combination of these. The scholarly and activist body of feminist knowledge has developed many attempts to resist all manner of inequalities and subordinations that are implicated in the violences of war and unjust peace.
Likewise, political motherhood points to the everyday mundane matters of life that can mobilize women into political movements. Brought together, these two approaches show not only overlaps but areas of mutual transformation.
Conclusion
This chapter explored the long-standing feminist debate to endorse women’s connections to caring or to delink women from caring, specifically through political motherhood. All people, whether genderqueer, nonbinary, trans women, cis women, trans men or cis men, are capable of both caring and engaging in violence. Connections between women and caring are stereotypes, yet stereotypes that some women feel empowered by. I argue that political motherhood’s accessibility and expedience may be a jumping-off point for women’s continued and evolving political participation and thus may warrant feminist support, or at least feminist intervention. One avenue of this comes through the international soft law of UNSCR
1325, which has been criticized as portraying women in a binary way as victims and maternal peacemakers. I suggest that this kind of maternal thinking could nevertheless empower some women. As Mariam Anderson (2016) terms it, UNSCR 1325 provides a window of opportunity in peace talks and other postconflict peace activities, that with time can be widened to be an inclusive space. UNSCR 1325 holds potential simply because of the budget it represents and as another avenue to explore when domestic political opportunities run out. If emancipatory
425 politics is to be inclusive, the public sphere should include mothers as there are women who choose to define themselves this way. In the next chapter, the conclusion, I reiterate the main arguments and findings from this study and examine postconflict Argentina and Sri Lanka.
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Chapter 9
Conclusion
Introduction
Over the previous eight chapters, I outlined the purpose of this study and central argument, as well as overviewed the literature on which this study draws and interrogated comparisons between Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war that resulted in the political motherhood movements of Argentina’s Madres of the Plaza de Mayo
(Madres) and Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front. The latter was always conceivably two separate movements, made up of the Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front
(SMF), while the Madres split after nearly a decade of organizing as a unified group into the
Línea Fundadora and Asociación branches.
The primary research question that drove this project asked: What impacts the legacies of political motherhood movements during and after internal armed conflicts in terms of duration, visibility and remembrance? I define duration as the staying power of a civic organization using political motherhood, specifically the length of time it remains active.
Visibility here refers to how “seen” a civic group is at the domestic and international levels. I understand remembrance as whether an organization’s work is remembered or forgotten at the domestic and international levels. To answer the research question, I compared Argentina’s
Madres with the Mothers’ Front in Sri Lanka, integrating visual analysis, feminist re-reading and counterfactuals, alongside comparisons of the Madres and the Mothers’ Front.
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The Madres represent one of the most well-known examples of political motherhood and an organization that has endured over 40 years. As one of the longest-running human rights groups in Latin America, the Madres speak to the possibilities of political motherhood’s duration (Bosco 2006). The influence of the Madres on postconflict politics in Argentina is undeniable, part of a politics of visibility and remembering that recalls the group, including by younger generations of human rights and feminist actors who deploy the legacy of the Madres to generate new meanings for social movement causes. In Sri Lanka, the story of the Mothers’
Front has taken a distinctly different route, in part due to the group’s invisibility internationally, as well as the forgetting of the group’s legacy by most Sri Lankans outside of the human rights and feminist movements.
In this concluding chapter, I overview the primary arguments of my project and provide a brief assessment of the postconflict periods in Argentina and Sri Lanka today. The first section reviews the central argument and supporting arguments. In the second section, I turn to the politics of memory in Argentina, reviewing how it began and where it is today. In the third section, I overview the politics of memory in Sri Lanka and assess where this is likely to move forward given the 2019 elections, which saw Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the new president, who has already moved toward a postconflict transition focused on forgetting. Finally, I wrap up the chapter with a brief conclusion that explores the implications of the Madres and Mothers’ Front in terms of their use of political motherhood and what it means for social movement scholarship and activism.
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Major arguments
The central argument of this project makes the case that it is the perceptions of other social movement organizations (especially of feminist and human rights organizations) that contribute to either upward or downward spirals of duration, visibility and remembrance that in turn impact the legacies of political motherhood movements. I suggest that when other social movement actors perceive the duration, visibility and remembrance of a political motherhood movement positively, this upward spiral promotes the legacy of that movement.
Conversely, when perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance are viewed negatively, this downward spiral deadens the legacy of that political motherhood movement.
Understanding the dynamic and overlapping notions of the perceptions of duration, visibility and remembrance holds implications for scholars, as well as social movement actors, in terms of how the past is remembered. Whether a political motherhood movement endures “for a long-time” (a subjective judgment) or not, it is only by preserving the legacies of movement actors that scholars and activists can unpack—and regularly re-interrogate—these legacies to gain insights from them. If legacies are lost or downplayed, then our understanding of effective social movement organizing—both now and in the future—is gravely reduced.
There are striking disjunctures in the legacies of the Madres and Mothers’ Front (See
Figure 6). While the Madres have been active for four decades, are visible domestically and internationally, as well as widely remembered, the combined branches of the Mothers’ Front were active for only seven years, and the terms of their visibility and remembrance differ as well. While active, both branches of Mothers’ Front were visible domestically. However, the groups were never “seen” internationally. Moreover, the Mothers’ Front has been overlooked
429 in terms of leaving an imprint on Sri Lankan popular culture, public art and other forms of memorialization, suggesting that they are apparently forgotten by the general public. Notably, those in the human rights and women’s movements of Sri Lanka do recall the Mothers’ Front
(Thiruchandran 2012, Samuel 2006, de Alwis 2001, 2004, 2012, de Mel, 2001, 2003). However, within these movements, the Mothers’ Front is not as well-known or as appreciated as it might be. One of the aims of my project is to highlight the Mothers’ Front and to promote their legacy in Sri Lankan, South Asian and global histories, which I do through the previous scholarship of the Mothers’ Front.
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Duration Visibility Remembrance Legacies
Madres 1977-present Domestic visibility Remembered by Positively
contemporary remembered
International movement actors (for their
visibility contributions
Culturally to human
commodified in rights)
public and art
memorials and
popular culture
Mothers’ Front 1984-1987 Domestic visibility Remembered by Poorly
(NMF) many within remembered
No international contemporary (equal or
1990-1994 visibility movements even greater
(SMF) emphasis on
Lacking any public their shorter
or cultural duration
commodification, compared to
including popular their
culture contributions
to human
rights)
431
Figure 6: Disjunctures in duration, visibility, remembrance and legacy of the Madres and Mothers’ Front
Chapters 1 and 2 introduced the project and the literatures upon which this project draws, notably political participation, social movements, political parties, and the politics of memory and transitional justice. Chapter 2 makes the case for the possibilities of political motherhood as a form of women’s participation, because, on balance, its benefits outweigh its drawbacks and because these drawbacks can be addressed through feminist (and other progressive) interventions.
In Chapter 3, after tracing the histories of the Argentine period of state conflict and Sri
Lanka’s civil war—both noted for enforced disappearances—I outlined three factors that led to a similar outcome of political motherhood movements in the two cases. I suggested that the reasons for this are because political motherhood: (a) provided cover to women activists operating in politically hostile environments, which mitigated some of the societal and state backlashes to women’s organizing, (b) offered an accessible political participation, which appealed to many women and (c) provided a framing device that found broad resonance among many in both Argentine and Sri Lankan society, and for the Madres, resonated internationally. The emphasis of this chapter highlighted out how diverse countries—different in terms of geography, history and societal characteristics—each saw the rise of motherhood movements. In Chapter 4, I explored the histories of the Madres and Mothers’ Front, emphasizing their differences in duration, visibility and remembrance, which is outlined in
Figure 6.
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According to Fernando Bosco (2001, 2006, 2007), emotional connections constructed among members of the Madres account for the organization’s longevity through their
“capitaliz[ing] on the existence of a geographically extensive [social] network of embedded ties sustained by affective bonds” (Bosco 2006, 352). The relationships that have sustained the
Madres—since 1986 as two branches—for over 40 years, are created and re-created each time the women join to circle the Plaza de Mayo during their weekly marches (Bosco 2006). Bosco
(2004), and earlier Jennifer Schirmer (1994), have noted the sacred space of the Plaza de Mayo and the ritual act of circling. Bosco and Schirmer draw connections to how the square and the weekly ritual of circling have given a sense of identity to the Madres. The weekly marches sustain “group solidarity, survival and remembering,” reminding the women of all that they have been through (Bosco 2006, 358).
I agree with these assessments from previous scholars but argue for a broader understanding of the context in which the Madres formed, which also impacted the group’s longevity. Both domestically and internationally, the Madres had greater opportunities for their organizing compared to the Mothers’ Front. The political motherhood movements were situated in similar situations as outlined in Chapter 1, which included: 1) internal armed conflicts; 2) nondemocracies with curtailed civil and political rights and liberties and 3) arising before the rise of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which, since 2000, has led to a transnational network of intergovernmental, international human rights and feminist organizations that promote women’s peace activism. However, as overviewed in Chapter 3, at a more refined level of comparison, the groups faced differences in their political environments.
Such differences included: 1) specific types of internal armed conflicts, with Argentina rooted in
433 ideological and class differences and Sri Lanka a protracted ethnic conflict; 2) different kinds of nondemocratic regimes, with Argentina clearly authoritarian as a military dictatorship, while Sri
Lanka could conceivably be labeled an illiberal democracy and 3) Argentina facing a much less diverse society compared to the significant levels of diversity in Sri Lanka. As explained in
Chapters 5-8, I suggest that these factors impacted the Madres and Mothers’ Front in contrasting ways that influenced their respective durations as well levels of visibility domestically and internationally, and impacted how each movement is remembered.
Chapter 5 investigated specific factors that account for differences in the duration of the
Madres and Mothers’ Front. I argue that the shorter durations of the NMF and SMF compared to the Madres are linked with the different a) domestic political opportunity structures available during Sri Lanka’s civil war as compared to Argentina’s period of state terrorism, b) to organizational structures and choices of the groups and c) finally whether international human rights organizations lent support to the groups. This suggests that political motherhood movements should not be assessed in a vacuum but understood in relation to the opportunities afforded at the domestic and international levels, and undergo nuanced assessments of how specific factors—such as organizational structures and maternal frame choices—impact political motherhood movements.
In terms of domestic political opportunities, a significant difference between Argentina’s period of state terrorism and Sri Lanka’s civil war was the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. That the
NMF and SMF reflected the ethnic divide of the war warrants extended discussion. In contrast,
Argentine mothers of the disappeared never had to overcome an ethnic cleavage in their organizing, which made facilitating bonding among members easier. Argentina is an
434 overwhelmingly homogeneous country in which the population almost entirely identifies as white European and Roman Catholic (Lewis 2015). Unlike Sri Lanka’s civil war, in which the
Sinhalese-dominated state was at war with the Tamil community, the period of state terrorism was an ideological and class-based war that targeted citizens for their political beliefs about economic justice. Given the largely homogenous population, there was no major hurdle of racial or ethnic divisions for the Madres to overcome during their organizing (Taylor 1997,
Kohut, Vilella and Julian 2003, Lewis 2015).
Another issue that may explain the easily shared understanding among the Madres is that enforced disappearances were uniformly enacted across the country, regardless of regional or rural/urban differences, from 1976 to 1979. Disappearances consisted of home invasions by night, or daylight kidnappings off the streets (Fisher 1989, Bouvard 1994, Taylor
1997, Kohut, Vilella and Julian 2003, Bosco 2006). During Sri Lanka’s civil war, enforced disappearances occurred in both the north and the south of the country. However, enforced disappearances took place in different periods and under different circumstances that varied by ethnic community (de Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001; Thiruchandran, 2012; Kailasapathy, 2012). For those in the north—mainly Tamils—disappearances were common throughout the war
(Ambrose and Yeo 2018). Tamils were treated as terrorists or potential terrorists by the government and underwent legal torture based on the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) (S. J.
Tambiah 1986, Thiruchandran 2012). Conversely, enforced disappearances in the south were largely confined to the reign of terror, 1987-1991 and were unrelated to ethnic identity in terms of why a person was disappeared. However, because it is mainly Sinhalese living in the south, this community was impacted the most during the reign of terror. The south’s violence
435 was an overhanded reaction of the government to the Sinhalese nationalist movement, the
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front or JVP) who attacked state forces. Those in the south were not targeted for their ethnic identity, unlike the disappeared in the north (de
Mel, 2001; de Alwis, 2001).
A second difference in the opportunity structures facing the Madres and Mothers’ Front is related to the type of regime. The authoritarian political environment in Argentina for the
Madres was a stark contrast from Sri Lanka’s technical democracy (in terms of regular elections). However, the NMF was arguably under an authoritarian regime given the oppression by the state and removal of Tamil’s civil and political rights and later, authoritarian rule under the LTTE. It was this challenging environment that led to their cooptation as no autonomous groups criticizing the LTTE were ultimately able to function in the north following the LTTE’s takeover over 1986-7 (Samuel 2006, Kailasapathy 2012). For the SMF, although there were restrictions on civil and political rights in the south, there were ongoing elections and political parties were operational, meaning it was a freer environment (Samuel 2006).
A final factor that impacted the different domestic opportunity structures of the political motherhood groups was the timing of when the movements’ demands were met. That the SMF achieved their key aims so efficiently gave the group a good reason to disband. In contrast, the
Madres had to organize for decades until their demands for accountability for crimes against humanity finally began to see traction in 2003 (Sutton 2010). In Argentina’s period of state terrorism, under a clearly authoritarian regime, the Madres were dismissed early on by the military dictatorship as “harmless housewives,” nothing more than a nuisance (Bouvard 1994).
When social movement actors are ignored by a regime, this can spur activists’ determination to
436 achieve their political aims, which I suggest may have been the case for the Madres (Cai 2008,
Bishara 2015). Notably, the NMF and SMF were treated as recognized political threats from the beginning of their organizing (de Mel 2001, Kailasapathy 2012).
Part of the reason for the SMF’s quick achievement of their main demands was their connection to the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), which brings in the second major factor that may account for the differences in duration between the Madres and Mothers’ Front: organizational structure and choices (de Alwis 2004). The SLFP did not appear interested in the empowerment of the SMF but mainly sought to use the group as a means of electoral success
(de Alwis 2004, Samuel 2006). Kumudini Samuel (2006) has pointed to the women’s cooptation by the SLFP, or at least of their demands. Likewise, Carlos Fernandez Torne (2017a) has suggested that the government under Chandrika Kumaratunga—a leading politician of the SLFP who won election to the presidency in 1994—made the integration of civil society a part of her ruling strategy, which may have undermined human rights activism. Notably, links between civil society and the state often dilute the aims of civil society (Piven and Cloward 1977, Basu 2003).
The autonomy of the Madres, at the least the time of their catalyzation, may have been a key factor in spurring their ability to continue organizing. Being autonomous, the group had to develop organizing skills to achieve any of their aims, which I suggest in turn helped the women to build political efficacy. The SMF did not have many opportunities designing their organizing since most of this was done by SLFP organizers (de Alwis 2004).
Another organizational factor was each motherhood movement’s choice of maternal frames. In terms of the framing choices of the Madres, NMF and SMF, all utilized what I call the maternal emotionality frame to highlight their plight as mothers of the disappeared. Maternal
437 emotionality plays up emotions, including grief-stricken sorrow but also anger and vengeance.
This was effective in gaining some attention for all three groups, although not all this attention was necessarily positive about the women (Bouvard 1994, de Mel 2001, Kailasapathy 2012).
However, it appears that a maternal authority frame—which portrays women as members of the political system who have political knowledge to participate as legitimate political actors— appears critical to sustaining political motherhood movements. While the NMF used the maternal authority frame, as noted, the political opportunities available to them were severely limited once the LTTE took over the north (Kailasapathy 2012). Given the wider opportunity structure in Argentina, once the Madres adopted the maternal authority frame, the group could then make the case for themselves that they belonged in politics. In contrast, the singular use of the maternal emotionality frame—without the adoption of the maternal authority frame— likely undermined the SMF’s in terms of others’ perceptions of them as knowledgeable political actors, and perhaps even themselves.
Finally, there was a difference in terms of international support for the political motherhood movements. While Madres received extensive support from outside of Argentina, the Mothers’ Front, in contrast, gained little attention from intergovernmental organizations
(IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) (Bouvard 1994). As I argued in
Chapter 6—which focuses on the international visibility of the political motherhood groups— the lack of international resonance of the Mothers’ Front is in part attributable to the Hindu and Buddhist tropes used in their organizing. Conversely, the Madres relied on the image of the
Virgin Mary, the sorrowful mother who mourns the loss of her son, which led to widespread resonance in terms of international visibility. The Virgin Mary is a well-known figure to Western
438 audiences, who due to historical events, predominate within powerful positions of global civil society (Orsi 2001, Katz 2001, Warner 2013, Hopgood 2013). While both the Madres and
Mothers’ Front achieved significant visibility domestically, it is only the Madres which did so at the international level.
Chapter 7 explores the legacy of the Mothers’ Front in the eyes of the Sri Lankan human rights and women’s movements and suggests that despite the criticism of the group for its reliance of political motherhood—which many have suggested led to the cooptation of the
NMF and SMF—I highlighted the need for a more nuanced understanding of social movement activism. Specifically, Chapter 7 argues for reconsidering everyday conversation, when it hinges on political concerns, as political engagement, and if it is oppositional, as part of social movement resistance. This chapter reassesses the legacy of the SMF to appreciate that many of its former members remained mobilized through individual resistance after the SMF disbanded in 1994. The resistance—whether individual or collective—of those women once with the SMF contributed to a counterpublic that disputed the state’s official version of the war. Instead, it remembered the war period’s human rights abuses and prevented the total normalization of the reign of terror, the period under which enforced disappearances led to the founding of the
SMF.
Finally, in Chapter 8, I explore the relationship between political motherhood and feminism and make the case for returning maternal feminism into contemporary feminist politics, arguing that political motherhood’s accessibility and expedience may be a jumping-off point for women’s continued and evolving political participation. Maternal feminism began to fall out of favor in the 1980s with the rise of poststructural and postmodern feminisms, which
439 are concerned with maternalism’s ties to gender essentialism (Butler [1990] 1999, Tong 2013).
However, as Penny Griffin (2015) argues, feminism includes many embodiments and understandings that may not ever align. It is this very fragmentation that provides possibilities for many different kinds of people and their respective forms of participation. I argue that there are possibilities for women’s empowerment in political motherhood while keeping my eyes open to political motherhood’s drawbacks, specifically in terms of gender essentialism—reified views of femininity and masculinity that demand women be feminine and men be masculine and often uphold heteronormativity—and hegemonic nationalism, which promotes the needs of the dominant social group in a society over other social groups. The latter is a critical concern in this project since the SMF was arguably guilty of this oppression. I suggest that the danger of hegemonic nationalism is as present in feminism as political motherhood and push for progressive interventions to prevent nationalism and other fundamentalisms, as well as gender essentialism and heteronormativity.
To sum up, over the previous eight chapters, I have sought to interrogate the histories of the Madres and Mothers’ Front, to come to grips with the differences in these movements’ duration, visibility and remembrance. I urge social movement actors, especially those involved in human rights and feminist movements, to check assumptions about the duration of political motherhood movements, which may have more to do with the limitations of political conditions facing motherhood groups than with the use of political motherhood itself. I seek to promote connections among women engaged with political motherhood and actors involved in human rights and women’s movements to bolster women’s political empowerment and to hold one another accountable in avoiding heteronormativity and hegemonic nationalism.
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The political motherhood movements today
The Madres’s presence in contemporary domestic Argentine politics is widespread, as attested to their regular supporters who join the women on their weekly marches around the
Plaza de Mayo. Likewise, the group makes frequent appearances at political and social events, including popular cultural events, and the activists continue to speak out on issues that on the surface appear only tangentially related to the period of the state terrorism (Provéndola 2019).
In 2018, the women of the Madres protested the G-20 summit held in Buenos Aires, reiterating the demand for the return of their disappeared children, as well as protesting growing poverty and calling out corruption by international financial institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (Booth 2018). Many young people, including those not even born during the period of state terrorism, continue to be inspired by the women, and not just in Argentina. The
Puerto Rican rock rappers Calle 13, known for their politically charged lyrics, have paid tribute to the group, as has the Irish band U2, who from 1987 onward has performed their song
“Mothers of the Disappeared” on concert tours (Meganoticias 2019, Schulz 2019). Moreover, groups of activist mothers in Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and Argentina use political motherhood in a fashion after the Madres. In turn, members of the Madres have reciprocated by lending their support to many of these mother groups, including the Mothers of Soacha in
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Colombia194 and Nicaragua’s Mothers of April195 (Gallagher 2013, Sherman 2019, Green 2019,
Laje 2017).
The Mothers’ Front influences Sri Lankan postconflict domestic politics more indirectly.
Beginning in early 2017, in the Killinochchi district in northern Sri Lanka, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, a group of Tamil women using political motherhood, have been organizing.
The group holds regular protests to demand the return of more recent disappeared Tamil men, women, children and even some infants, taken in the latter stages of the Sri Lankan war in 2009
(Disappeared 2018, JDS 2019). Many mainstream Sinhala and English newspapers have ignored the women’s actions or have failed to cover the group in-depth (Fernando 2018). The media has reported on the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, yet most with no mention of the history of the Mothers’ Front.196 There is no direct connection between the two groups, yet the
Mothers’ Front and Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared make use of the same maternal framings. While some of those involved in Sri Lanka’s women’s movement remember the
Mothers’ Front in scholarship on the history of feminism in the country, this work typically
194 The Mothers of Soacha formed during Colombia’s ongoing civil conflict. In 2008, state security forces illegally murdered nineteen male youths from Soacha, a neighborhood outside of Colombia’s capital of Bogotá and home to socioeconomically marginalized working class Colombians. These young men were falsely portrayed by state forces as armed guerrillas in a practice known as “false positives” (Angelo 2018). The mothers of many of these young men organized the Mothers of Soacha to struggle against state violence, obtain justice for their murdered children and call for investigations for the at least 4,700 false positives officially identified (Gallagher 2013, Angelo 2018). 195 The Mothers of April formed in April 2018, during the ongoing protest movement against the government of Daniel Ortega. The protests have been led by young people, mainly university students (Sherman 2019). At least 325 mainly young people have been killed by the government in protests and both the media and human rights groups have been repressed into silence by the government. There have also hundreds arrested by the government and held as political prisoners (Sherman 2019). 196 The only publications that I have been able to find in English that mention the connection of the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared to the Mothers’ Front is a piece by Team Roar entitled “Mothers of the Disappeared and Civic Responsibility” (Roar 2017) and a blog on reproductive justice by Sachini Perera (2018) on Resurj – Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice’s website. Notably, I can only look for English language-based publications.
442 mentions the group in passing (Wickremagamage 1999, Pinto Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002,
Y. Tambiah 2002, Menon 2004). Four scholars have given extensive attention to the group— whom I have cited throughout this dissertation—but none so far have conducted a book-length study on the group. In contrast to many of the histories of Argentina’s period of state terrorism, which may mention the Madres, histories of Sri Lanka’s war do not mention either branch of the Mothers’ Front. Likewise, the general public and the media have largely forgotten the legacy of the Mothers’ Front and there are no visual remembrances of the Mothers’ Front in
Colombo in terms of public art, memorialization or other popular cultural representations.
Those with Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared continue to organize in the north, mainly by regularly sitting along the side of the dusty K-9 Highway in Killinochchi under the hot sun, waving photos of their missing children to cars along the way, as well as by holding other events, including a protest around International Children’s Day in October 2019 (Frayer 2019,
JDS 2019). Six women from the group traveled to the February 2019 meeting of the UN’s
Human Rights Council in Geneva, to draw attention to their disappeared loved ones and the lack of transitional justice in Sri Lanka’s postconflict period (PD 2019, TGTE 2019). As of now, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have not picked up wide support in the south of Sri
Lanka or abroad outside of the Tamil community and Tamil diaspora (PEARL, The Ongoing
Search for Sri Lanka’s Disappeared, 2020). That the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist regime of
Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power in 2019 indicates that there would be little national support for minorities ’ concerns. However, it is concerning that the transnational networks associated with Women, Peace and Security (WPS) based on the UN Security Council Resolution
1325 that promotes women’s roles in peacebuilding and peacekeeping have not highlighted the
443
Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. While the group does not explicitly identify itself as a women’s peace group, their efforts for transitional justice align with the intention of peacebuilding and they are women. It may be the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared’s lack of
Christian symbolism in their maternal framing that is hindering their resonance at the international level, an indication of the continued predominance of the global North in international human rights organizations.
Transitional justice commitments were made by the previous government headed by
Maithripala Sirisena (2015-2019). These commitments included the Office of Missing Persons
(OMP), a permanent government office to locate the disappeared, and Office of Reparations, both of which are part of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms (SCRM).
Established in 2015 under the Prime Minister’s Office, the OMP and Office of Reparations have been “tasked with the design and implementation of Sri Lanka's reconciliation mechanisms”
(SCRM, About n.d.). Calling for the return of their disappeared, the Tamil Mothers of the
Disappeared’s first actions in 2017 demanded the opening of the OMP, which had been promised in 2015. It was only thanks to the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared that the OMP was finally launched in March 2018 (Groundviews, One Year in Kilinochchi: Tracking State
Commitments against Protests by Families of the Disappeared 2018, Singh 2018, Disappeared
2018). However, even at the end of 2019, the OMP had not yet resolved a single case of enforced disappearance, making it show rather than substance (Ayres 2019). Moreover, the
OMP has no authority to hold perpetrators accountable, being rather “a truth-seeking investigative agency,” with its mission specifying that “the findings of the OMP shall not give rise to any criminal or civil liability.” This means that any investigations conducted by the OMP
444 will be ineligible to be used to bring charges against anyone for committing a war crime (SCRM,
OMP: The Facts n.d.). Similarly, the Office of Reparations, created by a 2018 bill to provide compensation for the families of the more recently disappeared, is as flawed as the OMP since it lacks independence and decision-making (Guardian, Tamils Must Wait Another Two Years For
Land Returns If Premadasa Wins Election 2019).
The slow process of transitional justice in Sri Lanka has begun to backtrack rapidly due to the return of the infamous Rajapaksas to power. The former army colonel and defense minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa is now president. Gotabaya is the brother of former president
Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005-2015), one of the co-founders of the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), who oversaw the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Mahinda is now Sri Lanka’s prime minister
(Ramachandran 2019).197 Before discussing the politics of memory in Sri Lanka regarding its civil war, which appears increasingly pessimistic in terms of human rights, democracy and justice, I first explore the situation in Argentina. It was once a wholly discouraging situation of transitional justice in Argentina, but thanks to the work of human rights groups such as the
Madres, there has been a shift in favor of human rights and accountability.
197 The Rajapaksa brothers are responsible for significant human rights violations against both LTTE fighters and thousands of Tamil civilians. Both were behind the military’s operations during the war, which included ignoring an LTTE surrender, instead having state forces attack, and entrapping civilians and failing to protect them from military attacks (Ratner 2012). However, the men are upheld as “war heroes” by many Sinhalese Buddhists (Ramachandran 2019). In 1994, when Chandrika Kumaratunga of SLFP came to power, Mahinda Rajapaksa was appointed a cabinet minister whereupon he lost ties with the SMF, the very institution that had launched his rise in politics (Basu 2005). While president from 2005 to 2015, Mahinda Rajapaksa drew heavy criticism for his authoritarian rule and most notably for the brutal way he ended the civil war, as well as his efforts to prevent transitional justice that would promote remembering and accountability (Ratner 2012).
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The Politics of Memory in Argentina
The Madres captured the attention of human rights activists outside of Argentina throughout the 1980s and 1990s. While the Madres had been previously vilified by many
Argentines for their stance against the Malvinas War—which was deemed anti-patriotic—with growing dissatisfaction with the military dictatorship after the loss of Malvinas War, so too grew crowds of Madres supporters.198 Citizens congregated to march with the women to demand the end of the military government and the group was upheld as longtime defenders of human rights and democracy (Bouvard 1994).
Yet in the immediate postconflict period, during the transition to democracy that began in December 1983, the group’s demands for accountability against the military dictatorship were widely panned by most Argentines who wanted to forget the events of the past seven years (Bouvard 1994). The Madres, who separated into two organizational lines in 1986, continued their activism to remember the period of state terrorism by demanding transitional justice in terms of remembering and accountability. The women sought to put all members of the armed forces who committed human rights abuses on trial, create spaces to tell their stories of loss, fashion memorials to the disappeared and to demand economic reparations for families of the disappeared (Agosín 1990, Bouvard 1994, Taylor 1997).199 Yet these demands were met with broad condemnation by many Argentines who came to view the group as
198 The Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands) are claimed by both Argentina and Great Britain. Currently under British rule, the military dictatorship sought to claim the islands but were defeated by the British in 1982 (Bouvard 1994). 199 The two lines—the Línea Fundadora and the Asociación—developed for several reasons, including personality conflicts, but notably due to a split over how to collectively remember the military dictatorship. Both lines sought retributive justice through national trials but differed over how to promote restorative and reparative justice (Bouvard 1994). See Chapter 4 for full discussion.
446 lacking in political acumen, too “ignorant” to realize that the country needed to “move past” the bad years of the military government. This was the predominant discourse at the time of the transitional government, carried out by the first democratic regimes, and was certainly supported by those in the military, who sought to forget the period of state terrorism. It was also the dominant view of the general public throughout the initial decade after the transition to democracy (Bouvard 1994). Moreover, feminists working in Latin American area studies were critical of the Madres in the aftermath of the end of the period of state terrorism. This came in part due to the women’s refusal to collaborate with state actors, which was seen as a critical to effective organizing in a democracy, as well as for their continued reliance on political motherhood, which was increasingly disfavored by feminists for its supposed connections to gender essentialism, heteronormativity and transphobia (Feijoo 1994, Jaquette 1994, Taylor
1997).200
However, after 1995, in what is known as the post-memory boom in Argentina, the political environment became increasingly conducive to support for the Madres’s long-time efforts to remember the period of state terrorism. By this point, enough time had passed for many Argentines to start to face the past (Gates-Madsen 2016). The younger generation in
Argentina has been more open to learning about and recalling Argentina’s past than many who lived through this period. This is best demonstrated in the group Hijos por la Identidad y la
Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Children for Identity and Justice, against Oblivion and
Silence) (HIJOS), a civic organization closely tied to the Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de
200 It was only the Asociación branch that avoided working with state officials or political parties at this time (Bouvard 1994).
447
Mayo that was formed by the children of the disappeared. Like the Madres and the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo, HIJOS seeks to remember the period of state terrorism and the disappeared in a way that recalls the past as a lesson to learn from and to guide understanding of human rights and democracy in the present (Feitlowitz, 1998; Seidel, 2011; A Time to Fight: HIJOS
Speaks Out for the Disappeared of Argentina, 2013; Arditti, 1999). Slowly, since 1995, Argentina has come to embrace the politics of memory around remembering. During 2019’s National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice on 24 March, which marks the start of the military dictatorship in 1976, an estimated 1 million people congregated in Buenos Aires, concentrated around the Plaza de Mayo, to recall the past (Wadhwa, In Argentina, Over a Million March in
Honor of Victims of US-Backed Military Dictatorship, 2019). I experienced it firsthand, caught up in the choking crowds. While the day’s events were well attended, it is largely attended by those on the political left. The political right seeks to return to a politics of forgetting.
Today’s incorporation the Madres into Argentine politics and cultural commodification is seen through street art murals and taggings featuring the Madres or symbols related to them, as well as in artifacts symbolizing the group from t-shirts to earrings to pañuelos (scarves), which are featured throughout Buenos Aires. While these symbolic artifacts could provide evidence of the women’s status as outsiders to politics, I sense that this is an indication of how domestic politics is tied to the legacy of the group. Movement actors appropriate the group’s iconic white scarves to inform their own understandings of the political past, present and future of Argentina. This is no better demonstrated than in the mural of the indigenous warrior mother Madres figure who represents a Latin American identity rooted in indigenous and
Afrodescendant rights movements (Pineda 2018). This is in stark contrast to the military regime
448 of 1976-1983, which sought to portray Argentina as symbolically part of Europe, a representation of Western values that upheld Christianity, capitalism and all that is “civilized”
(Taylor 1997, Navarro 2001, Kohut, Vilella and Julian 2003). Other important visual sites of memory in Argentina that attest to the Madres include the Memorial Museum in Buenos Aires, formerly the infamous detention center, the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA), which houses hundreds of art projects made by artists from around the country that utilize images of the Madres, mainly taken from newspapers, to create visual representations of the memory of the disappeared, the period of state terrorism and the women of the Madres (See
Photo 16). Another major monument to the period of the state terrorism is the Memory Park, designed in part by the Línea Fundadora branch of the Madres, which is a major part of their efforts to remember the past (Bosco 2004, Levey and Lessa 2014).
Photo 16: “Madres” by Marta Badano. Undated.
449
The women of the Madres are a staple in Argentine politics and part of the cultural landscape of Argentina. This is true despite the evolution of the group that has moved it far afield of their earliest visual representation as nonviolent, sorrowful mothers like the Virgin
Mary. In stark contrast to Christian ideals of forgiveness and suffering in silence, the Madres has come to embody the decidedly hostile slogan of “No forgiveness” as well as the “Memory,
Truth, Justice” saying, which promote accountability (Gates-Madsen 2016, Pineda 2018). With time, the women of the Madres have become as vocal and angry as the SMF in their representation of political motherhood. It has evolved to include violent threats by the president of the Asociación line, Hebe de Bonafini who displayed her obvious disdain for former
President Mauricio Macri, which manifested in less than ideally “feminine” ways, particularly those Christian ideals of turning the other cheek. Bonafini threatened to blow up the Casa
Rosada, the executive building that lies just behind the Plaza de Mayo, over her anger for Macri and claimed that this would be just (McCay 2017).
Macri, of the right-leaning Republican Proposal, in power from 2015-2019, has a very different vision of the politics of memory than the Madres. His views fit with the earlier period in the transition to democracy when the Argentine governments sought to forget the past in order to move on (Bouvard 1994). Macri had publicly stated that there were likely “only” 9,000 victims who lost their lives under the military dictatorship rather than the 30,000 that human rights activists and scholars claim. Additionally, Macri and his administration met with those in support of the two devils theory, which holds that both the dictatorship junta of the period of state terrorism and leftist “subversives” are equally responsible for the violence of that period
(Politi 2017). Those within Argentina’s human rights movement, the Madres included, have
450 viewed such downplaying of the military’s responsibility during the period of state terrorism as a form of whitewashing history with ominous implications for Argentina’s and the world’s future (Goñi, 2017).
However, in October 2019, Alberto Fernández of the Peronist party Partido Justicialista
(Justice Party), was elected to the presidency over the incumbent Macri.201 Fernández’s vice president is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, former president (2007-2015) and a widely popular figure among the working classes, who is associated with the Asociación branch of the Madres
(Bio 2017, Londoño and Politi 2019). Fernández’s government runs counter to the recent trend in Latin America, which has shifted sharply to the political right. This is most aptly seen in
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who denounces “gender ideology,” a discourse that targets women’s rights and sexual and gender minorities rights, and who has promoted the destruction of the
Amazon rainforest at an unprecedented pace (Butler 2019, Evans 2019, Moreira 2020).202
Fernández has aligned himself with feminists, proclaiming his desire to include them in “a new social contract” with the government, alongside environmentalists. At a speech in February
2020, President Fernández wore a dark green tie to symbolize his alignment with the Argentine feminist movement, which initially adopted the color to symbolize the fight for access to abortion. Green scarves—an homage to the white scarves worn by the Madres—now broadly represent feminism in the country (Conn 2018, Timerman 2020).
201 Both branches of the Madres were vocal about their opposition to the Macri government (McCay 2017, Goñi 2017). The group celebrated the end of Marci’s administration with a 24-hour march of resistance around the Plaza de Mayo, which also served to welcome the incoming Fernández government (G. News 2019). 202 Originating from the Vatican in response to UN events, the 1994 Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and 1995’s Fourth World Conference on Women, gender ideology has come to define a global ring-wing movement that paints women’s rights and LGBTQI rights as undermining biological/natural complementary gender roles and sex differences as well as the natural institution of the nuclear family (Kane 2018).
451
One-fifth of Fernández’s executive cabinet are women and a well-known feminist lawyer, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, heads the newly created Women, Gender and Diversity
Ministry, a new part of the country’s national women’s machinery. The feminist economist
Mercedes D’Alessandro works under the ministry of economy and Dora Barrancos, a feminist theorist, is an advisor to the president. A WhatsApp group called “Women Governing,” made up of some 150 women working in higher-level government positions, provides a virtual collaborative space to discuss policy ideas and strategies (Timerman 2020). Fernández has also spoken out in support of #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess), a feminist campaign that is working to prevent gender-based violence, especially the issue of femicides, and he has noted that women face the burden of performing the majority of care work (G 2018, Timerman 2020). Since taking office, Fernández has toned down his support for abortion, instead promoting compromise between pro-choice and anti-abortion positions. However, there are rumors of a bill Fernández is expected to send to the legislature, which would legalize abortion (Timerman 2020).
The Madres will likely have some influence in the new government given their connections with Vice President de Kirchner. The Madres gained considerable attention in
December 2019. The women hosted Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, at their weekly march around the Plaza de Mayo. Following controversial elections in November 2019,
Morales fled Bolivia, first being hosted in Mexico and now Argentina (Times, Evo Morales Joins
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo For Weekly March 2019, Times, Thousands March in Buenos Aires to
Support Evo Morales 2019).203 By inviting Morales, who has promoted indigenous rights as well
203 Morales, who served as president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, was part of the “pink tide,” the leftward shift of governments across Latin America, starting in 1998 when Hugo Chávez came into power in Venezuela. The pink tide began to peter out about 2009, with a regional move back toward the political right. Pink tide governments
452 as stood up against the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the US, the Madres emphasize their stance against imperialism and support for economic and social justice as well as indigenous rights (Carroll 2006, Gonzalez 2019, Londoño 2019). With the left leaning
Fernández in office and Vice President de Kirchner’s connections with the Asociación, the politics of memory in Argentina looks to shift further in line with the version of the past promoted by both branches of the Madres. This vision seeks to remember the past rather than brush it under the rug and promotes accountability for historical human rights abuses. It also seeks justice for the present, with the Madres continuing to promote economic and gender justice. In a period of rising global authoritarianism and right-wing populist backlash against women’s rights—as well as sexual and gender minorities rights, religious minority and immigrant and migrant rights—Argentina is a bright spot in a world that is looking increasingly dark in terms of human rights and democracy. However, the 2015-2019 election of Macri points to the need for continued vigilance of the politics of memory, which can quickly shift from remembering to forgetting.
The Politics of Forgetting in Sri Lanka
While there is a growing complexity to the politics of memory in Argentina that promises continued accountability and remembering the period of state terrorism, Sri Lanka’s politics of memory exists in a vastly different form. This is attributable to the recent conclusion
were meant in part to address economic inequality by pulling away from the neoliberal policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund and similar intergovernmental and international development organizations (Gonzalez 2019). The pink tide has been linked with women’s and indigenous rights. However, Amy Lind (2012) argued that while there were moves toward women’s and indigenous rights and greater economic equality, the discourse of pink tide remained heteronormative and overlooked the rights of sexual minorities.
453 of the armed conflict, which was only in 2009. In converse to the role played by human rights movement actors in bringing an end to Argentina’s period of state terrorism, the Sinhalese- dominated state defeated the Tamil Tigers by military force and with international assistance, primarily from China. While the war is officially over, the ethnic conflict continues in an unarmed stage between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. There is an additional growing ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and Muslim communities that has made Muslims increasingly vulnerable (Hashim 2013, Fuller and Rizwie 2019).
The brutal end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which included violations by both the Sinhalese- dominated government and the LTTE, has not yet brought justice. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was president at the end of the war, and directed the state’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers as well as the killing of an estimated 40,000 civilians, refused to allow the UN to conduct a full inquiry into the government’s actions. This caused international condemnation, although Russia and China protected Sri Lanka’s position through their privileges as permanent members of the UN
Security Council (Ratner 2012). The Sri Lankan government created its own official inquiry into the abuses of the war, known as the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
However, this was a mechanism that justified the government’s actions in the final stages of the war, including its failure to protect civilians (Ratner 2012, Höglund 2019).
In the immediate postconflict period, Rajapaksa continued to rely on the Sri Lankan military, an institution that is overwhelmingly Sinhalese, which was tasked with postwar reconstruction. Putting the military in charge of postconflict reconstruction in the north—which was the main theatre of the war—resulted in the continued repression of the Tamil community
(Goodhand 2012, Hashim 2013, Stone 2014). For example, Tamil women continued to report
454 rape by members of the military long after the war ended (Pinto-Jayawardena and Guthrie
2016). Moreover, the military oversaw a Sinhalaization of the north, which included altering
Tamil street names to Sinhala names. This exacerbated tensions between the Tamil community and the Sinhalese-dominated state, as well as with the Sinhalese community (Thiranagama
2011, Stone 2014). Rather than tempering Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist discourses to work toward postconflict reconciliation, which would have begun to deal with the root causes of the
Tamil community’s complaints against the state, Rajapaksa designed a national policy of economic development that he argued would alleviate Tamil-Sinhalese relations (Bastian 2013,
Wijewardene and Peiris 2016).
Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism remained widespread at the state level in the immediate postwar period (Desasiri 2016). As part of Rajapaksa’s postwar policy orientation, his government pressured particular women—Sinhalese Buddhist women—to have more children, as well as to work outside the home less often, to focus on their “primary duty” to raise children. In 2013, the government issued a ban against permanent forms of contraception, a move that was understood to promote higher birthrates among the Sinhalese community.
This is because, at the same time, there were reports of forced sterilization against Tamil women. There were also growing fears among many Sinhalese Buddhists of the Muslim community’s high birth rate (Kodikara 2014).
The 2015 election of Maithripala Sirisena, who ran on the promise of the reinstatement of the rule of law to strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka garnered significant support from the country’s minority communities, although the majority Sinhalese mainly supported the SLFP
(Uyangoda 2015). Sirisena made several promises regarding transitional justice, most of which
455 have not been fully implemented. These included: the Office of Missing Persons (OMP), which is a permanent government office to search for the missing, a government office to distribute reparations for those who have experienced injustices, a truth commission and national trials for those who have committed crimes against humanity (Dibbert 2017). Sirisena did not promote devolution—greater autonomy over local matters—for the Tamil-majority areas of the country during his election campaign. Devolution is widely seen as the best way to resolve the ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated state and the Tamil community (ICES 2006,
Hashim 2013, Groundviews, Breaking Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State 2017, Uyangoda 2015).
The slow movement toward transitional justice happened largely as the result of activists’ demands, including those of the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared whose protesting began in February 2017 (Groundviews, What You Need To Know: Facts on the Enforced
Disappearances Bill 2017, Groundviews, One Year in Kilinochchi: Tracking State Commitments against Protests by Families of the Disappeared 2018, Disappeared 2018). After over a year of daily protesting by the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared, the government launched the long- promised OMP in March 2018, which began holding its first activities two months later in May
(Singh 2018). The office is only the first piece in the four-part transitional justice process to heal the country after the war. The establishment of a government office for truth and reconciliation and a special court to try those accused of war crimes remains to be seen (HRW 2018). The
Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have been bitterly disappointed with the slow pace of the
OMP and have continued their daily protests under harsh conditions, sitting under the sun for hours day after day. Many protestors suffer from the enduring impacts of the war, including
456 poverty and lack of adequate food, which makes their continued activism all the more impressive (Fernando, Disappearances in Sri Lanka: 500 Days of Protests 2018). The Tamil
Mothers of the Disappeared have been demanding that the state release information on those who have suffered enforced disappearance. In total, these protests have lasted over 1,000 days since their start in February 2017. At least 53 relatives of the disappeared have died during these protests due to the harsh conditions (PEARL, The Ongoing Search for Sri Lanka’s
Disappeared, 2020).
However slow progress has been on achieving the mechanisms of transitional justice, progress on the devolution of power from the national government to the provinces—notably the north and east, where Tamils predominate—has been far slower (Groundviews, Breaking
Down the Interim Report: On Proposals for Devolution and the State 2017, Uyangoda 2018).
The government has made promises of devolution in the past—most notably under Chandrika
Kumaratunga’s government (1994-2005)—although this has not been a part of the mainstream since Mahinda Rajapaksa became president in 2005 (Bastian 2013, Wijewardene and Peiris
2016). The return of the Rajapaksas to power at the end of 2019 does not bode well for a transitional justice that promotes remembering and accountability, nor for devolution
(Ramachandran 2019, Desasiri 2016). In January 2020, in a move attributed to sweeping under the rug atrocities committed by the government during the civil war, President Gotabaya
Rajapaksa proclaimed that all disappeared persons are dead, bluntly stating “I can’t bring back the dead” and indicating the search for the disappeared was over. The government will soon distribute 24,000 death certificates to families of the disappeared. This pronouncement has not been well received by many in the Tamil community. Some maintain that they will never accept
457 that the disappeared are dead and others have declared that they will not accept their loved ones’ deaths until they have a body (Abi-Habib and Bastians 2020).
In addition to the president, officials with the Terrorism Investigation Department of the government have been out in force to pressure families of the disappeared to end their efforts to locate missing loved ones. Many leaders involved in the protests demanding that the state investigate enforced disappearances have been interrogated by security forces, who have used intimidation tactics to pressure them to cease organizing (Guardian, Sri Lanka’s TID Attempt to
End Disappearances Protests through Interrogations 2020). President Rajapaksa has also declared that the government will be “reviewing” the Parliamentary act that created the OMP.
While any follow-up actions to this review are only speculations, Tamil civil society groups are concerned that this will lead to stripping what little authority the OMP has. Already critical of the OMP, groups like the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have spoken out against the inability of the OMP to file charges against perpetrators of enforced disappearances. Yet changes through the executive review might mean that even the authority to report what happened regarding an enforced disappearance could be removed (Guardian, OMP Urges
Government to Have 'Wide Consultations with Families of Disappeared' 2020).
Despite these recent setbacks, it should be recalled that it took Argentina over a decade before the stirrings against a politics of forgetting began, a process that remains ongoing. At the beginning of the postconflict period, top leaders of the military dictatorship were freed from prison and the government chose to forego charges of human rights abuses against lower-level military personnel. There was widespread support to move on from the period of state terrorism by silencing any mentions of those events (Gates-Madsen 2016, Bouvard 1994). Such
458 lack of accountability and collective forgetting remained the dominant preference in Argentina before the situation began to shift with Argentina’s memory-boom. This was unexpectedly launched in 1995, about twelve years after the transition to democracy, when Adolfo Scilingo, a former captain in the Argentine Navy, proclaimed on national television his participation in the murders of many of the disappeared. Scilingo brought up the issue not over remorse for his actions, but rather anger that many career officers in the military had been denied promotions because of their participation in murders or torture during the period of state terrorism. In this confession, Scilingo indicated his perception of non-culpability in any crime (Werth 2010).
Scilingo’s declaration ultimately led a belief among the growing numbers of Argentines that discussing the period of state terrorism was necessary, as was seeking accountability against perpetrators (Gates-Madsen 2016).
It remains to be seen what small or unexpected action might launch a similar memory boom in Sri Lanka. The recent admission by Anthony Fernando, a witness (in fact a driver complicit in the acts) of enforced disappearances, was apparently not the moment that would launch a shift in Sri Lanka’s politics of memory. Fernando claims that he witnessed the kidnapping hundreds of Tamils and saw their bodies fed to crocodiles in a swamp in the town of
Monaragala, which came at the behest of then defense secretary (and current president)
Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Fernando also claimed that these actions were known by members of the army and police (Guardian, ‘We Fed Bodies to Crocodiles’ Admits Driver of Sri Lanka’s White
Vans 2019). Despite this pronouncement, which was made at a press conference in early
November 2019 before the presidential election, voters in Sinhalese-dominated areas of the country elected Rajapaksa as president by a majority (Guardian, ‘We Fed Bodies to Crocodiles’
459
Admits Driver of Sri Lanka’s White Vans, 2019; PEARL, The Ongoing Search for Sri Lanka’s
Disappeared, 2020).
The Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared are a source of hope in Sri Lanka’s marginalized politics of memory movement that seeks to remember the atrocities of this period and to ensure that there is accountability for these abuses. The Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared’s status as a grassroots organization committed to remembering the past in a way that promotes justice invokes the Madres, NMF and SMF. While Sri Lanka’s current government promotes
Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, tacitly allowing for attacks and other forms of hostility against
Muslims, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared seek justice for the past and present. Although the situation looks grave—and it is—the Argentine experience suggests that a relatively minor event can trigger a major ripple of change in the politics of memory.
Looking forward: Supporting political motherhood movements
In this dissertation, I assessed the legacy-making of political motherhood movements by other social movement actors (especially of feminist and human rights organizations). I suggest that perceptions of these other social movement actors contribute to either upward or downward spirals of duration, visibility and remembrance that in turn impact the legacies of political motherhood movements. The disjunctures of duration, visibility and remembering that mark the Madres and the Mothers’ Front respectively speak to the impact of legacy-making.
While the Madres are more widely appreciated than the Mothers’ Front, both branches of the
Mothers’ Front contributed significantly to furthering their members’ political participation and drew attention to human rights abuses. The political efforts of the NMF and SMF contributed to
460 the ongoing counterpublic that continue to work to preserve the memories of the civil war in a vastly different way compared to the official story (ICES 2019, HRW 2018, Fernando,
Disappearances in Sri Lanka: 500 Days of Protests 2018).
Part of the intention of this project is to remember the Mothers’ Front example of women’s groups that made a difference to the lives of their members and other Sri Lankans and who impacted politics in Sri Lanka. I suggest that accounting for their history is integral to understanding the Sri Lankan civil war. The NMF highlighted the abuse of the state against the
Tamil community and saved at least 500 young people from being permanently disappeared.
Moreover, the group provided desperately needed assistance as aid to the Tamil community in the mid-1980s and the rank and file continued this work after the NMF officially disbanded
(Kailasapathy 2012). The leaders of the NMF drew attention to the gendered nationalism pressures of the Tamil Tigers against Tamil women, pushing for women’s rights (de Mel 2003).
The SMF contributed to the election of Sri Lanka’s first woman president who made peace talks a priority. The group also ensured that families of the disappeared in the south received economic reparations and that government commissions officially concluded that their children were wrongfully disappeared (meaning that they were innocent of participation in the JVP uprising) (Samuel 2006). The SMF branch also mobilized some 25,000 women, the largest mass mobilization in modern Sri Lankan history. After the SMF disbanded, many women moved into other political organizing in the NGO sector while others kept alive the memories of the disappeared (de Mel 2001).204
204 Kumudini Samuel, interview with the author, 25 October 2017. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
461
Contextualizing the few political opportunities available to the NMF given the ethnic conflict and understanding how connections to the SLFP likely disincentivized the SMF to stay organized is important to understanding the shorter durations of the two branches of the
Mothers’ Front, along with the lack of international support as well as maternal framing choices of these movements. Today’s organizing by the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared indicates the strong need to recall past and present political motherhood movements as a means to appreciate the successes and the mistakes of these efforts and to apply these lessons. These insights can serve as a corrective for current and future political motherhood movements. By ensuring that women’s organizing is recognized in a nuanced way that appreciates and critiques its actions and is incorporated broadly into scholarship and popular culture, the legacies of political motherhood movements can guide current activists.
Ethical concerns regarding political motherhood remain, particularly in contexts where women’s experiences vary by issues that are at the root of the conflict, as was the case with the
Mothers’ Front. Yet political motherhood’s usefulness in providing strategic cover to activists, its appeal to many different women and the possibility of evolution in women’s political thinking through political motherhood warrants closer attention by those who seek women’s political empowerment. The Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared are already organized, actively engaged in seeking postconflict transitional justice for Sri Lankans that provide remembering and accountability. Supporting these women is important to their continued organizing. The group has had some success, including in seeing to the establishment of the OMP, which is meant to address enforced disappearances (Singh 2018). While the OMP has not yet been used to provide justice for the families of the disappeared, it holds this potential. Likely it will take
462 civil society to pressure the current Sri Lankan government to run the OMP as it was intended.
For now, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime is working to manipulate the OMP to rid the government of any obligations to the families of the disappeared (Abi-Habib and Bastians
2020). Now is the time for social movement actors dedicated to justice to support these activists.
However, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared appear to lack widespread support from Sinhalese-majority human rights and women’s organizations to provide solidarity in the efforts. The mothers of the disappeared seek to locate their children if alive and see to their return, or to provide the next best thing (which is never enough): reparations for pain and suffering, restitution in the form of the government’s admission of—and apology for— wrongdoing and accountability for those who committed the crimes. Part of the reason for the lack of support among domestic women’s groups may be that the Tamil Mothers of the
Disappeared—in contrast to the NMF—have not made specific gender-related claims. The NMF claimed support for women’s reproductive control and argued against the LTTE’s gendered prescriptions for women’s dress and behavior (de Mel 2003, Kailasapathy 2012).
What I stress is that the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have not received visibility at the international level, despite meeting with members of the UNHRC in Geneva in 2020 and being documented by Human Rights Watch (TGTE 2019, HRW, Sri Lanka: Families of
‘Disappeared’ Threatened 2020). Amnesty International has called attention to the families of the disappeared, although they have not named the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared (TG
2020). I hope that the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) transnational networks linked through
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on WPS, can lend support to the Tamil Mothers of the
463
Disappeared—whose efforts are contributing to peace—and that major Western newspapers can cover the women’s efforts as was so willingly done for the Madres in the 1970s and 1980s.
Notably, one transnational women’s organization—the Realizing Sexual and Reproductive
Justice (RESURJ)—which works across the diverse regions of Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin
America, the Middle East and Europe, mentioned the group in 2018, but this organization is outside of WPS networks (Perera 2018).
The decades of organizing by Madres, active for over 40 years, provided the space for evolution in the women’s political thinking. The Madres are no longer concerned only with the fates of their children. They are equally concerned about human rights respect across the board, economic justice, democracy and gender rights. It was political motherhood that provided the Madres a window of opportunity under the military regime for their political participation. In the course of engaging with such opportunities, the group transformed their understandings of gender norms through their organizing. The Madres example indicates that women mobilized through political motherhood may move from using conservative gender norms to promoting progressive politics in the broadest sense. Moreover, this group indicates how political motherhood can influence women’s long-term political organizing in ways that empower women politically.
The Madres’s impact in Argentine politics is unique compared to most of the women’s peace organizing, which is typically forgotten by the general public and contemporary politics once these movements exit public collective organizing. However, although duration, visibility and remembrance are linked, I argue that social movement actors (especially those in human rights and feminist organizations) can bolster the visibility and remembrance of political
464 motherhood groups even if these motherhood movements endure for a “short” time. What I am particularly inspired by the Madres and Mothers’ Front is their collective spirit. Lone figures such as Angela Davis, Mahatma Gandhi, Huey Newton and the like are too often disconnected from the collective efforts that they worked on behalf of. The solidarity of the mothers of the disappeared is embodied in their collective public protests and in their collective private resistance. The lessons that can be drawn from any social movement are important to unpack and analyze. They also require continual interrogation. I do not expect all women’s groups to be so well remembered as the Madres. However, it is my hope that we can better recall the changemakers of the past who pushed politics into more progressive directions.
465
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