VII Trapped in Bad Scripts: the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo
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Diana Taylor Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ Durham: Duke University Press. 1997 VII Trapped in Bad Scripts: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo 224 Liberty is the proud mother of the Republic and its children; to lose her, in any way, would be to lose that which we love most. Let's protect her and conserve her. Jorge Rafael Videla, "Recuerda el país su gesta patria," May 25, 1976, La Nación, p 1. I. The Madres of the Plaza de Mayo Arm in arm, wearing their white head scarves, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo slowly walk around the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina's central square. Some carry huge placards with the smiling faces of their missing children. Others hang small photographs around their necks. Turning their bodies into walking billboards, they carry banners demanding "Aparición con vida," --that their children be brought 'back alive.' On any given Thursday afternoon at 3:30, hundreds of women meet in the square to demand justice for the human rights violations committed by the brutal military dictatorship that abducted, tortured, and permanently 'disappeared' 30,000 of their 'children.' The Plaza, facing the Presidential palace, lies in the heart of Buenos Aires' financial and economic district. Businessmen and politicians hurry to and fro, sometimes crossing the street to distance themselves from the Mothers. The women continue to talk and comfort each other as they walk, stopping every so often to gather around the microphone and loudspeakers from which they and their leader, Hebe de Bonafini, broadcast their accusations to the country's president. Where are our children? We want them back alive! Why did their torturers and murders get away with murder? When will justice be done? Until 225 these issues are resolved, the women claim, the Dirty War will not be over. Nor will their demonstrations. The staging of the Madre's tragedy is instructive not only to human rights activists but also to those who study the performance of politics in public spaces and to those concerned with the role of gender in civil conflict. For one thing, the entire scenario of "national re-organization" set in motion by the military was highly theatrical. By this, I am referring not only to the obvious spectacularity of the confrontations, the public marches, the ritualistic orchestration of events, the struggle to control public space and attention, the display of instruments, images and icons. I am also referring to the script or master narrative used by the military which "explained" and energized the public battle of images and which worked to transform the "infirm" social "body" into a passive (i.e."feminine") one. The Argentine scenario, then, like all scenarios, invoked a script, complete with plot-line and roles. For another thing, the Madres, a group of non-political women, organized one of the most visible and original resistance movements to a brutal dictatorship in the 20th century. Theirs was very much a performance, designed to focus national and international attention on the Junta's violation of human rights. The terrifying scenario in which the Madres felt compelled to insert themselves was organized and maintained around a highly coercive definition of the feminine and motherhood which the women simultaneously exploited and attempted to subvert. The spectacular nature of their movement, which cast the "Mother" in a central role, inspired and influenced numerous other political women's groups throughout Latin America, the U.S., the Middle East and Eastern Europe.1 I recognize that using the term performance to describe the Madres' activism might appear flippant--what could be more natural, one might object, than women looking for their missing children? How could that be considered performance? Does the term trivialize the very real nature of their pain? Performance, as I mentioned earlier, is usually perceived as the anti-thesis of the 'real,' as if it provokes no concrete repercussions. Anyone familiar with the Madres' movement knows full well how real and courageous it was and would never minimize the violent repercussions--from harassment, to abduction, to murder--that followed their demonstrations. But 226 performance, as I use the term throughout this study, does not suggest artificiality; it is not 'put on' or antithetical to 'reality.' Rather, throughout this study I have followed Richard Schechner's concept of performance as 'restored' or 'twice-behaved behavior.' I will argue that the 'restored' nature of the Madres' display served several purposes simultaneously, and offered the women a way of coping with their grief and channeling it to life-affirming action. It also brought motherhood out of the domestic closet as the Madres showed up the predicament facing women in Argentina and the world over. Traditionally, mothers have been idealized as existing somehow beyond or above the political arena. Confined to the home, they have been made responsible for their children. But what happens to the mothers who, by virtue of that same responsibility to their children, must go looking for them outside the home and confront the powers that be? Do they cease to be mothers? Or must onlookers renounce notions of mothers as a-political? By socializing and politicizing motherhood, as the Madres did, they were only reacting to the history of socialization of mothers as non-political, tangential figures in patriarchy. Their transgression of traditional roles made evident how restrictive and oppressive those roles had been. Thus their performance of mothers as activists challenged traditional maternal roles and called attention to the fact that motherhood was a social, not just biological, construct. Thus the concept of performance allows a discussion of the Madres' movement from its most practical level involving the weekly marches in the Plaza de Mayo to its most theoretical-- are mothers or women groups that need political representation? Or are they already the product of such representation?2 The individual women who came to be known as the Madres performed traditional, domestic duties for most of their lives. They were dedicated to their homes and families. Few had any degree of higher education or had ever worked outside the home. They were very much the kind of women that Evita had appealed to in her speeches addressed to those who were "born for the home," those who accepted their "profession as women" (189-190). Hebe de Bonafini recognized this, stating that the figure of Evita continues to represent, "in spite of all its contradictions, an emblematic image of liberty."3 227 The seemingly contradictory character of motherhood which is at once essentialist (born to) and acquired/performed (profession) is at the basis of Evita's philosophy, the Madres's demonstration and contemporary feminists thinking about what (if anything) constitutes women as a discrete social or political category. Nowhere is this theory clearer than in the political constitution of the category 'women' which Evita brought into public focus. For Evita, 'women' were those who accepted their domestic roles. Those who did not--regardless of their biological sex--were accused to "want[ing] to stop being women" (185), and dismissed as "a strange breed of woman... which never seemed to me to be entirely womanly!" (186). Evita sought to extend political visibility and representation to 'women' as she defined and constituted them. Thus, as Butler notes, women are not simply a pre-existing category of political subjects in need of representation--women are the product of political representation. Only one kind of woman, the one who who accepts her domestic "destiny" and "mission" (190), is a real woman according to Evita. Thus only one kind of women's movement was possible. The other, the one led by "feminists" says Evita, "seemed to me ridiculous. For, not led by women but by those who aspired to be men, it ceased to be womanly and was nothing!" (186). In speaking of the Madres' movement in terms of performance, then, I wish to make the connection between the public and ritualistic display of mourning and protest orchestrated by the Madres, and the notion of motherhood and womanhood as a product of a coercive system of representation that promoted certain roles as acceptable for females and eclipsed (and at times literally 'disappeared') other ways of being. II The Madres Movement: An Overview The Madres' strategy, like the military Junta's, was performative and communicative. Their aim was to insert themselves into the public sphere and make visible another version of events. For those unfamiliar with the Madres', I will include a brief overview of their movement. At eleven A.M. on Saturday, April 30, 1977, fourteen Madres first took to the Plaza to collectively demand information concerning the whereabouts of their loved ones. The women 228 had met in government offices, prisons and courts looking for their missing children. As soon as they got to the square, the women knew they had miscalculated--while the Plaza de Mayo is the political, financial and symbolic center of Buenos Aires, it was empty on Saturday mornings. They realized immediately that they had to make a spectacle. Only by being visible could they be politically effective. Only by being visible could they stay alive. Visibility was both a refuge and a trap--a trap because the military knew who their opponents were but a refuge insofar as the women were only safe when they were demonstrating. Attacks on them usually took place as they were going home from the Plaza. So the Madres started meeting on Thursday afternoons at 3:30. They walked counterclockwise around the obelisk in Plaza right in front of the Casa Rosada. They started wearing white kerchiefs to identify themselves publicly as a group.