The Madres of la Plaza de Mayo, protesting with white scarves on their heads in Argentina the disappearances under Argentina's military rule of their children and the children of others have always served as an inspiartion for me and other activists. Sadly one of the founding members passed away.Nelva Mendez de Falcone, 76, died Monday of an unspecified lung problem for which she had been hospitalized for the last 10 days in La Plata, 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Buenos Aires, the family said.Nelva had lost her own daughter, Maria Claudia Falcone, to the 1976-83 dictatorship.
The impact and pressence of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo has been used an a point of study by other mothers fighting in the name of their children even here in the United States. For example, Latina mothers in New York City who lost their sons to police brutality, met with some of the Plaza de Mayo mothers in the late 1990's.
According to official figures, some 13,000 people disappeared under the dictatorship's "dirty war" against dissidents, though human rights groups put the number at 30,000.
Mendez de Falcone's family said her body would be cremated and some of her ashes scattered in the Plaza de Mayo.
Link : CNN, VivirLatino
Tags : Argentina, Plaza de Mayo
3 comments:
On my last visit to Bs. As., I was told by my Argentinean stepfather that Las Madres were just "leftist propaganda" (which I do not agree with at all) and that they don't even march in the rain. That sounded completely ludicrous and I had my doubts, but could that have been true?
Good ridance, it is about time for that bunch of old hags to go do something worthwhile, 20+ years is enough. Forget the past and move forward.
Fuck you anonymous! It is easy to be some coward behind a computer, but it would be much harder to forget a past that saw your child and 30,000 of her peers tortured, murdered and thrown into mass graves with no explanation or punishment for the murders.
Nate Miller
San Francisco
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