Week 12: Speaking Truth to Power

This week our class is covering the topic “Speaking Truth to Power”. Alexander Dawson makes note of several important events, topics, people, and groups, but for this week’s post, I would like to focus on one group in particular who I am always drawn to every time they are brought up in conversation or in a reading. The group is known as the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, based in Argentina. As stated my Dawson, it is no secret that Latin American states have been historically weak regarding many things, in his own words saying “have always found it difficult to collect taxes, enforce their own laws, and govern their territories, or command obedience and loyalty absent the threat of violence”. As a result of this, many governments, including Argentina, basically declared war on their own people and anyone who questioned or opposed them, by kidnapping, torturing, and killing anyone they deemed as a possible threat to their power, and to hide and deny any wrongdoings when questioned. Arguably one of the most influential groups in protesting this violence and this injustice was the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. At a time when these disappearances were not talked about all that much, if at all, on the global scale, this group of women managed to change that through their protests. Although protests and large gatherings were not allowed in Argentina, particularly when they questioned the government, many mothers of people who had gone missing at the hands of the Argentinian government began gathering together to demand the return of their family members. Although they were not taken seriously at first, eventually they became the public face of grief and family, and these once non-political women created quite a political movement that captured the attention of international medias. Suddenly, people everywhere were listening to their cries and their stories started being told. Best explained by Dawson, 

“They confronted all physical threats stoically, never wavering from their single demand: the return of their children. This act—assuming the public face of grief and rage during a time when Argentines were largely silent—helped bring down one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin American history, a government that in less than a decade murdered somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 people”

These women and their stories, for whatever reason, struck a chord with me the first time I read about them in high school. Today, years later, I am still fascinated by their strength and bravery in the face of a government that was not afraid to intimidate, threaten, and kill them, and in awe of the noise they were able to make worldwide.