Unknown Speaker 00:03 And there's one additional reason besides one of the signs, residential dependency of the Ministry of Interior where they had to go over time and find out about the children. So from the Ministry of Interior, it was easy to stay in the plan, and to talk. But if a meeting of three persons has to be the if the police has to be one of the meeting of three persons, and there's no way you can have 10 women sitting together, or talking together in a bench of the plaza. So the first time they did this, which was on April 30 1977, the police told them move. So that day, they moved in the following week, they decided to come back and bite themselves again. It was on a Friday, they decided to come on a Friday, then they decided not to come on Friday, because because it still dealer brokers, which is in Spanish, so they decided to come on a Thursday. And so they like the second week, they had come to the plaza, and at five o'clock. And since they immediately went told move, they started to move, the only way they could move and talk was around the pyramid. And out of this very innocent act, became Kane is the is the beginning in a way of the mothers as they are called. They were 14 of them, they are now 2500. And that meant that every Thursday afternoon, you can walk around and get and I can't tell you how incredible is that you're in your mind? Is the simplest thing that you may believe, but they identify themselves as what they are as mothers, separate from everybody else. By that handkerchief, which now has usually the name of their children written in the back then they do something else very soon, in 77 is that when they walk, they carry a little card with the name of their children. Now this is this comes in from very low Spanish traditional guidance. I'm Benito and I, I It's a very interesting again mechanism. They separate themselves from everybody else. The San Benito which was a a mock of session of the Inquisition, which was a mock up celebration of heresy. That's what they do. And that's, that's again, it's a very interesting mechanism that they take at that moment. In a very simple way. They don't speak they don't make speeches. They silently walk around that pyramid with a white handkerchiefs and their and that card here. The the new man accompany them, they're no young people. That can't be any young people because young people are subversives in 1977 in Argentina, okay. They are by definition. So therefore, they are the only ones who can do it. The the and they are very, usually very they come they come very simply dressed some inner Barbatus that is with the sex didn't know them. You know, they're very fashionable now in the States. Unknown Speaker 04:36 No, they're like sort of Robo rooms Unknown Speaker 04:42 and in Argentina and stealing many Latin American countries as in Spain, it used to be that espadrilles are symbols. It's a social symbol. You can buy leather shoes, okay. In the states they are fashionable but then any in a place like urgent Dinner, it still means that you know, it's you can't afford some things, other kinds of shoes, they come with a house dresses with a shopping bags, that is doing what they are. And what they are are. In the words of the woman who has headed these organizations since it became an organization 1979 is and that is a pastor Levon afine is that we all housewives and we all bring brought up to clean and wash an island and stay home and take care of our children. Born acini is a 55 year old woman who has become of the most effective political activist in Argentina and the last six years. And she complains now that she had very little preparation for the life she has led in those years. As a young girl, she says she wanted to study and perhaps become a doctor, but her father was a worker. And there was not enough money for her to go just to study. And she married a 22, a young man who was an auto mechanic. And they had three children, two sons and a daughter. When her children began the bachillerato, that's between high school and the university. She wanted to study with them. But her husband said no, that it was a ridiculous idea. And she accepted his his decision. And I'm saying that because in terms of everything else, that also makes sense, okay. But she said very slowly, her backward lack of education when she became involved in the mother activities, for example, she tells about a 1980 97 1980 trip to Italy, and a meeting with President Sandra Bertini in which she showed up with a group of other mothers, other mothers are the mothers with her shopping bag and her app to her salary and coffee, showing up into a shopping bag, because they travel with very little money. They arrived in Rome, and went to a park an apartment where they had, which had been lent to them. So they decided to go by a little food in order to make the meal in the in the, in the apartment, but then they were caught by somebody who was coming to reach them to tell them that the President could see them now, so they didn't have time to go to the to the apartment, so they just took their shopping bags, and and went to the colonel and, and the the gods apparently moved, looked at them very weirdly, but she said it was fine. I knew it was not to be done. But there were more important things to worry about than my salary. So therefore she goes to her life was normal, as Argentina was normal, between quotations, of course, until 76, until her two sons and one daughter in law disappeared. And then like all other mothers, she tried every avenue she could think of and went to the police, to the armed forces to the church to the Ministry of Interior and got nowhere. But she was there on April 30 1976, who was one of the 14. What that means is that she had met other mothers in the ministry, in wherever doing the police, and that's it is by meeting the others that they decide to do to do that first march. And Unknown Speaker 08:54 she says her husband, however, supported, although her husband supported her, in all her activities with a mother's completely except that he was scared. She says she was never scared. After that first march. She was never scared. And she said she was not even scared not even when the police kicked us out of the plaza, with submachine guns, and one policeman shouted and these are her words. One policeman shouted, ready, and we shouted back shoot. And when mothers disappeared in 77, I wasn't scared. And I wasn't scared when other mothers disappeared. 78 Because they were involved in in the mother's depressor in mail. She got used to being afraid she got used to walk home at night with a Ford Falcon following her. And because he said that our wish to find our sons were stronger than our fears. And because thinking about our children, we don't think about our sufferings. Now what do with all these two with this strength is we can I can talk a little bit later I want to say, because I'm talking too much already. I want to say I can explain what they do in a literal in the discussion, but right now, let me make some general comments about, about why I think they could do what they did. Which as I said, was important in the process of re democratisation. One is the nature of the military regime. That is the closeness of the political system, and the brutal repression that disrupts normalcy in Argentina normality in Argentina, it establishes extraordinary circumstances, then the nature of the repression itself, in particular, the disappearances. And it's the disappearances and the quantity of disappearances. Because in Argentina, in Brazil, and in order why, and in Chile, they were also disappearances. But in Argentina, they were more they were, they were brutally, it was a brutal can quantity, from six to 30,000 is a hell of a lot of people. But the there's something however, about the disappearances, which is very significant in the in this process, because because the the person, the body is not there. Dead doesn't mean death is not there, there is an inability to accept the fact of death, because there is nothing to touch, that is proof of death, there is the makes the acceptance, the acceptance of death, it pushes it back, it makes the acceptance of death, difficult, complicated, it's not, there is no new way to resign yourself in, in Latin terms to the death. And there's always the hope and it in it is the hope that the missing person is going to be alive. And that if you work hard enough, if you try hard enough, the missing that person is going to be there, because as long as you haven't seen that the person is dead, therefore, you can find her and at the same time, it also means that you have to do something to find her. Because if you don't, then that person may or may die. And therefore it puts a sort of responsibility on in you that that that is in that feeds of course, the nurturing life giving a supportive element that are that we women are socialized to have and which and which are embodied in the idea of motherhood. So in the inability to accept the death, the finality of death is the mechanism that pushes with these women into actions into action, what the what is action action is to look for the children to see if the missing can be found to help avoid death, to go on living, giving life to go on protecting. And they do it because they are mothers. And they do it because the fathers cannot do it. Fathers have to go and work. Unknown Speaker 13:40 And the ones who do who search for who do the the go to pay the bills in Argentina, etc. Other than the mothers and the wives. Okay. So in the afternoon light they've gone for many years to pay the telephone in Argentina, you don't get it. You get through the mail, and you've got to go to an office to pay it. Okay. So as you go to pay the telephone and the water and all sorts of other things, you go and look for your child, in the police in the Ministry of Interior in the courts, wherever nobody else can do it. It's the husbands cannot do it. The young people cannot do it because they ended up in jail. If they come and challenge you, they come and ask questions. That is a dangerous thing. So therefore, they cannot do it. They the women do it. And they do it in the afternoon. As I said when all the house chores have been completed in the time that is allotted to them. They have the time to do it, or innovate. Because of the economic circumstances they have to go out and work they still can fit these activity with part time work with a less rigid structure than the ones that the men have. And it is also safe for them to Do it, they have the freedom to do it, because they are not young. Because they are mature women, serious women, matronly women, they are not the object, they are in a special category of mothers, okay, they are not women, they are mothers. And their first action, after looking for an answer is to march to bear witness in order to publicize this disappearances. In order to break the silence that the press, the government is giving them about the disappearances. That act of marching in bladder, the manual is a very innocuous act. It is perfectly normal form in abnormal circumstances, it is no more for them to do that. It is proper for them to do that they're not doing anything that they should not do in the military, in the military society. Accept that by doing it, it becomes this innocuous Act becomes a threat. Okay, it becomes a militant action, which affects the mothers who perform it. Because that means that they are going to go on doing it and give them the strength to go on doing it. And because doing it means they continue to accept a no for an answer. When the government says we have no news for you. We don't know what you're talking about. They are saying we don't accept your answers. We marched again next Thursday. Okay. So it's more it's it's something that pushes them to to give them the strength to refuse the official line. And by refusing to accept the official line, it becomes an act of defiance there is a each turn around the pyramid each day each week each month become these changes, because each time it is a more and more defiant act, and by and they are doing and what they are doing is to defy the military repressive apparatus the police comes and they cannot get them out in front of everybody. You don't you don't take mothers and take them out like you take anybody else when you come with a fort Falcons in the apartments, you can push manners these nice ladies around who are walking nicely you can't expose yourself in attacking the mothers, when however, they become they become a there are too many they will they will but initially they have qualms about attacking them. What we have here is that motherhood which I think in part of me says is a demon mobilizing symbol becomes a mobilizing idea, okay. And it gives women the necessary strength to act and to gain consciousness and to take motherhood as a country a form of consciousness. Unknown Speaker 18:36 And this was, this is what will lead them to take a variety of actions and they are relentless. They were relentless. They never stopped. The and the one fun. One final element in the picture is that what mobilizes the women that is the Motherhood is what demobilize is the man and there is a perverted form of this. I think it protects. It protects women in a very strange wait for a while. I must say that doesn't mean that some mothers did not, did not disappear. They did. But largely it gave the mothers a platform or a protection that was not available to anybody else. And you can even see in one horrible instance. We now know it was denounced, you know very clearly no longer an invention as the government used to say that there was there was a great deal of torture in Argentina. There were concentration camps, which were called to Barbados. swallowers a wonderful name there in terms of what happened to people people went in and never came out alive to Barbados. See, CH you be a D E, R O, N means to swallow. Sack. That's right. So, n in the two part arrows. When pregnant women were arrested, pregnant women were tortured with with particular techniques. One was called the spoon, because the fetus was tortured independently of the mother, and together with the mother. And yet, in yet, pregnant women were allowed to give birth, they were taken to. And they were taken care of, to give birth. And when they gave birth, then the mothers were killed. And the children were, they were saved, and distributed and disappeared. And that's why you have right now, grandmothers, looking for the grandchildren as well as their children. So there's something that I haven't been able to work out exactly what that means that in the superheroes, the although you taught your pregnant women, you allowed life to come out. And then however you feel her, and you kill the mother. And, and in a way that that that that kind of push that that respite that these poor women got is the respite that the mothers get into class in the blood or the Meijer. I mean, it's it's atrocious, but I think that there is a connection between the two. Now that it works, eventually, of course, in the case of the of the pregnant women. In what and therefore these leads, the mothers, as I said, to find, it allows the man has to find all sorts of, of activities, the handkerchief, the getting in 1977, when nobody, no political party was doing anything to get a petition, in the name of the of the missing sign by 24,000 people. And they are, you know, they go and deliverance. The government says they are no disappeared. They're also subversive, they don't exist, you're crazy. And they were called initially, last look as the Plaza de Meyer by the government itself, and is the crazy women of Playa de Mayo. You're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about. They, they show the challenge priests in muscles and doing and this is largely Catholic women initially, and they do the most insane things. In terms of Argentine society. They, as I say they stand on church and cut off a priest giving a sermon. They organized marches, the other first to organize marches is and and the first one was September 1982. They stand in line one day they decide we're going to be 200 Women in front of the ministry, in line, very quiet. Unknown Speaker 23:13 Okay, and just waiting to present a habeas corpus. There's nothing that the police can do. The they're the good citizens, but they're there with the handkerchiefs and the little, and the little cards. So they are witnesses, they are acting by being there. They Well, the, the political parties began to begin to reorganize themselves, and that's in in early 82. They show up in the multi party data, the multi party organization, they do their first meeting. And the women, the mothers show up there, they show and they haven't been invited. And then nobody dares to shut them up. I've seen in a March, a street cut off by horses, military, and horses and police on horseback. And they go with it with their handkerchiefs and a large need the name of their child, for example, holding it, open the horses and say we are mothers and the horses have to open the police could not due to them what it could do to anybody else. Although 18 mothers disappeared because of their participation in the Mother's Day. Thanks very much. If you don't mind, Unknown Speaker 24:51 I'll go right on because I'm going to talk about very similar things. El Salvador in Austria, Chile. And then I think I would like to to bring up the question of what do these movements of mothers imply for modifying certain assumptions and feminist theory? I think the the techniques of disappearance and torture which Marisa described in Argentina, are in our internationalized in Latin America, they've taken place in Chile. In fact, they proceeded they came first in Chile. And exactly the same techniques of torture are applied in places in El Salvador. And the fact that they are so routinized that the same thing happens in all these countries suggests that they are internationally organized as well. And what is remarkable as this internationalization of terror, there is corresponded very similar mother's movements, which have many of the same features but some differences. And I'd like first of all to talk about the committee of mothers and the families of the imprisoned and the disappeared in the assassinated in El Salvador, which is called, which bears the name of Monsignor Oscar or no program, Romero and has his portrait on their letter hood, that is the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador. This is a group of women who came into being in 1979. That is the time when there was a hunter in Chile, sorry, in Santiago, in El Salvador, a hunt that in which, before the present escalation of the oppression, and it came into being because already there were numbers of disappeared. And these women took on many of the characteristics of the women of the class and admire the they wore white kerchief, they carry the photographs of the disappeared, and they demanded of the government news of that disappeared children. Now, some of the differences I think, between these women in El Salvador and the women in Argentina, are also significant. Because shortly after 1979, when the hunter fell, and a part of it went over into the guerrilla movement, people like Google, for instance, El Salvador became a really divided society. And in a sense, we have to remember that there are now two Salvador's virtually salvadora, which consists of liberating Jones, in which there are women's movement, one called amis, for instance, which have very, very different aims, and a very, very different from the these organizations which are organizations within a highly repressive state, as in Argentina, like Argentina, death squads operate, they pick up anybody who seems to be helping the poor, for instance, people who work in refugee camps are currently taken up, they're putting vans, which move around the town are tortured in the vans, they disappear. And it's very interesting, they disappear for a period of 10 to 11 days, it's always the same period. And then either they're found dead, and in self Salvador's something that was particularly horrific was the mutilation, the ritual mutilation of bodies by the military, which went to absolutely extraordinary extents. Another thing to notice is that since El Salvador is a much, much poorer country than Argentina, most of the majority of families, in fact, are headed by single mothers. 1/3 of families live in one room shacks. 85% of families live in places with no running water. So we're in a situation of extreme poverty, these are not at all, we're not talking at all about middle class women in this particular environment. Now, I think we have to look, unlike Argentina, we have to look at this movement very much in relation to the activities of the church, and particularly the activities of the liberation of church, because to my mind, there would be no resistance in the unliberated zones of El Salvador, owing to the enormous repression in the 1979 1980, which killed so many people, there would be there would be very little possibility of resistance, without in some sense, the help of the churches, the church, not only the Catholic Church, but also Lutheran Church, which organizes the referee refugee camps, for instance, which takes in people who've been caught in the Civil War. And in these refugee camps, again, the majority of the population are women. And most of them are some of their suffering traumatically. From their experiences from the loss of their families, from the killing of the families, even from the being bummed many of them by the armies. Unknown Speaker 29:54 And it's also the fact that in 1979 I I'm in particular 1978 979, that the Archbishopric of San Salvador became the center for an extraordinary movement of resistance. And at the center of this was Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated in 1988. The Committee of mothers and mothers was formed in 1979. And they were formed, as I said, to denounce disappearances. But their place of meeting the center of meetings, they have an office, but the place of a meeting is around the cathedral itself. And because of the assassination there of Archbishop Ramiro, the Cathedral has a particular symbolic significance. Now, I think it's very interesting that in the case of Argentina, the case of El Salvador, the case of Chile, we will find that all the women's movements to a highly symbolic center in which to make that protests. in Salvador it is the cathedral it's the unfinished Cathedral, which Romero refused to finish because by finishing it, he somehow would authorize or legitimize the government and it's, it's a very stark building. And the back of the building is devoted to a kind of altar for Ramiro, there's a large portrait of him. And most of the time there is somebody comes in and plays music in commemoration of room Romero, so it's a very, very particular atmosphere around this figure. And in the document of the women, they call him, El Salvador, the Savior, Monsignor Oscar Romero. So I think we do have to understand that this is a woman's movement, which is organized around a figure of a male martyr. And of course, it was the cathedral. It was also the scene of the funeral of special Romero when many people were trampled to death when the army exploded bombs and shut on people who were fleeing from the cathedral. So it is a place of martyrdom. And what the Army did was to build an iron railing across the front steps. So that when you stand on what would be the front steps of the cathedral, in fact, you're looking as if you're out of a kind of prison gate. It's a very, very strange feeling. Now, I attended what was known as ascend data. That's a sit in of the cathedral earlier this January, January, which was held by the mothers, and it was an extremely moving experience. First of all, the mothers are not necessarily old mothers, life doesn't last very long in El Salvador. And a lot of the mothers were extraordinary young women were women of 19, or 20. And there were also there were very old, peasant women, they were dressed completely in black, they wore the white scarves here. What this means, to me is the most extraordinary act of courage because in a Nakhla document about San Salvador, it talks about the silent majority, nobody speaks, so to stand on the steps of the cathedral facing the public square, with bull horns in their hands and shouting down with the death squads. That is an act of courage, which I think really defies imagination. Unknown Speaker 33:24 And they I was there, obviously, and also this happened in Argentina, it happened in Chile, whenever these women appear to make this kind of demonstration. These public places which are normally for normally full of people empty magically, people disappear, they float away. Because if people don't dare to stop and listen to what the people are saying, so the women was shouting to the bullhorns. Now, the other thing that struck me is peculiarly obscene was also that they were being massively photographed and televised by the international press. But were not being listened to the press. Were not interviewing them. They were not asking them what they were saying. They wanted the dramatic photograph of these women with their photographs and their handkerchiefs and their placard. But they did not want to listen to them. And I heard one television cameraman saying, Why do I have this assignment to go and listen to these hysterical women? Right? So it seems at first sight when you first see it, you really wonder because it's a highly symbolic activity, but it's a symbolic activity, which doesn't appear to be reaching anybody. It seems to be surrounded by the silence of the town. And so you begin to ask yourself about it. Now what were these women was was saying they were telling very similar stories to the kind of story that Marissa is saying. The disappearance is the disappearance of children, fathers, husbands, that was the cause of the protests, and this disappearance in El Salvador, whereas in Buenos Aires, it gives rise to all this kind of bureaucratic searching, and the ascent from office to office. And this happens in Chile too. Now, Salvador is a particularly cute, cruel twist, in that when women go on, ask anybody in official positions where the disappeared people are, they're told, Well, you know, Salvadorian men, they, they like to leave home, they go off with other women, they've gone off to Mexico, you know, it's just a family quarrel. And our group, which is a human rights group actually interviewed the president, the president said, these disappeared, it's just nonsense them then go off from home, and they got to Mexico, they want to get away from the nagging wives. And this was the story the government were telling. So it was a very, very kind of cruel story. And secondly, as in Argentina, when people when men are arrested, very often women, the wives are arrested, as well. Many one women have disappeared. So mothers are also looking for daughters, daughters, who in some case, were not involved in political activities, but they were arrested along with their husband, and children are taken as well. So if there's a couple, for instance, that a case of couples who are working in human rights, in refugee camps, both couple would be imprisoned, or a tortured in prison. And some cases disappeared, and the children would then be taken and the children were put in a government orphanage. Now, about two months ago, I heard that this one of these government orphanages was placing children for adoption in the US. And so that is the need for motherhood here in the US. Is B is preying in a way on this absolutely tragic situation. You know, if you hear anyone adopting El Salvadorian children, I think you should really various ask very definitely Where did those children come from other parents, and who were their parents. This, the, the rituals around the mothers of the disappeared are intensely religious rituals that preceded by by mass. And afterwards there, they delivered a New Year's message. This was the New Year's message. It was a message about the cost of war, and the need for peace. But it was all done in this particular religious environment. And this is something else that I want to, to stress. So by making it interesting, as Marisa says, by making a person disappear, it's a refinement, simply killing them. It's designed to keep families in a perpetual state of limbo, and it backfires. it backfires, because women can't bear the disappearance of the children. Also, because again, as Marissa says, Because disappearance puts them in this state of perpetual confrontation with the authorities, it denigrates them. Unknown Speaker 38:12 And the authorities denigrate them as the mothers of terrorists, even though the children were not actively engaged in anything like terrorism or whatever, that doesn't matter. Now, by doing this, they remove the what the mother's reason for living in a way, in many cases, they really take away her desire to live therefore, she's empowered by death by it because she no longer fears death. I mean, that is what keeps many people back is the fear of death. These women can call out the can cry out, because they've overcome that fear. I like to mention, I think it's particularly interesting. The similar movement in Chile, which is not called a mother's movement is goalie. I grew up Paseo de familiarities, the collectivity of the family of the disappeared, and the assassinated. The reason it's not called a mother's committee here is because Pinochet's wife is head of the committee, the mothers, the mothers committee, so they obviously can't identify with anything that's already got Pinochet on it. And again, it's connected with the church. It was founded under the auspices of the Vicario de la solidaridad in 1976. That is at the moment when a lot of these women were going around trying to find the disappeared, and the church was the only source of any kind of help. Now the reason I want to mention chili is for two very, very significant events that are connected with the mothers very significant because of the shape. The movement took around these events. Number one happened in 1979 or the end of 98 I think it was 1978 when bodies were found in ovens, outside Santiago, these are Have some kinds of ovens that you use to fire for industrial cans of firing the huge big ovens, which had been blocked the mouth of which had been blocked. And it was found that just after the overthrow of two of ind and 973, groups of trade unions and peasant leaders had been captured, were going to be sent to Chile to the put in the National Stadium. But instead, the officer in charge, threw them down these ovens and locked them up suffocated them to death. And in 19, in 1978, and 98, the these bodies were found. And of course, it was a scandal that the government could not possibly suppress the bodies were identified. And the first act that the mothers this this group, this family group, which are mostly mothers did was to organize a pilgrimage. And the nature of that pilgrimage was very, very interesting. It was it was done in comparison, in cooperation with liberation priests, there was a mass on the site of the ovens across was planted on them. And then the women fell back, and they threw into the oven into the ovens, flowers, and photographs, and relics. And this brings me to the discourse of the mothers, which Marisa mentioned, which is always a discourse about germinating, about life starting again, about being able to flower have some kind of flowering, even after these tremendous and traumatic events. This is the discourse that comes up again, again, and again, in the speech of these women who are often not intellectual women, adult, but have really, really have what's called a discourse of life as against the discourse of death of the government. And the second event, which was which was a native 79, it was the chaining 59 People chained themselves to the National Congress, which of course, was empty, because Pinnochio doesn't need a Congress, the National Congress building these women chained themselves to the Congress, walls to the railings outside the Congress. And I'm emphasizing that again, because it shows these movements use these public spaces women who in in Latin America, you can't be a public woman, that means a prostitute to public woman. But these won't go out in public and tie themselves they'll draw attention to themselves take over public space. It's very interesting. The account of this occurs in a book by a man and it's a very good account in many ways. But all the way through the book, he talks about these rituals as if they're gender neutral. And if these this was not organized, particularly by women, and when he talks about this particular action, the chaining he says 59 People chained themselves to the railings of the Chamber of Deputies, of which three were men, which Unknown Speaker 43:07 was a wonderful extraordinary way of putting it. But nevertheless, his name is Andy dal. And his book does contain a lot of very interesting data, including some very interesting statements by these women. Because when they went to chain themselves, they carried very, they were wearing very heavy chains with padlocks. But to get to the place where they chained themselves, they had to go on buses, and they had to carry these chains. And of course, we're always afraid that the Drina or the secret police would would would get them. And they described you know, the fear because when you go out and the way these changed when they got to the bus will rattle and they were trying to disguise the noise of the chains and and then finally, when they get to the this place and chain themselves, it's very interesting. The chain themselves again, it's the public space, it's the place of the very near to the Congress, that's the cathedral nearby. It's one of the most busy parts of Santiago. And as soon as the chain themselves there, again, the crowds on that pavement miraculously disappeared. But people did begin to gather windows and begin to look out and the police there. I mean, this is rather contradicts what happened in Argentina. The police there were caught by surprise. And first of all, they tried to unchained the women by going to the bad weather, some bushes which kind of heads the back and unchaining them from the back so the public couldn't see what they were doing and of course, beating up a little bit on them at the same time. But when they unchained them and they were going to put them in the in the paddy wagons the women refused to move and then in public they had to drag them out with considerable violence. And of course then it became a real public violence committed against these women. But what I do want to draw attention to is the way that these different women's movements have developed their own style of politics, which is not at all. I think the politics that were that were usually practiced in Chile, or in Salvador are in Argentina. And it's this kind of politics, it's taken people by surprise. Because not only because these women take over public spaces, but because they show the importance of certain ritual and symbolic acts that, that politics isn't simply a matter of shouting slogans. These ritual and symbolic acts involve an enormous amount of courage, enormous amount of self selflessness. Secondly, it seems to me very much to make us ask questions about certain aspects of feminist theory in this country, because, for instance, feminist theory is tended to talk about the separation of the private from the public and women have had a private role and men have had the public role. Therefore, how can women enter into this public discourse, but these women out of that so called Private role, have created a new form of or a different form of public discourse. And it's a discourse which does not talk about sectarian politics at all, which does talk about caring, connectedness, and so on. The second thing is they found ways of interrupting dominant and authoritarian discourse in ways which could never have been thought of before Maria illustrated that. But another example from this from the Argentine women, is that when the government said to these women, you are the mothers of terrorists, thus saying you are biologically responsible for your children, you are the mothers of terrorists, they countered by saying, we are mothers of all the disappeared. Now, that was a very, very interesting answer to the government. They say, We are not going to be confined to our role as biological mothers, we've made mothering into something quite different. We've made a woman called I think she's called Beth ethylene. I think that's how you pronounce her name, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know her? Unknown Speaker 47:35 Epstein Epstein. What, uh, this is a, an article, which in fact, raises this very question, saying that in the women's movement in the US, for instance, women have aspired to sort of take over political roles, and they've made some sort of political demands, for instance, taking equality to the extent of going into the armed forces on an equal basis with men, you know, making equal demands of that kind. And she said, We should rather look back to the tradition of Sophocles Antigone, Antigone, defied the state in the shape of crayon crayon said that her brother, Pauline ICs, would be buried in dishonorable fashion outside the city gates and left to pray to burns. In other words, he would be forgotten by history. And this is what the states of Latin America are doing to these people to the disappeared, they're saying they don't exist as people and Antigone insist that there is something prior to the demands of the state, there is the demand of respect for the dead, and for the continuation of life, and social so what this article goes on to say is perhaps we should look at mothering in a new way and look at kinship in a new way, look at Antigone, in a new way. Um, see, not the mother in the Freudian sense always as the inferior as the castrated as the powerless but as people who have a special kind of power, which I think has come out in a very extraordinary fashion in these situations in which everybody else has been silenced. Okay, I think we could open it to discussion if possible to smoke once we open the window How do I interesting and Unknown Speaker 50:00 wonderful. One of the questions I have is feeling, as opposed to these women are operating out of almost traditional assumptions about one another is taken through their acts, really getting involved in the political, still not very separate. To what extent aside from representing very deep value and commitment to life to nurture, and thus to the opposition of what's going on a more explicit position for any of these larger politics are larger macro issues and systems of capitalist. And yet they're coming to an understanding out of their own experience each step of the way. They're encountering, you know, this larger political world and therefore becoming clearer and clearer I would imagine on what the nature of that system is, to what extent do you see them as you study them develop through their own experience, a kind of firmer, more, quote unquote, good theological? Culture Unknown Speaker 52:02 I mean, I can't give you the multiplicity of parts that I think that question required. But let me give you some, a few things. If I look at the discussion of the mothers, we first begin to talk about where the first ask one question, where are our children? Then they go to ask, we want our children to live. And then ultimately, they ask, we want our children alive. And the culprits perished. And this is reflected by slogans that existed in you know, in 7780 7888, until the present, and these are very clear, they're not they're not symbolic, or they're symbolic of some very important changes that take place in there. Let me read you a statement by AB, they want to see me, the President, we mothers, do not defend ideologies. We defend the lives of our children, of any child, and we are going to continue fighting until we get them back until we clear their names. That is our struggle. We also want young people to know that we mothers are doing is what we are doing as mothers is to prevent that what has occurred from happening again, we don't want a single mother anywhere in the world to suffer and struggle for the reasons we are struggling right now. This is written said in 1982. But we also want a mother suffering as we do. And I hope that will never happen. Not to sit down on a chair and cry, but to go out and fight for her son. As we call it can be son or daughter okay. That was an ad tooth ad for two months ago. What are you as our struggle will end when we when we find the last December Crusader, and if we don't find him alive when we find the assassin who killed him and see him tried and convinced if convicted as he deserves. I do not know what happened to my children. But if they are dead and they're beginning to admit that they may be dead, something they've never done until now. I want them murderer. I will not recognize any cadaver any dead body in equatable. Until then, the struggle of the mothers of Plaza de Maya will end when all the youth live in freedom. When young people can think freely, but as long as there is one single disability, though, as long as a young man is arrested with a reason, as long as there is censorship and repressive apparatus, we the mothers will exist. So, Unknown Speaker 55:16 yeah, you see, I'd like to link that up, it's not really an answer to your question, because I don't think that the way the movement goes, I don't think it goes from this to a conceptualization. But there's something extraordinary important about this, because the burial of the dead, or the non burial of the dead in Latin America is really to do with your relation to the past, your relation to the present, and your relation to history. And I think what we have to look at is, this is a different way of talking about things that maybe we would conceptualize as history as anti imperialism as this, that and the other, but which here are translated into a different kind of language? You know, it's a language about, as I said, about fertilizing and flowering and life continuing, which is not put in intellectual terms, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not, you know, it's not a political language. And the second thing that I think is very important is that the the, the fact that this language has gone as cut right through what, you know, the political, manipulate manipulative language, because it's so different, you say, it's not a language, where if they tried to argue, we say, with the hunters, or with the people in power on their own ground to say, you know, our sons are not terrorists, oh, yes, they are terrorists, you know, that kind of thing. That's, that just leads to a very kind of arid argument, the women didn't take that kind of discussion at all, they said, our children are not dead, and we refuse to recognize them as dead, therefore refuse to recognize that they're forgotten, that they can can be cut off from history. And they can be cut out marginalized from history, Unknown Speaker 57:03 they have rejected that which you asked by by doing what they did, because the political parties who were the ones who couldn't have done something didn't do, and they never asked anything from political party, they have their own vision, and their own language, and they have changed now, I don't think that they're going to change in the reaction that you are suggesting that you would like them to, or that's that they cannot go in that direction, necessarily, they are always going to feed their poor be off because their point of departure is, is skewed from that point of view from that angle. And they are always going to be looking at this at politics, from a very iconic, classic way, in a way that is going to be useful to the left, not to the right, but to the left, usually, by the left, the left cannot count on them necessarily. They are off on an on a different course. And I don't know what that course can be in a context of a democratic society, in a context of having to accept the disappeared or dead in the context of what do we do with ourselves? And there are signs here that it will not end then. But the directions are clear at one level but not clear on the traditional level? Unknown Speaker 58:29 Are they doing what? In a way I'm doing what we're doing the 19th century? Yes. Unknown Speaker 58:42 Anyway yeah, what would you describe them? I really don't know much about America, but I'm the taking up something which is very much in the Christian tradition of the image of mother, a woman, mother, live TV and all that all those things which not to the west, and in the 20th century, we are all of us the feminist movement solutions are turning into some kind of force in the external resistance like what happened in the 19th century, when they extended the force, the what society had prescribed to the mother some society prescribed image into, into strength, to force of autonomy, in the philanthropic movement, etc. To get out of it. Is there a similar? Unknown Speaker 59:41 Oh, yes, there is. Unknown Speaker 59:43 But I think it shows that you can't freeze these things into kind of old time categories, you know, that I mean it you have to be very historically specific. So you know, mother isn't an all time category, which just means so Certain things forever, you know, and that the clients in certain circumstances, the qualities, which secular society has said, are reactionary, or traditional, or whatever, can become these positive forces in resistance, you see. So I think one has to always be conscious of this, this power of seizing, and making meanings, you see, there's an anthropologist called Taussig, who's got a very interesting article called History of sorcery. And he talks about this colonize space of deaths, because he says, Death is manipulated by these authoritarian governments for their own purposes. And what these women are doing, are taking over the meanings which the government would get give to certain kinds of things like disappearance and death, and turning it around. So you know, I, I see it as quite dynamic, but definitely based on what we would see is very something rather traditional and religious based. Unknown Speaker 1:01:03 When you were in particular, other cultures, we really don't know. And issues, you will have different experiences. And this housewives and mothers, they don't have education, but they have their kind of experience with politics, and they third, and first time they get their children are usually taken away by the political powers, and they don't trust them anymore. And they sometimes take them they scare from them, the endeavor was politic. But when there is something very important. That is very hard to take. With a class, I'm taking the word what how they're thinking is close to this have left us right there out of that. Unknown Speaker 1:01:59 It's not being ideological, which is that as long as they are acting as mothers in a political dictatorship, they're not threatening the government on a political level. They are not politicians, they are not political people. They're merely mothers, if they were to articulate, they are socialists, they are Marxist. They are anti government in the classical political way, then they wouldn't be a political party. They could be the more legit crushed us. Unknown Speaker 1:02:29 Yeah. And they're using the fact that authoritarian, authoritarian governments always say family, church and home, you know, but unfortunately, in Latin America, that family church and home has been quite blown sky high since all those have been totally violated. Unknown Speaker 1:02:45 The government, at least in Argentina, the government realized by 78, that this was a political movement, that it was a dangerous political movement, and that it couldn't control it the way it could control political parties dissension, the press, you know, the left in general, so in and that's where it began to unleash a repression against the mothers. And in fact, in 79, they barely could meet a very, very infrequently in plus lmao. They just couldn't they put barriers, they, they, they, they took out the space. Yeah, they took up the space that these women had gained in order to diffuse but what they did they go off to the they go off to the to the you know, to other countries, and they do other things in order to regain the street, if not that space. The name of that Unknown Speaker 1:03:46 ticket. Oh, air Nam Vidal. Is the name of the office in this country? Yes, it's available from the University of Minnesota and Spanish? Unknown Speaker 1:04:00 Do we mean the rich the international? We need to know that the mothers are marching. Unknown Speaker 1:04:08 Okay. Well, what happened is that the foreign press began to pay attention to the mothers also because one of the basic reason is because some of the disappeared were of a foreign national origin. And the relatives use outside forces, you know, in the exterior, the exterior to do to do what could not be done in Argentina. The French government in particular, was very active. The Italian government, Italy has a large number of him has been very important terms of immigration, Italian immigration to Argentina, so that the government and the press in Italy in France in Spain, where numerous exiles also go, they began to agitate said this. And so then when and when you when you have democratic governments, you know from France and Italy and Spain coming to Argentina and press coming with them that they are the ones who go and pay attention to the mothers. The American press was not very good initially for for a very, very long time. But then, you know, CBS what time of the of the of the Soccer Soccer Championship 78, which is, you know, it was the World Cup, which is a national event and it had very important significance in Argentina was the first time the championship was in Argentina. It was the first time that Argentina had a good chance to win it. I mean, it was the ratification that the what the military had done was right. Well, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in June 1978, there is the beginning of the championship in an in a big stadium in Buenos Aires. Well, there is a group of mothers that stand at three o'clock the kickoff, they are in Plaza de Mayo, and the press is looking at them. They didn't talk to them, but they came and they knew there was they couldn't get any Argentine newspaper, but they could get CBS, ABC and French television, German television, all television in the world looking at them. And they are aware. And they were very savvy about using all these occasions when the OAS Human Rights Commission, which came in August 72, Argentina to investigate the condition of human rights in Argentina, what they do the first day that they announced that they're going to take their position, they are five blocks of a women's standing one next to the other, and they are wearing their their handkerchief, they are again bearing witness, the fact that they're going to defy the government who says they i There is no violation of human rights in Argentina, and they're going to act so and in the status by the fact that the government had tried to defuse the presence of the OAS commission, that they had put it in the street, which was not the main street and etc, etc. All sorts of things had been done in order to control the relatives have disappeared, and yet, they were there. Yes, my Unknown Speaker 1:07:36 question is related to the word implies for the future of Argentina's system, whether you like the Malvinas crisis was there any, you know, sort of reactivation of that were the mothers in the, you know, the 2000 or so more than died there, whether it also has changed, like the parent is resistance, you know, I don't know, just in the future of like, deleterious to face to face the mothers that have entered the political system? Unknown Speaker 1:08:02 It's a very difficult question right now. I've often seen is, is committed to human rights, and he was the main member founding member of the permanent human rights assembly, which was one of the human rights organization created in your during these years. And one, and he has taken measures which have indicated very clearly that he was going to address the issue of the disappeared, which I think it was very much the work of the mothers, not the mother's alone, it was also the relatives that have disappeared. This is another group, which is connected, connected to the to the Communist Party, but they've worked together and they are the two groups which have persistence, on on the insist at will have persisted on dealing with the issue of the disappeared and the punishment of the military. So he has named, he had first of all, what he did was to the derogation of the amnesty law because the military had had the gall before to before calling for election to pass or to enact an amnesty law that forgave the military for all the acts committed from 76 onwards. So that was derogated. Then the he has created a commission which he is going to investigate a high power commission with very responsible respectable people, which is going to investigate all the denunciations. These are pedophiles. And right now on end in June, he took over in December and in June the commission is supposed to make a report right now all sorts of more cases they, when they were known to the human rights groups have appeared since the commission started working. However, the human rights groups and the mothers in particular are unhappy with that commission, because the human rights groups would like would have liked a bicameral commission with greater powers. The government, the President says that it ever in Argentina needs to restore the process of law, which needs to restore order to restore the judiciary to its place it needs to, to believe and live with the Constitution, and that this would not the proper way to proceed is to have this high commission, which which will, which will produce the num the names and, and will and will therefore satisfy part of the demands of the human rights groups. This is a problem because the mothers want. They have lived for seven, eight years saying we want our children there is no way that that they can get their children. And there is no way I think, I think that any government now the Argentine Government at this point, can punish all those who from the mother's point of view, deserve to be punished. The government has arrested and is prosecuting all the members of the military hunters, which have existence in 76. There are no proofs. If you're going to have the rule of law, how do you try these cases, the superheroes have been wiped out so many port walls cleaned up. There are no bodies to be found the tombs they are tombs. We don't know how many tombs they are of people, buried with an end with rings unknown, which appear in quarters of Isla Platt time murder plot and when Osiris bodies which lack hands, so you can't fingerprints, faces, smashed, no teeth records Unknown Speaker 1:12:30 mutilated in various forms, the elements that you need to carry out justice in a proper manner, have been taken care of by the military in a very efficient way. So that the possibility that you begin to satisfy these, these these demands are very limited. Now what is going to happen in a situation in which that is an issue and a burning issue for a large portion of Argentine situation, but in the context in which the economic situation is also very bad, and in which the government is going to begin to have to negotiate? It's very hard to say I cannot. I can't tell you. It's very difficult, very hard, and I don't envy the job of Alfonsin. Now, the only thing that I think is that if anybody could do what is necessary, in a limited manner to be done in Argentina, I think that he can do it. And he has some very good people with him. And he has the trust, the trust of large sectors of the Human Rights Committee community, but it's getting critical, the criticisms also appearing. That's how, as far as I can, yes. No, no, the stock disappearing. I think 82 was the last time that a person disappeared, a socialist militant disappeared in 82. Yes, yes, they have in a total of 19 mothers, and the founder, the Aquafina biasanya, the one who began the marches disappeared in 77. Take their voice, no, the veteran this movement is in a bad situation because in fact that repression began and therefore the development the emergence of the three player, the triple A is a function of the parents of the feminist period. And when they when the mothers went to, to talk to the multiparty laria, that is the multi party organization that emerged in 1982. It was a very difficult going with a pair of nice desk. And I until the elections. Are you had large sectors of the peromyscus shouting that the mothers are mothers of super savers and the trade union sector? Oh, yes. So it's, well, it's the parents were involved in it. And they haven't wanted to admit that. But those mothers who lost children in 75, and 74, lost them, because there was apparently a government in a trip a AAA acting out. Unknown Speaker 1:15:47 Well, I think it's more than when love is rager came in, right? Yeah. Very significant, because you see, I sort of see this as an internationally orchestrated, and I don't see Argentina, as separate in this respect. I mean, I think, you know, Europe, Brazil, was the first one. To present it starts in Brazil. And it starts immediately with taking away immunity from certain sectors of the population that were always considered not to be political. I mean, that's when the killing of priests began in Brazil, as early as 1964, the torture of pregnant women began in Brazil, in Uruguay, Argentina. So you see, there is there's an international dimension about the form that the terror takes, which makes you think that this is terror, which is not the old fashioned terror where the police used to kick the prisoners or whatever, but then would go and tell the mothers, you know, your husband's in jail, or where your husband been killed, you know, there was a certain kind of immunity attached to certain people, or at least a relative immune to things like the bombing of the cathedral in El Salvador, the murder of an archbishop, the murder of nuns and church women, the bombing of the embassy in Guatemala, which just blew up the idea of diplomatic immunity, the occupation of the university in El Salvador, which blew away the idea of autonomy of the university University being a space, you can move in these took away one by one, every single kind of grip that you could have on some kind of resistance coming from all these places. And I think one has to see this movement in relation to this general right wing attack on what they formerly had based their ideology on. I mean, it really kind of indicates a shift on the right. Because the old right was family church, and you know, and they can't they can't say family church without now qualifying these because it's No, I mean, you know, they're attacking those very institution. Unknown Speaker 1:18:04 That's what mystifies me and when, because regimes as oppressive as this machines, which respect know, as immune, why is it that these mothers got away with what they were doing to the extent that they did? I mean, I think that you're both implying that and sometimes it was because they were not overtly political. And they traded more on their psychological power, or their their psychological status within society. And in that way, I mean, when you think about it, I suppose if you think about it, in terms of individuals, most of these soldiers or police must be relatively younger men. And the I mean, are you suggesting that in some sense, the psychological inhibition of defiling the mother or threatening her was traded upon? Unknown Speaker 1:19:00 Or? I'm not sure you see, I think the because some women were killed, and many women when you mutilate a friend of mine, who was 60 year old woman who went back to Guatemala, and was disappeared and tortured. So I mean, women, it's not that the women were particularly immune. They're not, but it is that the fact that they were it that they were able to protest, I mean, the way they protested where they took over public space, they did it in such a way that it was difficult for the military to act without looking bad. Without I mean, the way that Marissa described the fact that I mean, it's all very well to disappear, people who are subversives, but sort of to go in the middle of a square and kind of beat up on older women. You know, there seems to be some kind of, I don't know, but that's what I'm trying Unknown Speaker 1:19:51 to fix the space that society assigned to you, Ben, but then he transforms it, and it cuts that I think that uh, A Jean said is very, very rightly, there is a, a transgression of that division, it makes it blurs that division, because it takes the private into the public. She says they've got to go out in the street, everyone has seen that she, she understands that. And it's simple going in the streets and doing something which is acceptable, which is proper, which is okay to do, which is non non threatening, non challenging, innocuous initially, that is the basis for a major political action. Unknown Speaker 1:20:36 It could be true that, you know, your traditional machismo has something to do with it, right? That these men, I mean, these are, these are all women, therefore, they're worthless. I mean, you know, the d value, right, they're devalued as people. So you know, they would look very silly fighting a bunch of women, right? I mean, there's, there's something that that comes into it. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:20:58 young women are ending jail. And then the object tortured and disappeared. Some old women also, but the bulk of the old women are mothers. And as mothers, they cannot necessarily be subversive, at the at the initial at first sight. They are mothers. Unknown Speaker 1:21:21 That's a very, I mean, if you have to do it in Latin America to understand that. I mean, there is a real ideology of the mother. Unknown Speaker 1:21:31 I don't tree in contempt. Unknown Speaker 1:21:37 But it's also in this country, isn't it the symbol of the United States motherhood and apple pie? I mean, I mean, it takes different forms in Latin America, but here, it is also very, very important. Unknown Speaker 1:21:54 Yeah, yeah, I think it's really important for us for the International Women's Movement, revolutionary, to appreciate that both aspects of that Act, in other words, their creativity, and turning around the sexism of the society and using it against him to find that little breathing space, where they could demonstrate over time when nobody else could without just being shut down. But at the same time, not not to leave it at that, but to see, even if they didn't articulate that. Everything in ideological terms, what they were doing was such a deep challenge to the regime. They were the only ones out there when the left capitulated, in a sense, didn't fight back, even for instance, during the war in the loneliness when I was over there, of course, nationalism. And women was still out there and saying, of course, we should have our territory back, but we're not going to let you distract all the attention away from the question of the disappeared and kept out there every week. That kind of bravery and a total attack really on the society. The same we're not going to compromise is very, very political and very deep and can teach all of us a lesson and really seeing women's movement as a sort of cutting edge and the whole whole revolutionary movements these days, because it just was vital to everything that was going on. Unknown Speaker 1:23:23 During the war of Venus when the blast was taken over by by everybody who supported the government. They marched on a Thursday and there was a very small group of mothers with one placard, the the official line was of course last Marina Sona containers. And these marinas are Argentine. They marched with a bracket that said, the disappeared los desaparecidos tambien Sona. These are also Argentine and they were the only the only voice. I was scared. I have to confess it. I went to see them. I did not match with them. I didn't. I don't have relatives and they marched alone and I was scared. I went with friends to see them and then merge with that placard. That was mind boggling. Unknown Speaker 1:24:25 I want to add some comments i i am Argentinian. I am definitely agree with all that. Melissa have said this morning. When when Melissa started in 1977, they were few group of mothers and I went to law school near Plaza measure. And in the very beginning, I think also during the World Football World Cup in 1988. There were two or unfortunately, most of the people and most of the people that wasn't involved in leftist activities If we didn't want to, to accept, and to believe that all those things that mothers said, in interviews were, you know, through things. And I think that most of my generation were not involved in that, we now felt very bad. And we felt that in a way, the government and most of the people, we believe in that moment lie to us. And I think models has have gained a lot of respect for most of the people. And in that time, I went to school. In the very beginning, I just saw a few group of mothers and went to town tangos, most of the people and also relative young boys or girls, perhaps a sandwich brothers of the missing people were also there and some fathers do as a priest, in spite of the fact that the lady was yes, later on 1980s. And really, only one of the of the politicians who were supporting them from the very beginning was most of the traditional or old fashioned conditioning from the paganism or radicalism or other parties, perhaps it does, Canton was a little bit with them, or to where, you know, we're out without commitment or involvement with mothers, the the, also some mothers, as you know, all dads mothers and without any political implication or overpower, and, but fortunately, they have a lot of support from the exteriors as Melissa have said, because they start to have support by Amnesty International, and also the concentration through Patricia de rien. And they start also to travel with that money, the money they went also to Germany, and to Italy, and I Unknown Speaker 1:26:59 think the United States came and talked to Congress also, that was during the Carter administration, when Reagan came in, it ended. Unknown Speaker 1:27:09 And I went to ask him, I said, What do you think will be very much like her question? What will be the future of buyers and present rational as a public as a political or resistant group, after the Unknown Speaker 1:27:24 optics in a different way? I think I'm bothered at this point by one thing. And after having said all this, what I have said, there is right now in Argentina, a way of glorifying the mother's which bothers me. It's, I'm afraid they're gonna be cannibalized. Everything is the mothers. And, and also, and I see x glorifying the mothers as a way of Yes, but then at the same time of I have of making their struggle hours, which in a way is good, but then, at the same time, sort of feeling that they ought to be pardoned that that everything is all right, because now the mothers symbolize us. And I don't know, to what extent we don't come back to the pre, the pre 1976 mother in the pedestal? And I don't know, I don't think they're gonna let it happen to them. Because another thing that you said that I thought it was very good, what did you play, you played with death and taking life? Unknown Speaker 1:28:41 colonize space. Unknown Speaker 1:28:43 That's right. I mean, that is such a mind blowing experience for them, all of them, that it has changed their personalities that change their life, they've killed their husbands killed their husband. I mean, their husbands haven't been able to stand the pace that these women have had, during the these years. Bone affinity went home for a while to take care of her husband. He had a heart attack, and he died. She's back there. And all of them are back there. They have an energy at this point in the strength that defies the traditional categories. I don't want to believe that this is going to be diffused. But I don't know I am not a social. I'm not a political scientist. I'm a historian. I'd rather deal with the past and the present. And I don't know about the future really careful Unknown Speaker 1:29:42 kind of international network of the motherhood because they have a lot of experiences and other countries which cooters and a lot of mothers have the bother to do they Unknown Speaker 1:29:59 Well, they Yes, with the Euro clients in particular, where the situation is opening in by the window to wipe the wonderful things happening, which are replicas of resistance symbols and actions which take place in in Chile and that's the Cathedral. The cathedral others are fantastic they bought I don't know Unknown Speaker 1:30:20 if it is a right wing Damn it started by the right during the Unknown Speaker 1:30:25 bad banging but banging and and now it is it is a symbol of resistance opposition to the government. And there is a group of a Uruguayan relatives have disappeared in Argentina, because two of the very prominent politicians disappeared in 1976 Michelini e Rodriguez disappeared in Buenos Aires so many people who escaped the military junta in order guy went to Argentina and ended up in the hands of the of the of the police in England aside is and they have gotten in contact. I think without with the Chilean women. Yes, I don't know with Central America, it has been it has been more difficult. But I think it seems to me that they that that if political conditions become more open, there will be possibilities of doing those things. Unknown Speaker 1:31:23 Only the South America Unknown Speaker 1:31:29 I have no idea there at this point, no connections that I know of have been made. Unknown Speaker 1:31:33 But I heard an interview with Tim recently, and I never really thought that was a connection. But he seemed to suggest that you had some connection with a monkey. Maybe he made one. Unknown Speaker 1:31:57 I don't think so. I mean Timmerman in this country has become the symbol of resistance to the military junta. And as far as Argentines, he is not. He may be the symbol in the United States. But he certainly is not in his country. But Unknown Speaker 1:32:15 that might be an example of the political taking over these movements. I mean, I agree, I think I mean, there's a lot of concern being expressed that you know, what's going to happen. And I just don't think that you can necessarily expect things to develop in a very kind of ordinary illogical way. I mean, these are movements which drove under very repressive conditions. And nobody knows how, how they're going to survive a different kind of, of politics, I think the only thing that they can really teach us is that there are, you know, what's normally been defined as political in the very kind of narrow sense, has left out a lot of things which have a very kind of deep meaning for women. And it's also brought in older women, in a way which I think even the women's movements are often left out. I mean, they've been obviously marginalized, and, and in hundreds of ways, so that, to me, those are the significant things about it, that maybe it can teach us something, but it's something to do with getting appealing to women in a way that the old political categories often didn't, because let's face it, they really often did imagination, yes, Unknown Speaker 1:33:30 but what is personally very interesting personally, what is radical even having gone to the marriage are using well known symbols for this route, and of course, that was, was supporting power as well as being early? The question that I have is, we don't in any way try to incorporate these issues is the church Unknown Speaker 1:34:31 I spoke to Catholic University of Marquette, and a lot of people were precisely the reason I'm concerned is not a movement of the women, but because all of the Latin American moved to the collapse of faith and one of the reasons is that women in those movements have rows which they've never had a church