Here’s some news I have been eager to announce! I will complete the second stage of the seven-year “Going the Distance” challenge in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 23, 2018. No turning back now; the registration fees have been paid.
Why Buenos Aires? To begin with, it’s one of the most beautiful cities in South America, with rich history, fabulous food and world-class museums. From a marathoner’s point of view, it’s important that the course for the Buenos Aires Marathon is flat and fast, with a course record of 2:09:46 set by Kenyan runner Barnabas Kiptum in 2017. And the timing works with my training schedule.
Yet, as a human rights activist, my visit to Buenos Aires in September will hold deeper personal significance. One of the seminal moments in the history of late 20th century human rights activism was the emergence of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement in Buenos Aires in 1977. The Madres appeared on the scene in Argentina in April of that year in response to the disappearance of their children and the state’s refusal to provide answers to their whereabouts. When a right-wing military junta came to power in a coup in March 1976, the army put into action a plan to crush any potential opposition. In what is known as the “Dirty War”, death squads would seize people who verbally expressed their opposition to the military government or participated in related group discussions or even casually spoke against the coup, and take them to secret detention centres, never to be seen again. The vast majority of those who disappeared were young, between the ages of 20 and 25, and were usually well-educated, politically aware and idealistic. By the time the military dictatorship ended in 1983, the number of the desaparecidos, the “disappeared” was as high as 30,000.
In response to the disappearances, mothers in Buenos Aires began to mobilize to demand the truth about their children. The initial group of 14 mothers who met at the Plaza de Mayo—the centre of political power in Argentina—on April 30, 1977 did not know one another. They had only crossed paths as they carried out their relentless search for their loved ones. They agreed to meet because they were convinced that it was only by joining forces that they could achieve what they were failing at accomplishing separately. Every week after for 40 years, the mothers met in the Plaza opposite the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace), demanding to know what the junta had done to their sons and daughters, “an unyielding rebuke to a dictatorship that thought state terror would stifle the merest whisper of dissent.”
The mothers came to be identified by their white headscarves embroidered with their children’s names, emblematic of the diapers their missing sons and daughters wore as children. At first, they gathered in twos and threes on the benches on the plaza, but eventually (after being told by the police who were always watching them that they could not meet in groups) they began to walk around the Pirámide de Mayo. Their numbers grew—from 14 to 150 to several thousands by 1982 and 1983. The enormous risks they took was illustrated by the fact that three of the founding members of the Madres themselves disappeared, never to be seen again. After Argentina hosted the World Cup in 1978, the international community began to pay attention to the Madres, and in time the mothers effectively catalyzed worldwide political and media attention in support of their cause.
“It is precisely this unexpected nature of the [Madres] that gave them a strategic edge in their conflict with the military junta.”
When democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983, the Madres continued to pursue information about the fate of their missing children and demand punishment for those responsible for their disappearance. Although they have succeeded to a significant extent in the latter objective—more than 1,000 of the dictatorship’s torturers and killers have been tried and 700 sentenced—they are concerned that the current government is putting the brakes on the continuation of the trials.
While the Madres de Plaza de Mayo have been transformed into a political movement since the restoration of democracy, they began as a non-political group of women who were moved to civil resistance by their traditional status as mothers. One writer says, “It is precisely this unexpected nature of the participants that gave them a strategic edge in their conflict with the military junta.” Over the last 40 years, their reasons for their success has been analyzed over and over again in research papers and journal articles. They were unlikely champions in a society where the traditional roles and responsibilities of women were confined to the home and the workplace, but the respect tied to motherhood initially allowed them to demonstrate during a time when all protests were prohibited. The walking in circles around the Pirámide de Mayo epitomized the never-ending activities of the mothers and their dedication to the return of their children, the relentless pursuit of answers that is an incontrovertible feature of non-violent power. They did not acknowledge fear: even after three of the group’s founding members disappeared, Nina Cortiñas says they did not become afraid: “It was visceral – the love of our children, the desire to find them – you just had to do something.” They have been called “the first responders to the human rights violations committed during the Dirty War.”
The work of International Justice Mission points to the urgency of governments and donor agencies investing in the strengthening of developing countries’ public justice systems, but equally important—if the poor are to be protected from violence (whether from state-sponsored violence or the predations of everyday bullies)—is for the population to stand up and say: “This has got to stop!”. Bullies expect people to succumb to fear and remain silent, but when mothers, students, grandmothers, labourers, academics, elected representatives, spiritual leaders and civil society leaders raise their voices, the tectonic plates underlying violence begin to shift.
The Madres de Plaza de Mayo demonstrated to the world that the people can, and will, overcome.
In 1986, after hearing of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and meeting a similar group in El Salvador, Bono wrote the song “Mothers of the Disappeared”:
Midnight, our sons and daughters
Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat
When U2 performed the song in Santiago in 1998, the band invited mothers of Chileans who had disappeared during the country’s 1973 military coup onstage with them. The mothers held up photographs of their children and recited their names, while the band sang “El pueblo vencerá” (The people will overcome).
The Madres de Plaza de Mayo have proven to world that the people can, and will, overcome. Because of the resoluteness and courage they have displayed over 40 years, I consider the Plaza to be hallowed ground. I am thrilled that the course for the Buenos Aires Marathon crosses the Plaza. I pray that when I run through the Plaza on September 23 that the spirit of justice that empowered the Madres will fall fresh on me; in some small way, I hope that same spirit will work through me to mobilize new movements of unlikely champions to throw off oppression wherever it prevails.
Because of the resoluteness and courage the Madres have displayed over 40 years, I consider the Plaza de Mayo to be hallowed ground.
But this pilgrimage to Buenos Aires is not just about me: I also want to use my energy and passion to raise awareness of IJM’s work in another country in South America: Bolivia. Since 2007, IJM has been labouring to protect children from sexual violence in Bolivia. In a country where, at one time, you were statistically more likely to die from slipping in a shower than to go to prison for sexually assaulting a child, IJM is systematically working to change that reality and improve the justice system’s response to cases of girls and boys who have been sexually assaulted. Through Going the Distance: South America I aim to raise $15,000 to support IJM’s programs in Bolivia. I’ll write more about Bolivia in future blogs, but if you’ve been inspired by the story of the Madres you can make a donation to my campaign today at https://ijm.akaraisin.com/goingthedistance/2018. ($15,000 represents the approximate cost in salary and benefits for one social worker in Bolivia, enabling him or her to walk alongside young survivors of sexual violence on the road to restoration and healing.)
When the poor suffer violence, we cannot remain silent. Let your voice of solidarity be heard in the public places of your community, and stand with me as I go the distance on their behalf.
