By Luis Bruschtein on March 25, 2025 from Buenos Aires
The faces of the disappeared will always be present despite the denialism of Milei photo: AFP
It is difficult to understand how this ritual of hope could have emerged from horror. The state terrorism that caused the disappearance of 30,000 Argentinians gave rise to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. And the hundreds of thousands who march every 24th of March continue on their path, contributing to this democracy the richest facet of their people: love of country, solidarity and the fight against injustice.
“Self-managed rock,” said the kid standing on top of a homemade trailer with a black banner that read, ”Out with the denialists.” He was being dragged along by a rusty ’60s Estanciera. The guys went after La Renga and everyone started singing, especially the Cuban cigar seller who started jumping while balancing the tray. Afterwards, “La Bella Época” sang one of their own songs: “Pañuelos blancos”. They were on Hipólito Irigoyen and 9 de Julio. On Tacuarí and Rivadavia the murga “La mona suelta” sang to the rhythm of a mambo, “Conan, Conan, we are governed by Conan”, “we want to see Conan”. There was everything in the streets flooded by that climate of freedom and conscience that is created in the marches of the 24th of March.
This was started by the Mothers and it can’t be stopped. It’s not so much the event itself, but the phenomenon that most Argentinians set in motion on this date, some in the street, others at work or at home. It’s a stampede that has its own meaning, it’s in the air, it explodes and hits with precision. The guys from the Belle Époque made the ice lolly seller dance to La Renga, but everyone knew they were talking about the government.
This mobilization has become a popular ritual that exposes the authoritarian who dresses up as a democrat, the denier and the accomplice, the repressor and the one who justifies it. It works like a spell generated by hundreds of thousands of wills intertwining in the Plaza de Mayo and along the Avenida de Mayo and in the diagonals and in the adjacent streets and in those who could not go and in all the cities and towns where the ceremony is repeated.
It is not a force generated out of nothing, nor by the sum of hundreds of thousands of people. It is the force of those hundreds of thousands super-powered by the symbolic, moral and courageous force of the historic struggle of the Mothers until their last breath, in all circumstances, in the face of all injustices. It is the treasure that the Mothers offer as a legacy, the example of their struggles.
It is difficult to understand how this ritual of hope could have emerged from such horror. The state terrorism that made 30,000 Argentines disappear created the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. And the hundreds of thousands who march every 24th follow the path they opened, making it their own and contributing to this democracy the richest facet of their people: love of country, solidarity and the fight against injustice.
And memory is brought into play as a gift with which to build a better country. The governments that tried to stop that march succumbed to the moral force they tried to extinguish. Denial has been a way of justifying genocide. The miserable video that the Milei government released was like throwing a rat into a gale. It will never be a good decision to stand in the way of this force that is already inherent to an Argentine identity.
This time the march is worth double, because it comes after other recent demonstrations that were harshly repressed. I saw many of the pensioners who go to their marches and they came yesterday too. In their eyes and in those of the kids who walked alongside them, I saw the same light shining. It is not a metaphor, because hope is a light that illuminates a path. I saw the same light shining in the eyes of the disappeared, those who went to the marches in the ’70s. I was there and here. Other kids, the same dreams. Reality changes, but history does not stop. The struggle for peace, for true democracy and against injustice is making headway like a seed bearing fruit. It seems that nothing is happening. But the seed is there, underground. It is what the Mothers and Grandmothers have left behind.
In the words of Javier Milei, there were always forces of evil, which he now represents: reactionaries, conservatives, thugs, violent and criminal. And they had support. And they spread terror, the essence of fear. And they had economic power and the power of the mainstream media. And they were used by the empire that commanded them. Time and again it seemed that there was nothing left, that the land was barren.
Few of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo are left but the movement they started in search of their sons an daughters lives on. photo: Bill Hackwell
This time it is the seed that the Mothers have sown. The elderly who lived through the dictatorship and those who suffered repression marched with secondary school teenagers, with university students and with workers, employees, shopkeepers, with many families with young children, with trade unions and social movements. This amalgam is the best thing this country has. This government does not take advantage of it and works against the grain of what is put on the street every 24th.
The massive nature of the march in Buenos Aires and in all the country’s major cities came as no surprise. On March 24th last year, Milei had only recently won and the march was massive. In a moment of discouragement it was a sign of what was still alive and resisting.
This year’s was even bigger. It consolidated a core of unity in diversity. It is its contribution to the future. The unity document was read in the square at around six in the afternoon and it was half past eight and people didn’t want to leave. Many had been there since midday. There were those who kept going back to the presences of so many marches, around the pyramid, the profiles of the Mothers with their scarves who for years showed the way. Many people found it hard to go home because the 24th is like being embraced. You see faces and smiles, you see dozens of creations and posters, you see something that only the eyes of children can see.
It is the paradox of a march that, like the Mothers, was built on pain, but from which the warmth of hope always emanates. That warmth, which gives hope, bears fruit in a joy of the soul, an inner joy that embraces. It is the communion of peoples, the Argentine rite of the 24th. The celebration of Remembrance.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English