January 17, 2026, Buenos Aires
for 40 years the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have gathered to demand justice for their missing children. foto: Bill Hackwell
As they have done for more than forty years, repeating the ritual every Thursday, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo once again gathered at the Pyramid in the Plaza to demand justice for their missing relatives and children. On this occasion, marking the tenth anniversary of the arrest of Tupac Amaru leader Milagro Sala, the usual demand for justice for the 30,000 was joined by the demand for the release of the Jujuy leader. “What they are doing to this woman is an outrage and a disgrace,” said Carmen Arias, president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association.
Under oppressive heat that later subsided after gray clouds gathered over the white scarves, threatening a storm that arrived hours later, the march began punctually, as always, at 3:30 p.m. Leading the march was Carmen Arias, accompanied by Josefa “Pina” de Fiore, another of the mothers who, with tremendous effort and despite having to do so in a wheelchair, is present on every occasion. Behind them, dozens of activists followed, suggesting chants. From the historic “Let’s go, mothers, with strength to the front” and “Be alert, they are alive, all the ideals of the disappeared,” to the more topical ones such as “For Milagros, freedom; for Morales, popular repudiation.”
Further back, a group of people make the traditional request for justice by naming each disappeared person, followed by the cry in unison: “present.” As the minutes pass, more and more tourists approach, curious about the ceremony, taking photos and even some asking about the reason for such a large event.
10 years of persecution for Milagro Sala
When asked by Página/12 about Milagro Sala’s arrest, Carmen Arias responded emphatically: “For us, as it should be for all people with feelings, what the powers that be are doing to this woman, as well as to Cristina, is an outrage and a disgrace. These are women who have always fought for others.” Regarding Milagro’s current situation, she noted that “they are not even releasing her now that she is ill, even though she has every right to be released.” “They simply won’t do it because they want to silence all the people who think differently from them. They want to get rid of them, just as they wanted to do with us mothers,” she added.
Jorge Rachid, a public health doctor and member of the Instituto Patria, who has been accompanying Milagro Sala in recent days, provided details about the leader’s health, confirming that she is hospitalized. “We have to take some of the media pressure off her and take care of her because this week we have received two commissions from Jujuy that wanted to take her away, led by prosecutors and doctors from that province,” revealing that the actions of the Jujuy justice system were stopped thanks to the Ministry of Public Health and the governor of the province of Buenos Aires. “Axel, together with Justice Minister Julio Alak, prevented this action,” he added.
Raquel Kogan, a member of Tupac Amaru, affirms that “Milagro is in prison because she is poor,” asserting that her detention is completely arbitrary. “They want her in prison because she challenged the established power. Because she built more than 8,000 homes and several sports centers. Because she educated people, not only teaching them math and how to read and write, but also instilling in them a sense of solidarity with the people. Because the kids had a place to have fun, she built swimming pools so that the kids would no longer have to bathe in the rotten water left behind by Ledesma,” she said.
The leader of Tupac Amaru in Mendoza, Nélida Rojas, echoed Kogan’s words about the organization’s housing construction: “Last Christmas, I walked through the neighborhood at night and saw many little lights in each of the houses, with children playing, and I was really moved, because they made us feel ashamed all the time on social media. They attacked us, treated us like criminals, and said we had no right to express our opinions,” she said.
Rojas was politically persecuted by the Mendoza justice system, spending 70 days in 2017 in the Agua de las Avispas prison, until she was granted house arrest due to health problems.
In 2025, she was acquitted along with 22 other members of the organization. Despite having gone through all of this at the age of 60, Nélida insists that “it doesn’t matter if they put us in prison or insult us on social media, when I see those images, it’s clear to me that we weren’t wrong, we really took the right path. We know that many more families would have homes today if Milagro were free.“ ”Our work, as Milagro says, was not a fairy tale, it was dreams come true, because you can see and touch them,” she said.
Dr. Rachid added to the testimonies of the social activists, asserting that “Milagro exposed the emperor’s nakedness; she demonstrated the incompetence and corruption of the political leadership. She achieved what the political leadership had never built in Jujuy or Mendoza, which was 200 homes in four terms. She built 2,000 in Mendoza and 7,000 in Jujuy,” he said in relation to the reasons for the persecution of Sala, revealing that since the Supreme Court upheld the 15-year sentence and the leader has already served two-thirds of her sentence in prison, “she could be free tomorrow if justice worked as it should,” assuring that this could happen in March, although he warns that “they want to open two more cases against her.”
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English