Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo announce resumption of iconic Thursday marches after 10-year hiatus.

[forest444]

The Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the organization created in 1977 to seek justice for the state-sponsored murders of their loved ones during Argentina's Dirty War, has announced that their Thursday marches around Buenos Aires' May Obelisk will now resume.

The announcement, made by the association's longtime president, 87 year-old Hebe de Bonafini, marks the end of a 10-year hiatus from the Thursday marches because, as Bonafini stated, "one does not negotiate with the enemy."

The association's first march was actually held on a Saturday, April 30, 1977, by the 14 original members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo as a means of "having General Videla (the dictator) receive us." Their founder, Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti, and two others were instead killed later that year in retaliation. Hebe de Bonafini, who lost two sons and a daughter-in-law to the Dirty War in 1978, came to lead the Mothers the following year and established the Thursday Marches of Resistance in 1981.

Joined on different occasions by renowned human rights leaders such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, and Swedish actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Liv Ullmann, the iconic marches continued until, on January 14, 2006, Bonafini announced their discontinuation because "the enemy is no longer in the Casa Rosada."

Bonafini referred at the time to President Néstor Kirchner's policies supporting justice, notably his 2003 rescission of numerous amnesty laws passed between 1986 and 2001 to shield the over 1,000 officers implicated in the Dirty War from prosecution (to date nearly 600 have been convicted). The recent election of President Mauricio Macri, who as Mayor of Buenos Aires had vetoed a law granting witness protection to those testifying in Dirty War abuse trials and had recently referred to human rights as a "scam" during the campaign, led Bonafini to conclude that "the enemy has returned," however.

"From day one," Bonafini said before a gathering at the Plaza de Mayo, "we've described Macri as what we thought he was. We were heavily criticized when we said he was 'our enemy because he was an enemy of the people'. The Grandmothers and Founding Mothers associations criticized us as well because they seem to think that Macri is a smart guy who will receive them. We would not think to ask for an interview, because one does not negotiate with the enemy."

"During these 10 years we did not hold the Resistance Marches because the enemy was not in the Government House. But the enemy has returned. We have therefore returned to our marches on the square just as we did against the dictatorship. We can't walk the way we did then; but here we are, with all of you as always," Bonafini told the crowd.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Facontramano2007.blogspot.com%2F2015%2F12%2Fvuelven-las-marchas-de-la-resistencia.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Here's hoping when some of the grandmothers get too old to march, others will step in for them.

The memory most be kept alive, and made plain to the generations to come, to steer them away from falling into the pure evil which the fascists unleashed upon their political opponents.

"If you can't beat 'em, murder 'em," apparently is the way fascists operate if they can seize control of the country's military and use it against the population.

Good for the real Ladies in White, the ones the entire world has admired and respected since the days of the Dirty War.
their leader is right, he IS an enemy of the people.