Image Courtesy of Chaco en Linea Informa
By Sophie Rasmussen
Argentina’s recent legalization of abortion has repurposed a symbol closely associated with another decades-old Argentine movement.
From 1976 to 1983, the “Dirty War” was a reign of terror in which the dictatorship’s right-wing death squads ‘disappeared’ an estimated 30,000 people. Desaparecidos (disappeared people) were those perceived to be a threat to the junta, including left-wing terrorists and activists, students, and journalists. Because victims were only disappeared, their loved ones desperately wanted answers. In 1977 the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) was founded as a group of mothers seeking information regarding the status and location of their disappeared children, who were adults. Later on, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) was founded to look for children of pregnant desaparecidas who had been given to military families after being born in detention centers.
Image Courtesy of Radio Bayamo
At great personal risk – several leaders were disappeared – they marched regularly in the Plaza de Mayo, outside the seat of the Argentine executive. They wore white handkerchiefs embroidered with the names of their desaparecidos; the white represented diapers and thus motherhood. They have identified hundreds of dead desaparecidos and reunited many adopted children with grandparents they did not know they had. Their determination means that the work of identifying desaparecidos and their children continues, and some still meet weekly in the Plaza de Mayo.
In 2003, the pro-choice organization Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal, Seguro, y Gratuito (the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion) was founded in Argentina. Their symbol is a green handkerchief inspired by the Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo; they chose green because it was the only color without a widely accepted significance. Abortion has been debated several times since 2003, most recently in December 2020, with the Campaña Nacional at the forefront of the debate.
Image Courtesy of Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press
The handkerchief aims to show that it is a women’s movement, and it is, though in a different way. The Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo were strictly female-only organizations, and they did let women enter the traditionally male public sphere. However, the movement’s emphasis was on women’s traditional maternal roles; it had nothing to do with women’s rights. Conversely, the Campaña Nacional boasts many male supporters, and women’s political action is not radical in 2020. The gendered aspect of this movement is that it advocates for female reproductive rights – the right NOT to be a mother.
Abortion was legalized in Argentina in December, but the pañuelo verde (green handkerchief) has spread to other Latin American countries with movements fighting for women’s reproductive rights. Forty years after those mothers and grandmothers bravely took to the streets to try to find their missing family members, their symbol lives on as a way to unite women across the continent in their quest to control their own bodies. The Madres and Abuelas probably wouldn’t be pro-choice, but I bet they would be pleasantly surprised that their courage hasn’t been forgotten.
Sophie Rasmussen is a second-year King’s College London History student from the United States. Half Argentine, she is highly interested in the country’s culture, politics, and history.
