La Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

La Madres de la Plaza de Mayo - Cassidy

I first learned about the madres in Prof. Popescu's "Women, Performance, and Activism in Latin America" course two years ago. That class in general really shaped the way I thought about activism but I was quite intrigued by the madres and how their success came from something as simple as walking around the town square. Taylor touched on this in her essay but the madres really played into stereotypes to make their activism successful. The people going missing were typically younger (20's - 30's) because they said or did something that the government took as a threat to their power. In most cases, the missing had just questioned the political state of the country and were taken away and killed for it. The madres were also questioning the government but the fact that they were mothers and the fact that they chose to stage their protest in such a visible space is what saved them - and even still, many disappeared or were threatened because of their affiliation with the madres. In a country where masculinity and machismo was valued, the mothers were able to justify their stance to the government because the government told them they could only be mothers but how can you be a mother if your child is gone? I would like to pose the question around how stereotypes or social positions can be used to positively influence protest and activism.

With this I think about the use of privilege. Yes the mothers had lost their children but because of their age and the assumptions that come with being a mother, they had the privilege to be able to protest safer than the friends and siblings of the disappeared. Along those same lines and more recently in history, I think about how politicians will attend protests and if they get arrested, it almost helps the movement because it brings more attention to it. However, as a politician, they are more likely to get out unharmed after their arrest. They carry less risk than the average American.

This is an article from last July when their were protests at the supreme court around Roe v. Wade being overturned and several congress people were arrested including AOC and Ilhan Omar - two congress women who have built a large name for themselves in the time since they took office.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/politics/congress-members-arrested-abortion-protest-supreme-court/index.html

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