The Political Performance of Motherhood: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo Es

The Political Performance of Motherhood Las Madres de heart de mayonnaiseDuring the Argentine dictatorship known as the Dirty War (1976-1983), thousands of people were systematic totallyy abducted by the politics in order to eliminate all opposition to the regime. These disappearances, which the dictatorship never admitted to committing, happened across class and age lines, precisely most of the kidnapped were young students and blue-collar workers. Despite the fact that associations and meetings of any liberal were forbidden, a group of housewife mothers decided to protest the disappearance of their children. They began to garner every Thursday afternoon at the same time in the main squ be in Buenos Aires, Plaza de Mayo, walking alone or in pairs to avoid being arrested for disorderly conduct and wearing whitened kerchiefs on their heads to be easily identifiable. By showcasing their grief in public, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo turned their motherhood into a performance, and their bodies into political tools, to hold the government accountable. A 1985 Oscar-nominated documentary by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muoz, named after the group, not only preserve the Madres performance of their collective identity, but was also instrumental in providing a broader audience for said performance. Traditionally, motherhood in Latin America is qualified to the realm of the private. Diana Taylor explains that public women ... are considered prostitutes or madwomenthat is, nonmothers, even antimothers, while good mothers are invisible, (1) because they stay home with their children. However, the Madres carved for themselves a third position that broke this dichotomy, going on to become one of the most visible political discourses of resist... ...Works CitedButler, Judith. Gender is destroy Questions of Appropriation and Subversion. Bodies That Matter On the dianoetic Limits of Sex. New York Routledge, 1993. 121-140. Fregoso, Rosa Linda. Lourdes Portillo The Devil Never Sleeps and Other Films. University of Texas. 2001. hooks, bell. Is Paris Burning? Black Looks Race and Representation. Boston South End, 1992. 145-156. Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Dir. Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muoz. Videocassette. Xchitl Films. 63 min. Navarro, Marysa. The Personal is Political Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Power and Popular Protest. Latin American Social Movements. Ed. Susan Eckstein. 1989. Taylor, Diana. Trapped in Bad Scripts The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. disappearing Acts. Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentinas Dirty War. Duke Univ. Press 1997. 183-222.