Museo Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora

The tireless search for their sons and daughters in the midst of state terrorism led the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo to turn their individual grief into a collective demand: they were not only searching for their own children, but for the disappeared descendants of all the Mothers. This struggle turned them into a new political actor of the time, capable of creating spaces of resistance where terror was dominant.

The story of the Mothers as a collective, however, is also made up of the singular life experiences of the women who created and powered the organization. In order to tell their stories, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo - Founders Permanent Exhibit has recorded audio clips with some of their bios. This initiative is aimed at trying to bring their experiences closer through the most salient aspects of their lives. 

If History, with a capital H, is built through a number of events that many times are relayed in a generalistic and impersonal manner, our goal here is to recount the recent past through the lens of the protagonists’ stories. To reflect on the history and memory of the repression and the resistance during those times in order to “offer meaning to words on a collective as well as an individual level.” 

These individual stories have the power to teach while also demanding explanations through stories with first names and surnames that materialize social processes in concrete people. They also show how personal aspects are profoundly tied to political ones. This way we can approach a historical actor’s experience through their experiences, memories and sensations, as well as how they interpret their actions in the past. 

It helps us understand aspects of the past that can only be reconstructed through the experiences of those who, in some ways, lived through different events. This also adds a layer of complexity to our knowledge of the past, given that singular stories enrich the historical record by adding new discussions, memories, emotions, and sensations, as well as concrete experiences these actors lived through. 

We invite you to all hear the Mothers’ life stories in English by scanning the QR code you will find next to portraits of this exhibit.