Over the Rainbow

by Camille Darbo

1983: the End of Argentina’s “Dirty War”

After seven years of military dictatorship and state terrorism, the Argentinian people were finally freed from further human rights violations by its first democratically elected president, Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), since the military dictatorship of 1976. The mothers protesting in Buenos Aires were now able to act legally, without being brutally expelled by the police. These women of all ages have protested every Thursday afternoon since 1977 at the Plaza de Mayo, screaming with anger and sorrow as they await news of their children's and husbands’ fate.

The Story that was Not Told

Amongst the desaparecidos were children born to pregnant women who were kept alive long enough to give birth to their babies. It is estimated that between 250 and 500 of these new-born children were given to and adopted by new families or sold on the black market. In 2018, 137 of those children, who are now grown adults, were found and offered the chance to meet their biological families. This achievement was made possible thanks to the grandmothers who saw their pregnant daughters whisked away and their grandchildren given to other families. With their help, Mary-Claire King, an American geneticist, managed to use the grandmothers’ mitochondrial DNA to match them with their grandchildren.

The Rainbow

In 1977, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) published the calendar exhibited here. Its light-hearted and colourful cover does not foreshadow the content of the calendar. It appears to be an attempt to de-dramatise and make the calendar's content seem lighter than it is, in order to create a sharp contrast with the reality behind these pages. Children seem to have been cut up from the rainbow as if they were being used for a stencil. It symbolises their vanishing from the world they belonged to, from the bliss and nonchalance of childhood to the horror they probably lived once they were taken away from their parents. On a more optimistic note, the rainbow could also be interpreted as a sign of hope for the post-dictatorial future.

Day After Day

As you can see in the image, each monthly page is filled with photos and short descriptions of individuals who have disappeared during the dictatorship. Even if the calendar’s title relates to disappeared children, most of the victims represented are women, many of whom were pregnant at the time. Their black and white portraits suggest the absence of colours and ultimately of life. Some victims are also represented without photos, which makes them even more anonymous than they already are. The days in red in the calendars indicate the day of someone’s disappearance or the birthday of children who have disappeared.

A Tool of Resistance

The message conveyed by this calendar is straightforward: it aims at resisting the horrors committed by the military junta by remembering its victims on a daily basis. It is a recognition of the pain suffered by the families of the victims, used to help these communities to deal with their trauma. The calendar also had a practical use: to keep a record of the desaparecidos, as the junta made no effort to identify or document the bodies, in order to pretend they never existed. With translations in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French, this calendar also shows the desire of the Argentinian people to turn their struggle into an international issue. This everyday object was used both as a tool of remembrance and of resistance.

Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo

The first logo visible reads “identidad, familia, libertad, abuelas” (identity, family, freedom, grandmothers). La Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) is an organisation which aimed to find the stolen babies of the mothers killed in 1977 during the Junta's dictatorship. During the Dirty War, the government actively kidnapped babies of activists in order to prevent them from raising another generation of subversives.

CLAMOR

The second logo belongs to the Comitê de Defesa dos Direitos Humanos para os países do Cone Sul (The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights for the Southern Cone countries - CLAMOR), an organisation that played an outstanding role in the protection of refugees and the international denunciation of crimes against human rights .committed by the dictatorships. It was the first organisation to denounce the existence of clandestine detention camps in Argentina. The documentation gathered is remarkable, containing many posters, diaries, bulletins, testimonies, correspondence, photographs, and activity reports. CLAMOR’s main focus was undoubtedly the denunciation of arbitrary persecutions, kidnappings of people, clandestine detention centres, torture of prisoners, and the disappearance of victims.