Advent is about hope and expectation and waiting. The season also has strong ties with eschatology, the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and humankind. The term derives from the Greek eskhatos, meaning "last."
December 10 is also International Human Rights Day, the date on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948. It was a time when nations were determined that the horrors of WWII would never again occur. The General Assembly said that respect for human rights "is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."
From Wikipedia:
A forced disappearance occurs when an organization forces a person to vanish from public view, either by murder or by simple sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained in concentration camps, often tortured, and finally executed and the corpse hidden. In Spanish and Portuguese, "disappeared people" are called desaparecidos, a term which specifically refers to the mostly South American victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and the 1980s, in particular concerning Operation Condor.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, "forced disappearances" qualify as a crime against humanity, which thus cannot be subject to statute of limitation.
In Argentina, the Dirty War, or Guerra Sucia, lasted form 1976 to 1983. It was not a war against an external enemy, or a civil war in the strict sense. The political history of Argentina is complicated and I do not fully understand it. But it is fairly clear that the Dirty War was a state-sponsored campaign of violence against perceived Argentinian "subversives". Here, "subversives" seems to include trade unionists, socialists, communists, and anyone perceived to be affiliated. There is evidence that because of the fear of Communism, the United States assisted or at least condoned the violent acts of the Argentine military in its own and other Latin American countries.
Estimates by human rights groups place the total casualties in the Dirty War at 30,000. A report conducted by Argentine security forces in mid 1978 and later published estimates that up to 22,000 people had been killed or disappeared by that time.
The country later reverted to civilian democratic rule, but the war criminals were able to manipulate the legal system to escape prosecution. Often, when pregnant women were abducted, they were allowed to give birth, and then they were murdered. "Subversives breed subversives," so their children were often given to military families. These things have all left a scar on the Argentine psyche.
On April 30, 1977, Azucena Villaflor and 13 other women, whose names are listed below, started marching on the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. Azucena's son Nestor, and his wife, Raquel Mangin, had been disappeared. They wore white scarves, symbolizing the dove of peace, and these became the mothers' symbol. They also wore rose buds - a white one if they knew their child was alive, a red one for those who were dead. They had asked the Ministry of the Interior, the church, the police, the military, but there was no acknowledgment that their children were even missing. And the not knowing itself was part of the terror.
The Mothers started to know each other while knocking on those doors and one evening in April of 1977, while they were waiting for a priest at the Stella Maris Church, one of them, Azucena Villaflor de Devicenti, said: "If we do this on our own, we will not get anything. Why don't we go to the Plaza de Mayo and when we become a large group, Videla (then president) will have to meet with us ... "Azucena Devicenti chose the Plaza de Mayo as the meeting place because it is located across the street from the Government House (Pink House) and for being a historical and traditional place for demonstrations.From the Easy Buenos Aires City website.
Azucena Villaflor herself was disappeared on Dec 10, 1977, which was also International Human Rights Day. The Mothers had published a newspaper advertisement with the names of their disappeared children. She was abducted at night by soldiers. She was probably tortured, as were many of the disappeared. Her body was identified in 2005 by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which was created to locate and identify the bodies of the disappeared. Her skeleton displayed the forensic evidence of a large impact, and she had likely been drugged, bound, and thrown out of an airplane over water, which was a common way of killing someone so that the body could not be found. These flights were known as vuelos de las muerte, or death flights.
Azucena's remains were cremated and buried at the foot of the May Pyramid on the Plaza de Mayo. The Abuelas (Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo continued the mission of the Mothers, establishing a genetic database to help identify children who had been abducted and given to military families (some were adopted internationally in good faith on the adoptive parents' parts). 56 children were located, 7 of whom died. 31 are with their biological parents, and 13 are being raised jointly (the good faith adoptions). Many of the military adoptive parents managed to escape justice.
However, when one of the first parents to be prosecuted said that the child was better off with him, because he had not harmed her and that to remove her would be far more traumatic to her, the Supreme Court of Argentina disagreed. They ruled that the murders, disappearances and abductions were now public. Paula, the child, would soon learn. And besides, she was living with the man who murdered her parents. Mary-Claire King, an American geneticist involved with the Grandmothers and in genetically testing children, details the story of the abductions, the setting up of test procedures, and the fight to prosecute.
I consider human rights to be essential to the complete development of the human race. Those leaders who fail to endorse human rights have something to hide.
However, it's very easy to advocate for human rights from behind a desk - or from a blog. Azucena Villaflor was on the front lines of human rights. She surely knew or suspected that she was placing her life in danger. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Azucena stepped out in love and faith for her son and her daughter in law. Right now, human rights are supported by a body of international law in its infancy, by uncertain national laws ... and by hope, and faith, and love.
In this Lentz icon, Mary is dressed as one of the Mothers. The Mothers would hold photographs of their children, and would wear rosebuds: white if they hoped their child was alive, red if they knew their child was dead. As the practice of disappearance spread to other Latin American countries, so did the practice of the Mothers. In this icon, Mary has no photograph of her Son, only His crown of thorns. The white hand print in the bottom left is the blanco mano, the emblem of Salvadoran death squads. Lentz' icon of Oscar Romero is similarly defaced by the presence of military helicopters.
Whenever someone is murdered, or tortured, or left in poverty, or discriminated against, God's image is defaced. But God is found in the faces of those victims of torture and disappearance, and whenever we stand up for human rights, we stand up for God. We Christians cannot stand by when human rights are violated. If Azucena Villaflor had the faith to call her murderous government to account in the Plaza del Mayo, we can have that faith also.
For Azucena Villaflor and the other Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo:
Berta Braverman
Haydée García Buelas
María Adela Gard de Antokoletz
Julia Gard, María Mercedes Gard
Cándida Gard
Delicia González
Pepa Noia
Mirta Baravalle
Kety Neuhaus
Raquel Arcushin
Sra. De Caim
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