McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 46

confrontation with guerilla forces and “a
long clandestine campaign carried out by
special task forces,” whose aim was to abduct
individuals seen as seditious.4 Furthermore,
since the government believed in a definition
of subversion that was quite broad, tens of
thousands of people were taken. However,
the junta did not acknowledge that those
activities were perpetrated under their
orders. After being arrested, the individuals
were brought to concentration camps or
clandestine detention centers. Those who
were detained, the detenidos, were living
in inhumane conditions and subjected to
repeated torture; those who were abducted
but not formally arrested were called
desaparecidos, as many of them were
never heard from again. The special task
force did not make any distinctions when
accusing individuals of subversion; men,
women, children, adults, elders and even
pregnant women were all possible subjects
to abduction5.
Once the abductions started, the victims’
relatives reported the arrests, disappearances,
and kidnappings and tried to gain
information about their possible locations,
but the judicial branch denied them the
right to undertake legal procedures. Those
who continued to pressure the authorities
for help did so at the risk of their lives as
they received threats and became victims
of abduction themselves. Through powerful
state terrorism, the junta instigated fear
throughout the population with the
intention of prompting compliance, but
also created profound divisions between the
state and civil society6.
The movement of Las Madres de la
Plaza de Mayo, which emerged in April
1977, was one movement that arose as a
consequence of the conditions produced
Marysa Navarro, “The Personal is Political: Las
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo,” in Power and Popular
Protest: Latin American Social Movements, ed. Susan
Eckstein (Berkeley: