Plaza de Mayo

The Plaza de Mayo is located in the main square of downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In the late 1970s, this is where the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo marched with signs and pictures of their missing children that the Argentine military had taken away from them. These years were known as the "Dirty War" in Argentina. The Argentine military was anticommunist and believed that the best way to get rid of the communist threat was to get rid of the people who supported Marxism. The majority of these people consisted of the young, the middle-class, the university students and the urban people. These people would be taken away by the military and raped, tortured and murdered and their bodies would be disposed of secretly. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo knew what was going on and marched in the plaza to open the public's eyes to what their military was doing and to try to find out what happened to their children. However, for many years the military called them las locas – "the crazy mothers of the Plaza de Mayo". The mothers would often wear white scarves with the names of their missing children.

It is not known just how many people were killed since there were no records kept, however, the mothers believe that the number is somewhere around 30,000. Three of the founders of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have also "disappeared". The mothers refuse any money the government offers them and will only recognize the deaths of their children when the government shows them official documents of what happened to their children. One movie that portrays these events very well is entitled La Historia Oficial (released in English as "The Official Version") directed by Luis Puenzo. It is about a couple with an adopted child. The mother soon comes to find out that her adopted child may have been the daughter of one of the missing people.