Word: plazas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...particularly chilly Thursday in late June, the beginning of the Argentine winter. A group of 60- and 70-year-old women who had told a whole government to go to hell when nobody else had such courage would soon converge upon the plaza to reiterate their silent demands, the same demands they had made of three governments before the present...
...little better than nine years since these women began their weekly marches outside Government House in downtown Buenos Aires to demand information on their "disappeared" children. For the first six years, when a ruthless military dictatorship ruled the land, they were ridiculed as "the Crazy Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" because they weren't silent like all the rest. For the last three years, in which Argentina has enjoyed a return to democratic rule, the mothers of the plaza have continued to don their characteristic white kerchiefs to issue more broad (some will say more ill-defined) demands...
...bitter June wind began to pick up, most of the human traffic scurrying through the plaza probably wondered why these women continue. It is now generally accepted in Argentina that the military liquidated all remaining political prisioners and their traces shortly before the nation hosted the 1978 World Soccer Cup. In all, it is estimated that anywhere between 8,000 and 30,000 people "disappeared" during the military's 1976-1979 "dirty war" against left wing extremism. It is also generally accepted that the vast majority of them were completely innocent and in fact had no ties to guerrilla groups...
...newspaper, called simply "Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo," reflects an extremism that has begun to characterize the mothers nine years later. It is not particularly objective and not entirely reliable. It also reflects a bitterness to which the mothers are certainly entitled, but which has unfortunately alienated many...
However routine, the surprising landslide enraged many P.A.N. supporters. Stores across the state closed down for a day, and nearly 10,000 people gathered in the city of Chihuahua's main plaza while Francisco Barrio, P.A.N.'s candidate for governor, urged them to block roads and boycott progovernment newspapers...