Mothers of the Disappeared (May 4, 2006)

We slept in this morning because of the late night, and were feeling very tired and lazy. Around 10:30 we took Pooch for a long walk and then went to eat at Café La Spiga on Av. De Mayo, the same place I went with Roger and Adam on Monday. It was much busier today, and it was fun to sit and watch the people go by. We brought Poochie back to the apartment and sat down for a few minutes planning our day. We were both very tired and felt like taking a nap, but we managed to drag ourselves out around 1:30 . We decided to go back to the jewellery street, and ended up buying a ring for Lincoln at one store (nice stainless steel for 25 pesos), and went back to the same store we were at last night and bought one for me, but not the one I had seen last night. (silver for 35 pesos). So for US$20 we have nice new wedding bands! We were happy. Mom & Dad had given us some money for our anniversary, so some of it went towards buying these rings – thanks Mom and Dad! We have some left over from what they gave us to help pay for our dinner.

Next stop was the Hotel Castelar, which Adam had recommended. Lincoln had stopped in earlier but nobody spoke English she he left. We went in together and I asked at the desk about the price. He called the reservations desk and handed over the receiver to me – I had an entire conversation in Spanish with the lady and managed to reserve a room for us for tomorrow night. There was one thing she said that I didn’t understand, so she said it in English, but I responded to her in Spanish and she kept talking Spanish to me. It was very exciting and a big rush for me. Lincoln was impressed too. It’s fun to be practising my Spanish!

We continued on towards Plaza de Mayo because we wanted to see the Mothers of the Disappeared, who protest every Thursday at 3:30 . These women have been protesting here weekly since the early eighties, demanding an explanation for the 30,000 people that were tortured and “disappeared” by the dictatorship government during the Dirty War (1976 – 1983). The women are grandmothers now, and have recently held their 1000^th protest. The women walk around the plaza carrying a banner that says “Ditribute the wealth” (in Spanish). The Mothers have managed to find out what happened to many of the people (some lists of people detained have been provided), but there are still thousands of missing people that are unaccounted for, and nobody knows the details of what happened to them. It was very sad and touching.

Next we went to see the Cathedral Metropolitana that is on the Plaza, whose construction was finished in 1827. The cathedral was nice inside, and had many different altars lining the sides of it, as well as a huge central altar that appeared to be made of solid silver. The tomb of Argentina ’s liberator Jose de San Martin is also contained inside the cathedral, and is protected by two guards all the time. He is Argentina ’s most venerated historical figure, and is also the liberator of Chile and Peru .

We walked back along Av. De Mayo and stopped at Goya Café for some tea & coffee and papas fritas provenzal – these are yummy French fries with roasted garlic, chopped chives and oregano sprinkled on top. Yum. After our snack we went back to Adam’s and hung out, downloading and editing pictures and reading. Roger showed up shortly after we did, and Adam and Andrea didn’t get home until around 9:20 . I had a piece of quiche for dinner, and the others went out around 10:30 to get something to eat. I was really tired and couldn’t handle staying up until 1:30 again, so I stayed behind and went to bed at 11:00 . They went to a Japanese restaurant that was apparently very good, but I was happy to have a good night’s sleep.

To see pictures of the demonstration, click here