Seinforma Canada

. The soldiers wanted to know the whereabouts of their children, Martin and Horacio. 48 hours later they were released. She had been tortured, her husband had not. Elisa thought she had saved her kids, but she was wrong. 15 days later, Martin was kidnapped, and in June, 1977 Horacio was taken away as well. Since then, Elisa spends her days as a member of the association Madres de Plaza de Mayo.
   Elisa used to be a teacher in a school from Marcos Paz, place where she and her family used to live. She would follow the same routine every day; leave work and return home. “I devoted my life to my home, my children and the school. Anything else; I wouldn’t integrate nor worry about other people’s problems”, said Elisa. At the moment, she is 80 years old. Landin family used to have a pharmacy in front of their residence.
That January 5^th the bell rang and 8 men dressed in plain clothes, carrying assault rifles, bursted into their shop and kidnapped Elisa and her husband. They were taken to the ESMA (School of Mechanics of the Navy). “I was tortured while asked their whereabouts. The feeling of the torture is similar to the sensation of having your breast removed without being given anesthetics, horrible”, recalls Elisa.
    In the ESMA, located in the capital city of Buenos Aires, on the avenue rAvenida del Libertador, worked during the last coup d'état one of the biggest clandestine centres of detention and extermination, according to the information registered by the CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of People).
   The ESMA was a three-story building, with a basement and a big overhead cupboard. It was in the basement where Elisa was kept in captivity for 2 days. “I still can not understand why I was taken; If I gave birth to my children, Did they think I would send them to their graves?” she says.

Handing flyers out
   Martin Landin used to study law in the University of Buenos Aires, but worked in the candy store of the Philosophy and languages campus. “I knew that Martin was pamphleteering in the university and Horacio in the factory where he worked”, stated Elisa. On January 20^th, 1977 Martin disappeared leaving no trace of his destination.
   Martin had been doing the military service that year and had made himself deserter; therefore, Elisa had not reported his absence to the police. “I thought that by pressing charges I was putting him in a bigger risk” says Elisa. In September, 1977 Horacio was taken away from the factory, where he was an unionist. It was then when Elisa began her endless fight. “I said to my husband I was going to look for mi children. I went into retirement that year, I had been teaching for 33 years. Since then I devoted myself exclusively to find them”, expresses Elisa.

A maternal, nonpolitical fight
   Her fight traveled across all Human Rights organizations. “I used to go to the reunions of the League and the Meetings. It was everything about mass movements and discussions on political issues. However, I did not want to talk about politics, as my aim was to find my children. It must be taken into account that I did not understand anything about politics. Women were not allowed to vote until the year 1952”, explains Elisa.
   Some months before the coup, the Permanent Committee for the Human Rights had been created (APDH). After March the 24^th, Families of Disappeared and Detained People for Political Reasons was also created. These events gave place to the beginning, in April, 1977, of an obstinate and memorable task of demand by The Mothers. The aim was to find their children and grandchildren born in captivity.

A new home, with other disappeared children
   They have been known, ever since, as “Abuelas (Grandmas) de Plaza de Mayo”. Furthermore, with the same objective arose the Universal Movement for the Human Rights (MEDH), which provided support and restrain the victims needs. The service Peace and Justice (SERPAJ), the League for the Human Rights and the Centre of Social and Legal Studies (CELS) participated in the search of missing people, spreading over different countries around the world what was happening in Argentina. “The Meeting and the League were composed of very respected people, but whom would not do a thing with all sincerity, and attended you like offices”, criticizes Elisa.
   Elisa Keeps on with this endless fight working in the House of the Mothers, placed in 1584 Hipolito Irigoyen Street, in front of the park Dos Congresos. “On September 15^th, 1977 I went for the first time to meet the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo”, said Elisa. They gathered together for the first time in Plaza de Mayo in April 30^th, 1977. They all claimed for the same, they were all jointed by the same pain, pain that motivated them to gather together every Thursday. From that moment onwards, Thursdays without them marching around the pyramid do not exist.
    They say marching and not prowling around, because the prowl implies to loiter around the same thing, “and the Mothers believe that, even if going in circles, we march towards something”, says Elisa. The mothers considered the park the perfect place, “we did not have desks, or queues, or bureaucracy to separate us there”, Elisa explains.
   “The Mothers are a group of women fighting for freedom, restoring our children as revolutionaries. At the very beginning, our aim was to make justice, but as time passed by, we realized justice does not exist and so we were not going to gain anything. Nowadays, we fight for work, education and health”, yells Elisa.
   The solidarity and fraternity gained between The Mothers caused a change in them. The motive was not personal anymore, so they socialized the maternity. They took out the names of their kids from the shawls and asked for all the missing people. “Many mothers did not accept to fight as a group and some quit; they did not understand what their children had done, because it is in there where the base of the whole cause resides. Many of them said that because of those black people their children gave their lives. They did not understand their fight” said Elisa.
   But the task was not easy. Obstacles were a daily thread. “Our friends stopped coming and the neighbours would cross to another street in order to avoid the front door of my house. A long time went by before things started to change and people began to show more solidarity with me” admitts Elisa.
    But the obstacles were political as well. “When the mothers were going to bring up charges for the kidnappings in the inland of the country, the police inspectors would advice them not to do it, otherwise they would kidnap their other kids”, testifies Elisa.
   The CONADEP estimates that the number of persons who are still in a compulsory missing situation goes around 8960, basing those numbers on the reports received by this commission, under compatibility with the payslips developed by national and international Human Rights organizations. This figure can not be considered definite, as the CONADEP has proved that there are lots of cases that have not been reported. Likewise, it has not been ruled out the possibility of having included in the pay slip some people that did not communicate the cessation of their disappearance to the appropriate organization promptly.
The memory of their children gives Elisa the necessary strength to continue the fight they had started. Inside the association, Elisa is in charge of the photographic files. “Anyway, I do thousands of things besides that. Recently, for example, I have been counting the t-shirts we have been selling. We also go to the schools to talk to the students, we help people in need…” pointes out Elisa.
    The Mothers created a university, the “Café Literario”, the library, a video library and a printing shop, where photographic data and documents can be found. It has been a short while since the first school of The Mothers was founded in Marcos Paz. “Every field The Mothers create, are thought for young people to have a place to share and debate” Said Elisa.
   Elisa, a member of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, had two contrary lives. She let the school go off, as well as the house, and faced up to the street. She opened her eyes never to close them again. In the bedroom there is a desk and a chair where Elisa is sitting down. She fixes her eyes nowhere. Her features do not move until she sighs deeply and says: “They were fighting for something nice. They were not carrying a weapon in each hand; their weapons were their minds”.