Susan Hawthorne #336 traffic

like traffic signals the signs

in this park signify terror

trafficking in children

is just another daily event

pregnant women abducted

the longest wait in the world

for this child not yet born

removed from her arms forever

here the markers show

history acknowledged unlike

Australia's own savagery

icons blaring the past

others were raped in detention

kept until they too had the child

forced from her    how can this end

as we sink into formal depravity?

we know these stories because

of bravery by grandmothers

and mothers who still walk every

Thursday at 3.30 pm around

Plaza de Mayo we know because

survivors gave evidence at trials

the speak with hesitation
words trembling truth: desesparacidos

My translation of text*

There were a lot of women who were pregnant at the time of their detention. It was no obstacle to carry out torture. The delivery was carried out in inhumane conditions, often inside the same Centre of Secret Detention. After the birth, many of these women were disappeared and their children, in the majority of cases, delivered into the hands of the military or civilians related to the armed forces. This would not have been possible without the participation of doctors and nurses who were part of this system of appropriation and disappearance.


* This is a permanent outdoor art exhibition in the Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires. It is filled with street signs representing the various horrors and the history of state terrorism (that's how they refer to it on the signs).