Argentina's Mothers focus on poverty 30 years on

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 29 (Reuters) Day care centers, soup kitchens and housing for the poor are the new focus for Argentina's most famous human rights activists, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who risked their lives 30 years ago demanding the dictatorship return their missing children.

The Mothers became an international symbol wearing white scarves to march in front of the government palace every Thursday at a time when government opponents disappeared into political prisons on a daily basis.

Now split into two groups over ideological differences, they say they are helping to carry on the revolution their leftist children dreamed of and were killed for pursuing.

''They couldn't achieve a better country, without poverty, with dignity and with work. The mothers, much later, have continued where they left off,'' said Marta Vasquez, 81, president of the Founding Line of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association, which split in 1986 from the Founding Line, recently opened a free day care center inside the concrete ruins of a defunct hospital called ''The White Elephant'' in a Buenos Aires slum.

Hebe de Bonafini, 79, president of the association, widely seen as the more hard-line of the two groups, said the new projects make their movement relevant for generations born since the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

''There is still a lot to do. But when the mothers are gone, the youths who are working with us will carry on,'' Bonafini told Reuters.

The group has also built homes for poor families, founded a university, where students can get degrees in human rights law, and runs a radio station, a printing press, a Web site and a newspaper.

The Mothers also spawned the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Children, and the Siblings, largely dedicated to searching for children of political prisoners.

The grandmothers have located and identified dozens of people who were stolen by the military as babies and brought up unaware of where they came from.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed in the 1976-1983 dictatorship as the government cracked down on leftist dissidents. Most of those victims disappeared in political prisons and their bodies have never been found.

SHIFT IN FOCUS Leftist President Nestor Kirchner has put a new focus on human rights, and amnesty laws and pardons have been overturned. Judges have reopened dozens of cases, are investigating crimes against humanity and have put notorious torturers on trial.

But those cases are no longer the center of the Mothers' work.

''We left the trials up to the lawyers and 15 years ago shifted our focus to social issues. As long as there are children dying of hunger and so much injustice, we are needed,'' Bonafini said.

Bonafini, a critic of what she calls US imperialism, faced criticism for saying she was ''happy'' about the Sept 11 attacks in the United States. Although she denounced terrorism, she called the attacks the result of misguided US foreign policy.

Despite those and other provocative comments, her organization has become an important political player in Argentina.

Her group and others rallied tens of thousands of people in a soccer stadium in March for a rally against US President George W Bush, during his Latin American tour, and she has the ear of Kirchner.

Nowadays when dozens of Mothers still march each week in the Plaza de Mayo -- in two separate groups and with slow steps, some with canes -- tourists and affectionate fans surround them.

But when they first started their Thursday marches in front of the government palace, on April 30, 1977, they were risking their lives.

Azucena Villaflor, who founded the group, was kidnapped and assassinated in 1977.

''They arrested us, they beat us, and we returned with wigs on so we couldn't be identified,'' Bonafini said.

Reuters JK DB2124