The intense agenda of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this Monday (23rd), in Buenos Aires, included a meeting with the group of mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a collective of women formed to demand explanations from the Argentine State for the murder and disappearance of thousands of young people during the dictatorship in the neighboring country. 
“The Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo are an inspiration in the defense of democracy in Latin America. Touched by our meeting today”, wrote Lula in a post on social networks. The trip to Argentina is Lula’s first international tour in this third term. Throughout the day, he held a bilateral meeting with the country’s president, Alberto Fernández, as well as a meeting with Argentine and Brazilian businessmen. In the evening, Lula, Fernández and other foreign leaders participated in a musical concert with artists from both countries at Centro Cultural Kirchner.
First Lady Janja Lula da Silva, who is accompanying President Lula on the trip, also made a post on social networks highlighting the meeting with the Mothers and Grandmothers of Praça de Mayo.
“In Buenos Aires, we met with representatives of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who had their children and grandchildren murdered or disappeared during the military dictatorship. Admiration for these women who fight for dignity and reparation of rights”.
The movement began in April 1977, during the military dictatorship in Argentina, when 14 women gathered in Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, seat of the national government, in Buenos Aires, to protest for their missing children, starting a struggle has lasted more than 45 years for truth, memory, justice and for life. Throughout this period, the mothers themselves were the target of persecution and repression by the military and, even with the end of the authoritarian period, fought for laws to establish reparation and punishment for those involved in crimes against humanity.
It is estimated that, in the dictatorship of 1976 and 1983, the hardest and most violent in the history of Argentina, more than 30,000 people were killed or disappeared by the official military forces.
This Tuesday (24th), Lula will participate, still in the Argentine capital, in the 7th Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), a group of 33 countries in the hemisphere. The following day, the Brazilian president pays a visit to Uruguay, where he will meet President Lacalle Pou. Afterwards, Lula returns to Brazil.
