Although this Friday’s game between Argentina and the Netherlands for the quarter-finals of Qatar 2022 will be the first confrontation under the European country’s new name, the Albiceleste and the old Netherlands have played five times at World Cups, four of them in crucial stages. Nothing is more outstanding than the Argentina 1978 final, which gave the locals their first title. However, at this World Cup, played in the shadow of Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship, the Dutch made a far more transcendental contribution to Argentina than any sporting rivalry. Off the field, the Dutch journalists sent to Buenos Aires made known to the world the struggle waged by the mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, until then invisible in their country, in search of their missing children and grandchildren. A Dutch soccer player, Wim Rijsbergen, also visited the Plaza de Mayo; The Netherlands were one of the only two sides, along with Sweden, to allow any of their players to get close to women who have become symbols of human rights.
Every Thursday since 1977, the year after the beginning of the last dictatorship in Argentina, a group of mothers and grandmothers with handkerchiefs on their heads marched. Coincidentally, the day that the World Cup began at another venue in Buenos Aires, the River Plate Stadium, on June 1st was also Thursday. A Dutch journalist from Vrij Nederland magazine, Frits Barend, decided not to go to the opening match between West Germany and Poland, but to go to the Plaza de Mayo – in front of the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s government palace – to interview the throwers who were “the lunatics of the square”. Barend made his report and alerted other foreign envoys in the days that followed. His compatriot Jan Van der Putten from Dutch public television (VARA channel) went to the Plaza de Mayo the following Thursday. There they were, as always, the mothers and grandmothers.
These pictures are on YouTube and they are shocking. Strictly speaking, they only have a small date error: they are usually said to be from June 1st, the opening day of the World Cup, but in reality they belong to the following Thursday, June 8th, according to journalist Matías Bauso , author of the book Historia oral of 1978: “On June 1, almost no people were on the streets because the dictatorship decreed an inauguration holiday. On the following Thursday traffic was already normal and then behind the mothers and grandmothers the office workers of a working day can be seen. That’s the note that had so much repercussion.”
A single question from Van der Putten (“What’s up ma’am?”) ushered in the release of the mothers. “We want our kids to tell us where they are,” one pleaded. “Why don’t they tell us if they’re alive, if they’re dead?” another comrade cursed. A police officer tries to interrupt the interview. “Don’t you see they’re saying we’re going to have a World Cup in peace?” a mother told Van der Putten, who had been a correspondent in Argentina between 1973 and 1976, the year of the military coup, when he was forced to leave the country , because some of his friends had disappeared. The Dutch journalist decided to return in 1978 because he saw the World Cup as an opportunity to tell what would have been impossible without football.
– The government says you are a liar – insisted Van der Putten.
– Are we liars? Are we lying that our children have disappeared?
– How many are you?
– Thousands across the country.
The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo during a protest in October 1982. Horacio Villalobos (Getty Images)
Then Marta Alconada, mother of the Plaza de Mayo, took the floor and asked Van de Putten to tell the rest of the world what was happening in an Argentina without freedoms. “We are desperate because we no longer know where to turn. They rejected us everywhere: consulates, embassies, churches, they closed all doors to us. That’s why we ask you, you are our hope, please help us!” pleaded the human rights activist, who died in 2007. Immediately, on June 8, 1978, the Argentine police arrived to disperse the demonstrators and another mother called for the VARA Camera: “Say that human rights are not respected here.”
This footage, previously unpublished worldwide, was sent through a Lufthansa airline pilot whom Van der Putten trusted, and over time it became an iconic interview. The dictatorship continued to kidnap people around the world, to the point that more than 50 prisoners were estimated to have “disappeared” between June 1st and 25th, 1978, but material like that on Dutch television really served other countries around the world to help know what happened in Argentina. The military had organized the World Cup to show a peaceful country where human rights were respected, but it happened the other way around: awareness of terror was high abroad. None of greater symbolism than the mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
“It was a good opportunity to use football as a cover to report on the social drama. Football assured me of some impunity. The military used the World Cup as an excuse to show the world how beautiful the country is,” Van der Putten told Tiempo Argentino newspaper in 2019 at the age of 77. “Thanks to the journalists who came to the World Cup, we had our first Support groups,” recalled Mercedes de Meroño, vice president of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, in 2013.
Luis Galván and Rob Rensenbrink fight for the ball during the 1978 World Cup Final at the Monumental Antonio Vespuci Stadium in Buenos Aires.VI-Images (via Getty Images)
Hebe de Bonafini spoke in 2018 when Arie Haan and Ernie Brandts, two soccer players from the Netherlands who had played in the 1978 World Cup, returned to Argentina and joined the March of Mothers in Plaza de Mayo in 2087: “I don’t know when real dimensions were assumed at that moment. We were a very small group of desperate women, our three best mothers were murdered, raped, tortured and thrown into the river alive. We were in the plaza the day the World Cup started, nobody knew us, nobody talked about us, not even the Madres murder, but you introduced us to the world,” said the Madres co-founder, who died November 20. passed.
Van der Putten spoke to the Telam agency again in 2020. “It was part of a long series of interviews and meetings full of drama. It was only after many years that I found out that it was an iconic interview,” added the Dutch journalist, who gave the best possible meaning to the 78th World Cup.
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