Mobilizing motherhood (and fatherhood): civic empowerment in the quake zones of China.(Essay)

A POWERFUL FRONT-PAGE PHOTOGRAPH in the New York Times pictured Jiang Guohua, a Communist Party secretary in Mianzhun, kneeling before two angry mothers. With his arms outstretched and eyes gazing deferentially downward, Jiang was caught in an unusual act of contrition for a party official. As he confirmed state responsibility for poorly built schools, he also begged forgiveness from parents who lost their children in the shoddy buildings that collapsed during China's May 12, 2008, earth-quake. In recent months, these open displays of grief and anger, commonly referred to as "mourning rallies," have served as high profile examples of the growing tension between the bereaved and the government. Indeed, these very public demonstrations present an uncommon challenge to state officials who have historically quashed dissent with arrests of intimidation.

As dramatic as this scene is, from a global perspective, parental protest is not entirely new. There are parallels between China's unfolding crisis in which roughly 17,000 children died (1) and the activism of mothers during Argentina's "dirty war." Similar to the repressed civil liberties environment of the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), China has also, traditionally, maintained a highly regulated atmosphere of government censorship and surveillance. In much the same way, however, that the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo were able to transgress the edicts of social control by embracing the state-sanctioned role of all-consuming motherhood, Chinese citizens have been able to use their standing as parents to articulate their demands for state accountability. In the wake of stories that reveal gaping governmental oversight that led to structurally compromised schools, distraught mothers and fathers cling to photos of sons and daughters with their sorrow slowly turning to rage. The visual image, moreover, of a bereaved parent gripping a photograph of their child has become a weapon of protest that Chinese officials have found difficult, if not impossible, to counter.

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GENDER AND THE STATE

During the seven-year period of Jorge Videla's military rule in Argentina, some 30,000 people, labeled subversives and terrorists by the regime were "disappeared" the majority kidnapped, tortured, or murdered with no trace or record of their fate. In 1977, despite the danger of reprisals, Argentine women took to the streets to denounce this state-sponsored violence against its citizens. Dressed in black and wearing white headscarves, these grief stricken mothers and grandmothers gathered in the main square of Buenos Aires, the Plaza de Mayo, holding photographs of their missing loved ones and demanded that the government be held accountable. In a time when even the slightest sign of dissent resulted in severe repercussions, these public protests, strangely, went largely uninterrupted. (2)

Undoubtedly these women understood, as did the state, their inherent ability to transgress the bounds of political authority in periods of extreme repression. Throughout the Proceso, the military sought to encourage the obedience and submission of women by appealing to their sense of motherly duty. (3) The government promoted the image of "good" mothers as those women who were nonpolitical, confined to the private sphere and primarily concerned with the care and protection of their children and husband. By contrast, those who were politically active or who ventured outside the private domain were associated with deviance and subversion. These women were deemed "bad" mothers who had abandoned their families and children for a life of radicalism and immorality. (4)

Turning this governmental regulation of gender back onto itself, the madres co-opted the state-sanctioned ideal of motherhood to justify, define, and promote political action against the dictatorship. They turned mourning into a political spectacle, thus giving voice to the thousands of victims that had been kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Further, to represent the bodies of missing children, the mothers fashioned their own bodies into human billboards, wearing the identification numbers of the disappeared to grant visibility where before there was none. (5)