The day the Dutch press challenged the Argentine dictatorship to give a voice to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

Although the match between Argentina and the Netherlands this Friday for the quarterfinals of Qatar 2022 will be the first confrontation under the new name of the European country, the Albiceleste and the old Netherlands played five times in World Cups, four of them in decisive phases, none more transcendent than the final of Argentina 1978 that gave the locals their first title.

However, in that World Cup played in the shadow of Jorge Rafael Videla's dictatorship, the Dutch made a much more transcendental contribution to Argentina than any sporting rivalry.

Off the field of play, the Dutch journalists sent to Buenos Aires made known to the world the struggle that the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, until then invisible in their country, carried out in search of their disappeared children and grandchildren.

Also a Dutch soccer player, Wim Rijsbergen, visited the Plaza de Mayo;

The Netherlands was one of the only two teams – along with Sweden – that allowed any of its players to get close to women who have become symbols of human rights.

Since 1977, the year after the start of the last dictatorship in Argentina, a group of mothers and grandmothers marched with handkerchiefs on their heads every Thursday.

By chance, the day the World Cup began in another place in Buenos Aires, the River Plate stadium, on June 1, was also Thursday.

A Dutch journalist from the magazine Vrij Nederland, Frits Barend, decided not to go to the opening match, between Federal Germany and Poland, but to the Plaza de Mayo – in front of the Casa Rosada, the Argentine Government Palace – to interview those who were called "the crazy ones of the square".

Barend reported on him and in the following days alerted other foreign envoys.

His compatriot Jan Van der Putten, from Dutch public television (the VARA channel), went to the Plaza de Mayo the following Thursday.

There they were, again, as always,

Those images are on YouTube and they are shocking.

Strictly speaking, they only have a small slip in dates: it is usually said that they are from June 1, the opening day of the World Cup, but in reality they belong to the following Thursday, the 8th, according to the journalist Matías Bauso, author of the book

: “On June 1 there were almost no people in the streets because the dictatorship decreed a holiday for the inaugural ceremony.

The following Thursday there was already normal circulation and then, behind the mothers and grandmothers, the office workers of a working day are seen.

That is the note that had so much repercussion”.

A single question from Van der Putten (“What's wrong, ma'am?”) started the release of the mothers.

"We want our children to tell us where they are," one pleaded.

"Why don't they tell us if they are alive, if they are dead?" cursed another fellow fighter.

A policeman tries to break up the interview.

"Don't you see that they say we 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 had to leave the country because some had disappeared. of his friends.

The Dutch journalist decided to return in 1978 because he saw the World Cup as an opportunity to tell what, without football, would have been impossible.

– The government says that you are liars – Van der Putten insisted.

– Are we liars?

Are we lying that our children disappeared?

– How many are you?

– Thousands across the country.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, during a protest in October 1982. Horacio Villalobos (Getty Images)

Then Marta Alconada, Mother of Plaza de Mayo, took the floor and asked Van de Putten to convey to 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 the doors on us.

That is why we beg 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 protesters and another The mother asked the VARA camera: "Say that human rights are not respected here."

That material, unpublished in the world until then, would be sent through a Lufthansa airline pilot with whom Van der Putten had confidence, and over time it would become an iconic interview.

The dictatorship continued kidnapping people throughout the World, to the point that it is estimated that there were more than 50 detainees -disappeared- between June 1 and 25, 1978, but materials such as the one on Dutch television served for other countries in the world to know really what was happening in Argentina.

The military had organized the World Cup to show a country at peace, in which human rights were respected, but it happened the other way around: abroad there was awareness of terror.

No one with greater symbolism than the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

“It was a good occasion: using football as cover to report on the social drama.

Soccer assured me a certain impunity.

The military took the World Cup as a pretext to show the world how beautiful the country was," Van der Putten told the newspaper

, in 2019, at the age of 77.

“It was thanks to the journalists who came for the World Cup that 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 dispute 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 participated in the 1978 World Cup, returned to Argentina and joined the 2087 march of Mothers in Plaza de Mayo: "I don't know if in that moment took real dimension.

We were a very small group of desperate women, with our three best Mothers murdered, raped, tortured and thrown alive into the river.

We were in the Plaza the day the World Cup began, nobody knew us, nobody talked about us, not even about the murder of the Madres, but you made the world know us," said the co-founder of Madres, who died on November 20. past.

Van der Putten spoke again, in 2020, with the Télam agency.

“It was part of a long series of interviews and meetings charged with drama.

Only after many years did I find out that it was an iconic interview”, added the Dutch journalist who gave the 78 World Cup the best possible meaning.

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