HER STORY

Argentina’s Armed Forces led by Army General Jorge Rafael Videla, stage a coup d'état, seize power and implement a systematic plan of disappearance and torture of civilians.

Norita’s eldest son Gustavo, a young political revolutionary, aged 24, is kidnapped by members of the Armed Forces at his local train station. Within days, Norita begins searching for him at police stations, hospitals, and other government offices but receives no answers.

Azucena Villaflor de De Vincenti, was one of the leaders of that small group of 14 women who had the courage to protest and demand the appearance alive of their children in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Government House. Norita also participated in the protest that day and this collective action gave birth to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo movement.

Three of the main Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, María Ponce de Bianca and Azucena Villaflor de De Vicenti) were kidnapped and thrown alive into the sea in the death flights. Weeks later their bodies appear on a beach on the Atlantic Coast, at Santa Teresita.

Under the auspices of the military regime, Argentina hosts a successful FIFA World Cup in Buenos Aires. While the national squad is crowned champions, the Mothers take advantage of these circumstances to talk to the international press that came to cover the World Cup and begin to learn of the existence of this group of women who gathered in the Plaza de Mayo to demand the government the appearance of their children.

Norita addresses the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, imploring Argentina’s de-facto military government to provide answers about her son and the other thousands of missing people. She is joined over a dozen Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

The military are facing increased international pressure on human rights, plus weakened public opinion at home due to the state of the economy. They send troops to reclaim the Malvinas Islands (known as Falklands to the British). The debacle, which leaves hundreds of dead Argentinian conscripts, forces the military to concede elections.

Democracy is returned to Argentina with President Raúl Alfonsín’s inauguration. This date also coincides with International Human Rights Day.

Norita participates in the First National Women's Meeting.

For her activism and sustained focus over decades on economic inequality, Norita is awarded the chair of the "Economic Power and Human Rights” course at the University of Buenos Aires, a position which she holds until 2020.

At the age of 63, Norita graduated as a Social Psychologist from the Pichón Riviere School of Social Psychology.

Norita testifies in the trial known as “ESMA Mega Trial”, which looks into, among other incidents, the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of the 3 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in 1977.

Jorge Rafael Videla is jailed to serve multiple life sentences, alongside dozens more.

Norita lodges a habeas corpus writ with the Argentinian judiciary to demand that the State continue searching for her disappeared son. This act of protest is something she will repeat, together with her grandson Damián, many times in the 2000s, to emphasize the State's continued debt to the people for not having provided answers about the fate of the disappeared.

Norita marches alongside thousands of women in the first “Ni Una Menos” (Not One Less) demonstration which protests against continued violence against women. The movement is later instrumental in installing abortion reform in the country’s, and the region’s, public debate on women’s rights.

Norita and the Mothers lead a protest of over 100,000 people against a Supreme Court ruling in Argentina that would have halved the sentences of military officers serving jail time for human rights crimes. The controversy is known as the “2x1” (two for one). Finally the ruling is overturned thanks to public pressure.

Norita is the key speaker at the March 8 International Women’s Strike in Buenos Aires where she calls for abortion to be legalized.

Norita joins nearly one million women on the streets of Buenos Aries to urge Argentina’s Lower House to pass a bill to legalize abortion. The bill successfully passes to the Senate.

Norita visits Congress to lobby Senators to vote for the abortion bill, but it fails to pass under the pressure of interest groups like the powerful Catholic Church. Days later, Norita announces she will debaptize herself from the Church.

After two years of sustained pressure by the women's movement, and under the expectant watch of millions of women across Latin America, the Chambers of Deputies and Senators legalize the law that regulates access to voluntary termination of pregnancy and post-abortion care for all people with the capacity to become pregnant.