Filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz recently spoke with the iconic Mexican-American filmmaker Lourdes Portillo about her groundbreaking films, Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (1985) and Señorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman) (2001). Ruiz’s documentary El Equipo (2023) chronicles the history of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and is currently streaming on pbs.org through Independent Lens until January 7, 2024. Portillo’s films are available through her website.
Note: This interview was conducted before Argentina’s presidential run off in which a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who denies that 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared, under the Argentine military dictatorship, despite extensive corroboration and international consensus, won the presidency. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Bernardo Ruiz (BR): This year, 2023, marks the 40th anniversary of the return to democracy in Argentina, after that country’s military dictatorship (from 1976 to 1983). It is a good opportunity to talk about your documentary Las Madres (co-directed with Susana Blaustein Muñoz) which was nominated for an Oscar in 1986. It then went on to air on the very first season of the PBS documentary series POV on August 2, 1988 (in what was a groundbreaking season). Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to this story? What was your connection to this specific history?
Lourdes Portillo (LP): I was married at the time, but I went back to school to do something that I loved. I was very influenced by the poets in San Francisco at that time and also the artists at the [San Francisco] Art Institute. Then, the atmosphere was all about muralism, poetry, theater – all kinds of artistic expression in the Mission. I learned a lot about South America, Central America. That was my schooling in the Americas, was here in the Mission [district in San Francisco]. And then later, when I went to the Art Institute, it was, of course, cinema that I was always very excited by. I loved the idea of cinema. At that time, I was editing a film [which included a tango]. My mother loved tangos, and she would listen to them. I was working in the editing room at the Art Institute, and I had the door open, while I was working on the Moviola [editing machine].
A woman went by and said, "Qué?" "Qué es esto?" You know, and it was the song "Caminito." She was from Argentina and we started talking. It was wonderful to be able to talk about tango with somebody who knew a lot about the music. That was my first conversation with [co-director Susana Blaustein Muñoz]. And then she would come by to say hi. And she started telling me about what was happening in Argentina. How young people were disappearing.
BR: Was it your first time hearing about the issue?
LP: I don't know that this was a first time for me because I grew up in a household where my father read printed materials that he would bring home. I would read a lot of Soviet Life, Bohemia from Cuba, Siempre, which came from Mexico. I was exposed to a lot of that [international journalism] by my father. And later I found it again here in San Francisco.
BR: What was your experience of making what I believe was your first feature documentary, and documenting the madres? [Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Argentine human rights organization formed by mothers and grandmothers of the ‘disappeared’.]
LP: Well, I think it was probably one of the most crucial experiences I've had in filmmaking, was being with the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, because we arrived in Argentina about 100 days after the dictatorship had been toppled and and [Raul] Alfonsín was in power. So that means that the mechanism of the repression was still in force. So we were followed. People came into our rooms in the hotel. They opened a big trunk or they tried to open it. We felt very threatened. But when we were with the mothers, it was different. We would go to the marches and cluster around them. The police or secret police would come up to us and take pictures—point blank in front of our faces. You know, it did give me pause. But the madres got their purses and they would ‘beat them up’. I have never met women like that. Really fearless. They were so intelligent. And they they made a very big impression on me.
BR: 1984 must have been a very tricky year to be there [1 year before the historic “trial of the juntas” documented in the documentary The Trial (El juicio) and fictionalized in Argentina, 1985.] I know from the interviews I did for El Equipo that there was a palpable fear that the military could return to power before the trial. Were you scared?
LP: Remember I was younger and, you know, we were pretty brave. Susan, was more afraid. And she probably was right to be afraid. I was more fearless because I was more stupid about it. But not nothing happened. Fortunately.
BR: In terms of culture, were there things that you didn’t fully understand about the Argentine context? I ask this as a fellow Mexican-American who has now made a film about Argentines.
LP: Being in Argentina was obviously another culture. But, I never really felt handicapped because I was speaking Mexican Spanish and not Argentine Spanish, you know. Of course, sometimes we would have to clarify what we're saying, you know, the meaning of words or something like that. But I found the madres so warm and very loving and very tough, you know.
BR: And what were the big differences that you saw between the mothers in Argentina and the mothers in Mexico, that you documented later in Juarez for Señorita Extraviada?
LP: Well, the mothers in Argentina were settled people that had been there for maybe three generations, of the either Italian, Spanish, German or Polish [descent]. And in Ciudad Juarez, these were women that came from the countryside of Mexico, different places, middle Mexico, including recent arrivals. People were poor. And in Argentina, they were middle class women, educated, erudite, the whole thing. In Argentina [during the dictatorship] it wasn’t just one class that was disappearing, it was everybody.
BR: Did you have a stronger cultural understanding of the women in Chihuahua because of your own background?
LP: I understood them more because, I'm I am from there. But, they’re mothers like the other mothers in Argentina. There is desperation… and the people that are holding their dear ones, the bodies… they are just as mean in one place as in the other. But the mothers are like fierce lionesses, intelligent. Even if they're not educated… and they're just trying to make a living trying to survive, they're so astute. I mean,[the organizing or resistance] is the same thing. There's just a different mode of expression.
BR: In El Equipo, we focus on the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team which worked in that post dictatorship period in Argentina that you experienced. They also worked on the femicide cases in Chihuahua, in Juarez, among other notorious Mexican cases, like the disappearance of 43 students in 2014.
LP: I actually met them [the team] when I was in Juarez. That was the last time I was there. They were not interested in making a movie at that time… Its very interesting that you made a film about them. They were into their work…
BR: To close out this conversation, I wanted to ask you about what you see as the current state of documentary. What do you think of the kind of the landscape at this point?
LP: Well, I think everything that we breathe we have to pay for. There is no respite from commercialism. And that disables candid speech. I think that we need to have people that have opinions that have nothing to do with making money. You know, we need the wisdom of people that understand that. I mean, we have to live, of course. But, you know, I don't believe that documentary is the way to make money. I think it's like the priesthood. You have to swear off material things [laughs]. Otherwise, it's corrupted. And then you're not really giving people the right information, real free opinion. And and it saddens me when I see that, you know. A lot of the films are paid for by, you know, these companies to have people do a documentary and they kind of degrade the notion of what a documentary is. When really, it's a piece of truth.
