What is an enforced disappearance?

Notes: “An enforced disappearance takes place when a person is arrested, detained or abducted by
the state or agents acting for the state, who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their
whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law.
Very often, people who have disappeared are never released and their fate remains unknown. Their
families and friends may never find out what has happened

Mothers of the Disappeared (U2)

Write the following verbs on the board and ask students to say or write their past participle:
cry – cut – hang – hear – see – stand – stretch – take

Students listen for the verbs above in any form and number them in the order they hear them. If they appear
more than once, refer to the first time. Play the song.

KEY: 1. cut – 2. taken – 3. hear – 4. see – 5. hangs – 6. stretched – 7. stand –

8. cry

Students fill in the gaps based on context and their answers to the previous activity.

Play the song again. Students check in pairs or in groups.

Correct in open class and sing together.

Follow-up. Text analysis: You can use the following prompts:

1. Which verbs of perception can you find in the song?

2. Why do you think they are frequently used here?
3. Why do you think the passive form has been chosen at line 2?
4. In the song there are some similes and metaphors: can you find them?
5. How do the weather and time of the day contribute to create the atmosphere of the song?

KEY:
1. hear, sing
2. possible answer: to try to perceive the presence of the disappeared
3. possible answer: because the tortured are more important than the torturers.
4. simile: e.g. like a prisoner; metaphor: e.g. sons and daughters compared to branches which are cut down
and taken from their trees (mothers)
5. possible answer: the rainy and windy weather and the night underline the gloomy and melancholic
atmosphere of the song

Mothers of the Disappeared

Midnight our sons and daughters

Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat
In the wind we hear their laughter
In the rain we see their tears
Hear their heartbeat,
We hear their heartbeat
Oooh, oooh

Night hangs like a prisoner

Stretched over black and blue
Hear their heartbeats
We hear their heartbeats
In the trees our sons stand naked
Through the walls our daughters cry
See their tears in the rainfa