Young punks, smiling transvestites and combative grandmothers were among the thousands of Argentinians who filled the Plaza de Mayo on Thursday evening, to attend the closing act of the annual "Resistance March" first held during military rule in 1980.
The arrest of Gen Pinochet in London has given the march a particular resonance this year. The protesters demanded trial and punishment for army officers implicated in human rights abuses and a radical change in the current economic system, which has impoverished a third of the population.
"The unemployed are today's disappeared," said Ms Hebe Bonafini, president of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation. She added that the "annihilation of an entire generation" had allowed the ruling class to implement the current economic model, "where children starve, where there are no jobs and people kill each other for crumbs".
Speakers celebrated the continued detention of Pinochet. They also applauded the rearrest of four convicted Argentinian army torturers on new child theft charges. However, the race to put repressors behind bars in Argentina is regarded as suspect by the human rights organisations, which fear it may be a "shield" to avoid the diplomatic embarrassment of European extradition proceedings.
"The only tribunal we can believe in is the people's tribunal," said a labour leader, Mr Carlos Santillan, "like in Cuba where killers and torturers were put to the wall". Mr Santillan had arrived directly from Jujuy, northern Argentina, where he led massive street protests which forced the seventh governor in six years to resign his post.
Spirits were high as human rights organisations celebrated a remarkable year in which amnesties for military abuses were revoked by parliament, the army formally apologised to the nation and a notable shift occurred in public opinion, in favour of the victims of military rule. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo showed no signs of tiredness, despite having spent 24 hours marching round the square in temperatures that rose to almost 100 degrees.
"This is what keeps us alive," said Ms Alicia Moore McCormick (82), whose son, Ricardo (18), was taken in broad daylight from a bakery and never seen again.
"It was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed him," she said, looking at the ground, the memory as fresh as it was in 1976. She has never heard a word about the circumstances of her son's murder by the army.
Ms Yolanda Castresana (81) explained how she began timidly to attend the weekly march in the same plaza we stood in. "We were arrested and thrown into cells where anonymous corpses were piled up, it was repulsive," she said.
Neither threats nor arrest nor even the disappearance of several of the mothers could dampen their determination to find out the truth about their children. "They died because they fought for justice," said Ms Castresana. "We're taking up where they left off."
Mr Hernan Briones, a wealthy businessman and president of the Pinochet Foundation, has called on the Chilean army to join forces with Argentina and "retake the Malvinas". "We can't have a colonial power with an army base near our coast," he added, "because they might decide to bomb us in the morning."