It was a particularly chilly Thursday in late June, the beginning of the Argentine winter. A group of 60- and 70-year-old women who had told a whole government to go to hell when nobody else had such courage would soon converge upon the plaza to reiterate their silent demands, the same demands they had made of three governments before the present one.

It has been a little better than nine years since these women began their weekly marches outside Government House in downtown Buenos Aires to demand information on their "disappeared" children. For the first six years, when a ruthless military dictatorship ruled the land, they were ridiculed as "the Crazy Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" because they weren't silent like all the rest. For the last three years, in which Argentina has enjoyed a return to democratic rule, the mothers of the plaza have continued to don their characteristic white kerchiefs to issue more broad (some will say more ill-defined) demands for social justice.

But the organization, which has gained international renown especially in the wake of the Oscar-winning movie "The Official Story," also recently suffered an unfortunate split over what are popularly rumored to be irreconcilable differences between its two leaders, both in personality and, more importantly, in sense of the group's mission. The main group, led by Hebe de Bonafini, has become fiercely and broadly political; while the small splinter group of Adela Antokaletz, it is said, has preferred to adhere to the original goal of gaining information on the disappeared. Neither side will discuss the other, but it is popularly rumored that Bonafini's hardline attitudes and bickering over money matters are largely to blame for alienating the more moderate faction. It is also becoming more apparent that the larger group of mothers no longer enjoys the same popularity and worship they gained after the ill-fated Falkland Islands War, when the government was doomed and human rights protests became safe--and fashionable.

But still, they gather.

Just before 3:30 each afternoon, it is possible to witness the changing of the guard in front of President Raul Alfonsin's headquarters. These soldiers, in full regalia, strike an odd contrast to the graying women as they begin to amass in the square, kissing each other on the cheeks and hanging photographs of missing children around each other's necks.

In the old days, these demonstrations were illegal, the mothers were harassed and arrested, and some, including the group's founder, vanished like their children. Critics today argue, with some validity, that the mothers got away with what they did because their demands were more humanistic than political, and because Argentine society tends, like most of Latin America, to worship the mother as an extension of the Virgin Mary. (In Spanish, the phenomenon is known as marianismo.) But the undeniable fact is that, in a society in which the newspapers (with one exception) were silent, the courts were a farce, the police formed an arm of the military government and members of opposition groups were being tortured and murdered in some 340 clandestine, Naziesque concentration camps, the mothers were the only group that forced the people of Argentina to face a horror they would have rather continued to ignore.

As the bitter June wind began to pick up, most of the human traffic scurrying through the plaza probably wondered why these women continue. It is now generally accepted in Argentina that the military liquidated all remaining political prisioners and their traces shortly before the nation hosted the 1978 World Soccer Cup. In all, it is estimated that anywhere between 8,000 and 30,000 people "disappeared" during the military's 1976-1979 "dirty war" against left wing extremism. It is also generally accepted that the vast majority of them were completely innocent and in fact had no ties to guerrilla groups. We will never know: not one was ever tried in a court of law.

As the women began arriving and tying their kerchiefs, the statement that tumbled first off their lips was, "We feel powerless."

One might be ready to believe them, after nine years and no answers. Then the demonstration began. Somehow a small handful of elderly women had grown into a force of some 400 people. About 120 of them wore kerchiefs; the rest, men, women and children, marched in solidarity. The walked a slow, symbolic circle around a small obelisk dedicated to Argentine independence from Spain, and at the end they gathered around a bullhorn through which one member delivered an impassioned speech about the government's recent decision to take pending human rights complaints out of the hands of military tribunals and give them over to the civilian courts.

For many of the mothers this is the focus of the week. Some faithfully travel several hours to the city to take part. Others trek the 10 blocks from their office, which they call, in a motherly way, their "house--the large and impressive second floor of a building located a stone's throw away from the Congress. Its walls bear the eerie reminder of the dirty war: thousands of black and white snap-shots, each with a name and a date, hang in solemn rows behind protective glass; and the shelves of an overflowing glass case sag under the weight of homemade trinkets sent to the mothers as gifts of moral support from all over the world. Here the mothers meet and work. Here they write the speeches that cap off their weekly protests. Here they plan and write their monthly newspaper--a professional-looking montage of interviews and articles which they began in 1983 in reaction to an establishment press that, with one noble exception, had for six years refused to note their presence.

The newspaper, called simply "Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo," reflects an extremism that has begun to characterize the mothers nine years later. It is not particularly objective and not entirely reliable. It also reflects a bitterness to which the mothers are certainly entitled, but which has unfortunately alienated many.

The mothers now, three years into stable, democratic rule, flounder precariously between their status as a movement and a political pressure group. To the outside world, it is tempting to term their current situation an identity crisis, though the mothers would firmly disagree. Argentina is a nation where movements rapidly, sometimes underhandedly, sometimes violently, turn into governments. (The most outstanding example is that of dictator Juan Domingo Peron, who managed to unite the most curious mixture of labor unions, fascist military men, left-wing guerrillas and a host of other disparate elements into a movement that has lost its cohesion in the 31 years since Peron was overthrown and in the 12 years since he enjoyed another brief stint as head of state before he died in 1974.) And while Bonafini insists that the group has no plans to become an official political party or propose a candidate for Congress, their broadening political scope has begun to lead some pundits to such speculation.

While sticking to their original demands that the military be punished and that information on the disappeared be released, the mothers have broadened their political profile to become visible spokesmen for the left wing. Journalists regularly contact their offices, like those of the five or six political parties and splinter factions, for reaction to current events. The mothers voiced strident and widely publicized opposition in July, for example, when the church and other anti-divorce groups held a moderately successful "march for the defense of the family" in anticipation of congressional debate on a divorce bill (Argentina is one of a small handful of countries where it is still illegal).

The mothers' politicization and vowed isolation from other political groups is rooted in the events of the dirty war. They still refuse to associate with the CGT--the main labor union, which, in the wake of Peron, remains at the forefront of Argentine politics--because they say it propped up the government's reign of terror. They shun other political parties, left and right, for the same reason.

To some extent, their charges are valid. But then again, in a society in which security forces snatched people off the street in broad daylight simply because they shared a last name with someone the government suspected of having guerrilla connections, in which the economy is 60 percent government controlled and most depend on Government House to put their daily bread on the table, and in which years of military dictatorship have left the lesson that if you are quiet and obedient you will survive, everyone to a certain extent condoned the military. Everyone was both a victim and an accomplice. Except the mothers.