During the military dictatorship named by its leaders as the National Reorganisation Process (1976-1983) her husband, a worker at the Propulsora Siderúrgica (Iron and Steel Propellent) in Ensenada, her son Roberto José and her daughter Elena, who was pregnant, and her sons-in-law Héctor Baratti and Gustavo Ernesto Fraire were abducted, along with her grandson who was later recovered.
Adolfo S. Tortolo, who had a register listing many abducted individuals and particularly with information on the fates of children born in captivity, told her that her son had died and that her daughter was being held under arrest.
[5] A year later, Alicia received news of the birth of her granddaughter and of the deplorable conditions under which her daughter and son-in-law were suffering: On that day (11 July 1977) a young man came to my house and said that he had been in the Quinta police station, La Plata, in the same room as Elena's husband.
He told me that Elena shared her cell with five other girls - in an absolute and total lack of hygiene - and who gave birth without medical assistance and while lying on the floor while her cellmates shouted in horror, asking for help.
Shortly afterwards, thanks to the negotiations of that Italian Jesuit order, Monseñor Mario Pichi intervened, meeting with Colonel Enrique Rospide to ask him if he could give the child to its grandmother.
[8] At that time, the family members of the disappeared were completely defenceless and powerless, as neither any of the world's democracies, nor the Catholic Church, nor international humanitarian organisations were ready to condemn the atrocities committed by the military regime and on the contrary even cooperated with this illegal repression in some cases.
The idea was put forward by Azucena Villaflor, later kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship: We have to go straight to the Plaza de Mayo and stay there until they answer us.
[11][12] The group quickly became known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and by their simple presence they began to exert national and international pressure on the question of the fates of those who disappeared in Argentina.
Mariani had been pushed towards joining up with other grandmothers by Lidia Pegenaute, a lawyer working as an advisor to minors in the courts of La Plata, where she had tried without success to find a solution to her case.
[14]That same day, Chicha and Licha made the decision to form a group of grandmothers and unite those whom they knew from the Thursday marches in the Plaza de Mayo.
In 1984, the Grandmothers became a civil non-profit association, with Alicia stepping down as president and the role passing on to María Isabel de Mariani (Chicha).
But I never, never feel beaten, and I always have this conviction to continue to fight until I find all the grandchildren and my own granddaughter, until they are returned to their true homes, until I can hold her in my arms as her parents wanted.