Searching for life: the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the disappeared children of Argentina

SEARCHING FOR LIFE: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina Rita Arditti Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; 235 pp. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo drew international to the disappearance of thousands of Argentines during the country's Dirty War (1976-1983). Scholars argued that their gender and motherhood were key reasons for the Mothers' success. However, since the return of electoral democracy in Argentina it appears that grandmotherhood may be playing an equally significant role in current struggles for human rights. Rita Arditti's Searching for Life is an important contribution to our understanding of the work of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The empirical contribution is complemented by a methodology that allows for the Grandmothers to speak about their experiences in their own words. Searching for Life introduces the reader to the atrocities of the Argentine Dirty War. Notably, during this period of dictatorship an estimated 30,000 people disappeared, a minimum of 136 were pregnant women and at least 80 (but possibly as many as 500) were children (p.50). Equating the family with the nation, the military understood the importance of families, particularly mothers, in transmitting values and identity from generation to generation, and it punished the women for raising those who would challenge the regime (p. 51). To protect the Argentine family, the military took children from subversive parents and had them illegally adopted into acceptable homes. Arditti explains how, like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (in fact some Grandmothers were originally Mothers), the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo began to organize in the hope of finding their missing loved ones and uniting their families. However, unlike the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers were searching not only for their missing children but also for their missing grandchildren. The perceived innocence of the missing grandchildren, many of whom were infants when they disappeared, was an important distinction of the work of the Grandmothers. Arditti quotes one of the Grandmothers as saying: realized when I mentioned the disappeared adults even priests were hostile. When I mentioned the child people paid attention (p. 112). The emphasis on the locating of grandchildren also facilitated the struggle of the Grandmothers after the return of electoral democracy in 1983. While very few of the disappeared adults ever returned, many of their children are still being found. That said, Arditti reveals the tremendous efforts and innovation the Grandmothers have used to find the children they have located. The Grandmothers have drawn on scientists, psychologists, lawyers, forensic anthropologists and the international community for support (see chapter three). The story Arditti tells of the Grandmothers' struggle is enhanced by a methodology that lets the women use their own words to articulate their experiences and their struggles. …