Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina.

Bonner, Michelle

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 attention to the disappearance of thousands of Argentines during the country's Dirty War (19761983). 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 regime "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: "I 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. In fact, most of the book is a collection of powerful and well-organized quotes from interviews with members of the Grandmothers and their located or remaining grandchildren. From this experienced-based analysis the complexity of the issues concerning the work of the Grandmothers emerges. The chapter on returning the disappeared children to their biological families (what the Grandmothers call "restitution") is particularly powerful. One Grandmother explains that upon the return of her granddaughter, "I asked myself if it was right what I was doing. I was worried ... When she [her returned granddaughter] started to cry, I was really afraid" (p. 119). Arditti's methodology also allows us to learn from the Grandmothers' experiences in a similar way to how one psychologist said members of his profession have learned from them, through conversation. The psychologist explains that, "The Grandmothers taught us about some fundamental aspects of the human condition. They forced us to rethink issues of identity. We had to revise our thinking" (p. 123).

Beyond the Argentine context, Arditti's Searching for Life raises a number of important issues for women generally, including the definition of the family, the relationship between women and aging, and the relationship of family-based politics to feminism. Unfortunately, the analyses of these issues are brief and sporadic. This is perhaps the downside of a methodology that places the emphasis on the actors' self-analysis. For example, Arditti explains in her introduction that one of her reasons for writing the book is that her previous work on reproductive technologies had led her to, among other issues, explore "various definitions of what constitutes a family" (p. 3). While the definition of the family is central both in the work of the Grandmothers and Searching for Life, little analysis of what these definitions mean in relation to other debates on the definition of the family is provided. A number of interesting points concerning the family are indeed made, especially in relation to the right of children to know the identity of their biological family. However, the book could have been strengthened by the inclusion of a chapter that summarized and tied together what we learn from the Grandmothers about women, the family and feminism.

Overall Rita Arditti's Searching for Life is an excellent book for those interested in women's political participation in Argentina. It is also a powerful contribution to our understanding of the impact of repressive regimes on the traditional role of women.

Michelle Bonner

Department of Political Science/Collaborative Programme in Women's Studies

University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario