A Prick of a Needle Can Do No Harm: Compulsory Extraction of Blood in the Search for the Children of Argentinas Disappeared

By

Ari Gandsman
Uni o n C ol l e g e , Sc h e n ec t a d y

Resumen
ltima dictadura militar (19761983) en Argentina es responsable por la desapariLa u n forzada de 30,000 personas, entre quienes se incluyen unos 500 bebe s y nin os cio ilegalmente apropiados y criados como propios por familias de militares. Las Abuelas sito de ubicar a estos nin os desaparecide la Plaza de Mayo se organizaron con el propo as dos, sus nietos y nietas, y restituirlos a sus familias biologicas valiendose de tecnolog 0 ticas de identificacio n. A mediados de los 90, los jo venes cuya identidad estaba en gene a de edad, volvie n adquirieron la mayor ndose duen os de sus propios destinos. cuestio Sin embargo, las Abuelas fueron confrontadas por casos en los que, a pesar de estar seguras de haber ubicado uno de los nieto/nieta desaparecido, el o la joven rechazaba menes necesarios a fin de verificar su identidad biolo gica. En casos someterse a los exa stos, las Abuelas argumentaron por realizar extracciones compulsivas de sangre, como e culo examina n en contra de la voluntad de los potenciales nietos o nietas. Este art au uno de estos casos, enfatizando las contradicciones en los discursos de derechos nculos de parentesco. humanos y suposiciones de v During the military dictatorship in Argentina (19761983), up to 30,000 people disappeared, including an estimated 500 newborn infants and young children who were handed over to military families to be raised as their own. Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) is a human rights organization that formed in order to identify their missing grandchildren and reunite them with their biological families. By the mid-1990s, custody was no longer an issue as the grandchildren had legally become adults. However, the Grandmothers also confronted cases in which they believed they had located one of their grandchildren but the grandchild refused to
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 162184. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN 1935-4940. & 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.19354940.2009.0001043.x

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undergo a genetic verification of his or her identity. In these cases, they argued for a compulsory extraction of blood to identify them against their expressed wishes. This article examines one such case in light of contradictory human rights discourses and assumptions about kinship relationships. tica, PALABRAS CLAVES: derechos humanos, violencia de estado, parantesco, La gene identidad. KEY WORDS: human rights, state violence, kinship, genetics, identity.

IN MARCH OF 1999 in the city of La Plata, Argentina, retired policeman zquez was arrested for the kidnapping of Evelyn Va zquez. At the Policarpo Va a Farra , were time of the arrest, Evelyn believed Policarpo and his wife, Ana Mar her biological parents. In reality, her birth certificate was a forgery. Evelyn was believed to be the kidnapped child of a couple who had been disappeared and murdered by the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983. During the dictatorship, up to 30,000 civilians disappeared.1 The majority were kidnapped by the military and taken to clandestine detention centers where they were tortured and eventually killed. Young children of these victims were also seized, while women who were pregnant at the time of their disappearance were kept alive long enough to give birth. An estimated 500 of these young children and infants were handed over to families with close ties to the military to be raised. Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) was formed to search for the members missing grandchildren.2 After the re-establishment of constitutional government in 1983, the Grandmothers located potential grandchildren through anonymous tips and their own investigations but were unable to prove their identities. Acting on behalf of the Grandmothers, geneticists from the United States developed an index of grandpaternity that could confirm the relatedness between child and grandparent with an accuracy rate of 99.99%. Blood samples from family members were housed in the National Genetic Data Bank where they could be matched with grandchildren when they were located. Initially, the Grandmothers struggled through the court system to annul the illicit adoptions that they termed appropriations (so-called because the kidnappers were generally provided with forged birth certificates that certified them as biological parents). These legal struggles were initially custody battles. By the mid-1990s, custody was no longer an issue since the children in question were legal adults. Forced to change their strategy, the Grandmothers initiated public campaigns that attempted to direct their missing grandchildren to contact them. As of 2008, they have succeeded in locating 97 grandchildren.

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The Grandmothers public campaigns are informed by their belief that their missing grandchildren have inchoate suspicions that the people who raised them are not their real (i.e., biological) families.3 Furthermore, they are assumed to have an innate psychological need to know their biological identities (compare the discourse of adopted adults in Brazil, Fonseca this issue). The Grandmothers campaigns are shaped by arguments from the adoption rights movement that advocated the right of adopted children to access their birth records (Griffith 1991; Lifton 1994). This movement originated in North America in the 1970s but has expanded in recent years to Latin America. The Grandmothers are a reference point for adoption rights issues throughout the continent (Cardarello 2006). In Argentina, they played a role in reforming the countrys adoption laws and led a drive to prohibit international adoptions. In their publications and public discourse, the Grandmothers liken the kidnapping of children of the disappeared during the dictatorship with the illegal trafficking of children in the postdictatorship era (Cardarello, this issue). They also criticize the dynamics of international adoption in which citizens of wealthy countries with low birth rates adopt children from poor countries with higher ones. In the past decade, the Grandmothers campaigns have succeeded in encouraging hundreds of young adults who harbor doubts about their biological identities to contact the organization. Yet simultaneously, the Grandmothers have faced situations in which they believed they had located one of their missing grandchildren yet the presumptive grandchild refused to have their biological identity confirmed through genetic analysis. Approximately eight such cases existed in 2003. In such cases, the Grandmothers have argued for compulsory genetic identification. This article focuses on the case that attracted the most media attention and legal scrutiny. This case is noteworthy for the challenges it poses to the Grandmothers institutional ideology as well as for the broader questions it raises about kinship and identity in the aftermath of state violence and mass human rights violations. This article analyzes the consequences of one radical form of family-making on the part of the Argentine military dictatorship, the appropriation of children of the disappeared to be raised by military families. In this case, efforts to redress the actions of the dictatorship by a human rights organization through identifying and reuniting these children with their biological families raises several troubling issues. First, in advocating for Evelyns need to know her biological identity, a human rights group explicitly embraced a biologically essentialized notion of identity. Second, efforts to reunite her with her biological family were predicated on state intervention in what is generally considered to be the private or intimate domain, and, lastly, efforts to compel Evelyn to know her biological identity required the negation of Evelyns agency by overriding her expressed wishes. Evelyns situation was a topic of debate in human rights circles when I arrived to commence fieldwork in November 2004 shortly after the judicial decision that this

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article will analyze was reached. Because of the intense media scrutiny and difficult emotional issues surrounding the case, the primary actors declined to be interviewed. This article is primarily based on the public record, the court decision, and from my interviews with individuals connected to the Grandmothers and other human rights organizations. It forms part of a larger ethnographic study that I conducted on the search for and recovery of the kidnapped children of the disappeared and the human rights movement in Argentina. During 14 months of fieldwork, I conducted more than forty interviews with human rights workers and family members of the disappeared, including several children of the disappeared who recovered their biological identities, in addition to the Grandmothers legal, genetic, and psychological teams.

zquez The Discovery of Evelyn Va The Grandmothers believe Evelyn is the daughter of disappeared couple Susana Pegoraro and Ruben Bauer. Susana was 21 years old and 5 months pregnant when she was kidnapped on June 18, 1977. Two survivors later testified that Susana gave birth to a baby girl while being held in a clandestine detention center. They said she named her daughter Laura. The infant was taken from her mother shortly after she gave birth. In most of these cases, children were handed over to military families; the mothers, murdered. The whereabouts of Susanas daughter remained unknown until 1999 when the zquez, a retired Navy Grandmothers received an anonymous tip that Policarpo Va petty officer, was raising a child of the disappeared as his own. Their subsequent a Servini de Cubr a. The investigation resulted in a formal complaint to Judge Mar zquezs arrest. He was indicted on charges of kidjudge issued a warrant for Va napping, suppression of civil status, and falsification of public documents. zquez immediately confessed that he was not Evelyns biological father but Va claimed to be a low ranking official uninvolved in what he called the militarys fight against subversion. However, he admitted to probable knowledge of Evelyns origins and to concealing her origins by procuring a forged birth certificate that identified his wife and himself as her biological parents. In his confession, he told the court, God put a baby into my arms and, from that point on, I believed he left her to me to take care of and raisey I considered it a divine mandate.4 His statement reveals the messianic ideology that led the military to adopt the children of its enemies. In doing so, they believed they were saving the children from the zquez said he received Evelyn recently born subversion of their parents.5 Va from Navy headquarters in Buenos Aires with instructions not to inquire into her origins. His wife was later arrested. She confessed that Evelyn was not her biological

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child but also claimed she did not know anything about her origins. She was eventually released but placed under house arrest due to a heart condition.6 The couples confession that Evelyn was not their biological child was unprecedented. In previous cases, when children of the disappeared were located in the custody of military families, the kidnappers would invariably insist that they were the biological parents. A genetic proof was necessary to prove the lack of a biological link and substantiate their crime. This was also the first case in which a military officer admitted to receiving a child of the disappeared from another military officer. This admission served as additional proof of a systematic plan to kidnap children of the disappeared. The Grandmothers had claimed the existence of such a plan for years. However, despite accounts of an official protocol for adopting young children of the disappeared and even a waiting list of members of the Armed Forces who wanted to adopt them, direct confirmation had never been found. Evidence came from survivors testimonies of clandestine maternity wards where pregnant disappeared women gave birth. The location of children of the disappeared raised by military families served as more conclusive evidence by providing material proof of the militarys actions. zquezs account of how he ended up with Evelyn was Despite his confession, Va dubious. After Susana Pegoraro was kidnapped, she was taken to the Naval Submarine Base in the city of Mar del Plata. Survivors testified that the majority of the disappeared taken to the base were detained in the Buzos Tacticos (Tactical Divers) zquez worked there. After being detained there for five months, she was division. Va moved to the ESMA (the most notorious concentration camp in Argentina) where zquezs involvement in she gave birth. The Grandmothers argued that only Va Susanas disappearance could explain how he ended up with her child (Fig. 1). zquezs arrest. She initially expressed a Evelyn met with the judge shortly after Va willingness to have her biological identity verified. However, a week later, she stipulated that she would only undergo the genetic proof if the evidence would not be used against the people who raised her. The Grandmothers and the judge found the precondition unacceptable. Faced with her refusal, the Grandmothers petitioned the judge to order a compulsory extraction of blood, a procedure that involved forcibly drawing a blood sample from her to send to the National Genetic Data Bank to match with her presumed biological family. Truth and Reconciliation Evelyns professed justification for not wanting to have her biological identity verified merits comment. She claimed that she did not want to be the cause of sending zquez had already confessed to his crime. His her parents to prison. However, Va sworn statement was sufficient for conviction. Additional proof in the form of DNA

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Figure 1 Sign placed at the ESMA in 2004 calling attention to the children born there

evidence was unnecessary. The logic behind her refusal emerged during negotiations between the Grandmothers legal team and Evelyns lawyer and highlights the important role brokers play in such cases in pushing particular positions (see Leinaweaver, Cardello, this volume). Evelyns legal representative in the case was Juan Pablo Vigliero, the son of a retired Navy officer. Vigliero offered the Grandmothers a deal. If they would guarantee impunity not only in her case but also for all future cases, he would provide information about other disappeared children in the custody of military families. The Grandmothers viewed Evelyns refusal as a bargaining ploy in order to curtail future prosecutions. Viglieros public statements reinforced this: What do we do with the children of the disappeared? Some type of reconciliation has to be possible. If not, we fail as a society.7 His argument is the traditional one of the Argentine right in which both sides needed to forgive each other for what took place during the 1970s in order to move on with the past.8 In the case of disappeared children, Vigliero wanted the biological families to negotiate and make concessions in order to reach a common accord. The situation of the children of the disappeared was thus being used as a symbolic medium of reconciliation and as a practical means of securing impunity.

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Vigliero made this point explicit: Its not just about Evelyn, This could set a precedent for another young person in her position. It goes to the heart of how we deal with our past. Making the genetic evidence inadmissible required impunity. The end goal was reconciliation. In many countries where mass atrocities occurred, Truth and Reconciliation commissions form to investigate and document the human rights abuses of the recent past. Perpetrators of violence testify with the promise of amnesty. The premise is that reconciliation is a goal worth striving for, a fundamentally positive means of moving on with the past. Although it is the professed goal of some human rights advocates, anthropologists have criticized national reconciliation processes (Borneman 1997; Wilson 2001, 2003). In Argentina, human rights groups uniformly reject the language of reconciliation. It is the term of military perpetrators and their apologists. Reconciliation conceived as closing wounds or moving on with the past requires both sides to admit responsibility. Accepting this view assumes the militarys representation of the past that justifies the dictatorships actions as a response to left-wing terrorism. Since the militarys atrocities (in their words, mistakes or excesses) were unleashed by the actions of guerrilla groups, it was a war where both groups shared equal responsibility. This is a widely discredited view (known as the theory of the two demons) that human rights groups have struggled to surmount (Andersen 1993). zquezs arrest, the only means of holding military officers At the time of Va accountable for their actions during the dictatorship was through charges of kidnapping children of the disappeared. Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, respectively, the head of the Army and Navy during the dictatorship, were both under house arrest for their responsibility for the kidnappings. In 1985, Argentina was the first country in Latin America in which a civil government put military leaders on trial for their actions during the prior regime. However, the government subsequently passed amnesty laws in 1986 and 1987 that prevented further prosecutions. In 1989 and 1990, all military high commanders convicted during the trials were pardoned.9 Importantly, however, the charge of kidnapping babies was not included in the amnesty or pardons. Evelyns case was part of a larger investigation into the systematic theft of babies. Viglieros offer was an effort to end these prosecutions. A Compulsory Extraction of Blood
zquez was Why did Evelyn refuse? In a later interview, Evelyn recounted the day Va arrested: The only thing that I remember is the moment I heard them mention my name. I yelled out, I didnt do anything, Dad. I swear to you that y Im not mixed up in anything strange!10

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 zquezs arrest is noteworthy in how she immediately protested Her description of Va her innocence. According to the Grandmothers, this was the response the kidnappers intended. Rather than blame them for kidnapping and lying to them for their entire lives, she blamed herself for her parents legal predicament. Guilt motivated her refusal as the source of their legal problems was contained within her body. Her own blood could be used as evidence to send them to prison. For this reason, the Grandmothers argued for judicial intervention. A compulsory extraction would relieve Evelyn of any feelings of guilt. Evelyns refusal stemmed from the love she professed for the people who raised her, a love irrespective of whether they were her real parents or not. The Grandmothers argue that since their relationship was based on deceit, no love could exist. The Grandmothers argue that the relationship between their grandchildren and their kidnappers is inherently perverse because of the context in which the children were born and the kidnappers knowledge and concealment of these origins. Evelyns professed loyalty to her accused kidnappers elicited numerous comparisons with Stockholm syndrome, a phenomenon in which hostages become emotionally attached to their captors. As one editorialist remarked, Evelyn is as free as an abused wife who does not want to leave her abuser.11 For this reason, the Grandmothers considered Evelyns refusal to have her identity verified as a product of her victimization. As I mentioned above, one of the Grandmothers driving assumptions is that adopted children have an intrinsic need to know their biological families. As an innate psychological need, the Grandmothers believe in the inevitability of Evelyns eventual acceptance and embrace of her biological identity. In the words of the President of the Grandmothers, Its very traumatic for the grandchildren when they discover the truth y Once they see that their blood is different to that of their supposed families and meet their real grandmothers, they usually come around. Im sure Evelyn will do the same.12 Evelyn, on the other hand, challenged this assumption: A desire to get to know [my biological family] did not emerge in me. However, another one of Evelyns public statements suggests a more ambivalent position: I know that in some moment a need is going to be born in me to know my identity.13 The Grandmothers argued that Evelyn could not be left to decide whether she wanted to know her biological identity because the state was legally required to os, the Grandmothers lawyer, argued: This only has to do ascertain it. As Alcira R with registering who Evelyn is y In the end, Evelyn does not have legal docuos, she affirmed this position stating that Evelyn ments.14 In my interview with R cannot legally be allowed to live under an identity that is known to be false. Until her biological identity was confirmed, she remained in a purgatorial condition with an unresolved civil status. Evelyn herself acknowledged this problem. I dont even

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know when my birthday is any more. Oct. 29, 1977, is the day I was brought home, not my date of birth.15 The Grandmothers argued that the state had a responsibility to verify Evelyns identity in order to investigate crimes against humanity. The Grandmothers also argued for the rights of Evelyns presumed biological family to know if she was their lica, Evelyns presumptive grandmother, stated: I just want the relative. As Ange certainty of knowing if she is my granddaughter or not.16 In March 2000, the Federal Court ordered Evelyn to undergo a compulsory extraction of blood. The courts had previously ordered compulsory extractions of blood in cases of children of the disappeared located in the 1980s. Since those cases involved minors, the courts had the authority to make the decision on their behalf. Ordering a compulsory extraction of blood for an adult not accused of committing a crime was considered more controversial and without a clear legal precedent. A previous case of compulsory extraction for another presumed child of the disappeared had ended a Luja n de in a stalemate. In 1986, charges were filed against Omar Alonso and Mar a Natalia Alonso. The Grandmothers believed she was Mattia for kidnapping Mar born in a clandestine detention center in 1977. When ordered to stand trial, the couple fled with the child. They were finally caught in 1993. Alonso was arrested and jailed for two years. His wife was arrested in 1997 but freed two months later for a Natalia was lack of evidence. Lack of evidence meant a lack of proof that Mar a Natalia was subsequently cited as a material witnot their biological child. Mar ness in the case and ordered by the Court of Appeals to undergo a compulsory extraction of blood to provide that proof. She refused. a Natalia was taken into custody by the court and ordered to In May 2000, Mar undergo a compulsory extraction. She responded with a hunger strike. The measure was delayed and she was detained for several days. Faced with her refusal, medical personnel refused to carry out the procedure. She was released. Five months later, she was ordered once again by the court to undergo a compulsory extraction. She threatened to kill herself: If they draw blood from me, Im going to throw myself under a car after I leave.17 Medical and psychological experts both concluded that she was not in proper psychophysical conditions to face the measure and argued that the compulsory extraction posed a serious threat to her mental and physical wellbeing. She was released again and no further attempts were made. The Supreme Court Decision Evelyns case was appealed through the judicial ranks until it reached the Supreme Court. In October 2003, the Supreme Court ruled against a compulsory extraction. The Court viewed the case as a conflict between individual and collective rights. In the end, they prioritized an individuals right to privacy and what they termed

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physical and psychological integrity over the collective rights of the state to investigate crimes (in this case, crimes against humanity) and the rights of family members who had been searching for Evelyn to know if she was their biological relative. A compulsory extraction of blood was considered a violation of Evelyns rights because it would be carried out without her consent. Although the Supreme Court justified compulsory extractions of blood for criminal suspects, this case differed because Evelyn was not the alleged author of the crime but its victim. A compulsory extraction would therefore be an unwarranted infringement on Evelyns body and amounted to a victimization of the victim. In the courts words: A person doesnt have to supply their body or parts thereof to be used to extract elements of proof.18 The premise of the decision is the cornerstone of natural rights: individual sovereignty. A person is considered owner of their body, and so long as a person has not infringed upon anyone elses rights, his or her rights cannot be infringed upon. In such a way, the Court likened a compulsory extraction to an unwarranted seizure of property. They also compared it with a coerced confession. Juan Carlos Marqueda, the lone judge who partially dissented with the majority decision, maintained that a distinction could be made between a proof extracted from the body and a proof extracted (i.e., forced) from a confession. As a result, compulsory extractions of blood could not be refused by invoking a right against self-incrimination. Marqueda employed a subject/object dichotomy to distinguish between a person as a subject of proof and a person as an object of proof. In the case of a compulsory extraction, the person was an object of proof. Objects of proof could be gathered independent of the individuals free will to give it. The Supreme Courts view of psychological and physical integrity was predicated on the view of the person as an autonomous individual. A right to psychological integrity implied Evelyns autonomy to choose her identity. The states attempt to impose an identity upon her against her will was considered a violation of said right. The struggle was thus framed as a contestation between two com zquez and Laura Pegoraro Bauer, the daughter of Susana peting identities: Evelyn Va Pegoraro and Ruben Bauer. The two individuals were incommensurable. For this reason, the state had not only demanded Evelyns blood as evidence, but they also demanded she turn over her official documents. They argued that these zquez was a fraudulent identity. documents were no longer valid because Evelyn Va As a juridical person, she did not exist until her biological identity was revealed. New ones would be drafted only then. Evelyn reacted to this by saying: It feels as though they are trying to erase my entire existence.19 Her lawyer, echoing her sentiments, argued that taking away her papers would result in a civil death.20 The Supreme Court concurred. They wrote in their decision that: For the court to take away her documents would condemn her to a kind of civil death that would take away her right to bureaucratic processes, to work, social security, right to a

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name, and the exercise of political rights.21 The Grandmothers also employed the language of death: in their case, the death of Susana Pegoraro and Ruben Bauers daughter. They likened the refusal to uphold the compulsory extraction of blood to placing a tombstone.22 In public debates, the Grandmothers were accused of being unconcerned with Evelyns psychological wellbeing. Critics relished pointing out a purported irony of a human rights group arguing for a compulsory extraction of blood. A right-wing magazine with fascist leanings posted on its cover: Grandmothers or vampires? They considered a compulsory extraction of blood to be a literal, as well as a symbolic, violence and even likened it to the actions of the dictatorship. Even Evelyn pointed out the apparent contradiction: My human rights are being violated in the name of human rights.23 At the same time, most human rights and progressive political organizations rallied around the Grandmothers. An apparently paradoxical situation emerged. A human rights group was arguing for the coercive intervention of state power while defenders of the military dictatorship were arguing for a right to privacy and a right to physical and psychological integrity. A human rights group was arguing for the primacy of a genetic relationship while defenders of the military dictatorship argued for a nurture-based conception of kinship. A more tragic irony emerges when considering the origins of the right to physical and psychological integrity. The right was adopted by the American Convention on Human Rights of the Organization of American States Pact of San , Costa Rica in an article that states: Every person has the right to have his physJose ical, mental, and moral integrity respected.24 Drafted in 1969, it first entered into effect in 1978 after its adoption by a majority of member states. Argentina only incorporated it into its national constitution in 1984 in direct response to the dictatorship. The articles explicit intent was to protect people from state-sponsored terrorism. By citing this right, the court was likening a compulsory extraction of blood to an act of torture by invoking a human rights treaty enacted to prevent what the military had done to Evelyns biological parents from happening again to anyone else. The Right to Identity: the Normative Power of Human Rights The Supreme Court framed the case as one in which individual rights trumped collective rights. However, the Grandmothers argued in defense of Evelyns rights as well. They argued that Evelyns rights were being violated even if she consented to their violation. The Grandmothers denounced the Supreme Courts as a violation of Evelyns right to identity. This right was enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Article 8 (Van Bueren 1998). This article,

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known as the Argentine article because of the Grandmothers role in its creation, declares, States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. As the Grandmothers describe it, The right to an identity is the right to know who you are. The right to a name, a nationality, a history (see Leinaweaver this issue). The military dictatorship and Policarpo zquez had violated this right. The courts decision sanctioned the original viVa olation by permitting its perpetuation. The Grandmothers argued that the state had a responsibility to remedy this situation, even if it required overriding her will to do so. Evelyns right to identity existed independent of her claim to exercise it or not. Rights are not only exercised but also entail responsibilities and obligations. The Grandmothers were arguing that Evelyns right to know who she was entailed Evelyns obligation to know who she was. The right to identity emerged in response to the militarys actions during the dictatorship. The concept of human rights is premised on violation. Human rights appeals nominally occur in the context of their abuse. Aviolation of right precedes a rights existence. As a response to violations, human rights are universalizing, normative, and prescriptive. They are universalizing in how they make claims independent of time and place. They are normative and prescriptive in how these universal claims are transformed into institutionalized norms that dictate how persons should be treated. The end goal of these universal norms is that they are implemented into local practice (Risse et al. 1999). Critics argue that the subject of human rights is culturally and historically particular (Mutua 2002). In this way, human rights project a view of the person that not everyone shares. The right to identity that the Grandmothers advance is premised on the need to know ones biological identity. Conflict in this case stems from an individuals repudiation of her own right; in this case, her right to know who she is. Human rights often reveal their underlying assumptions when individuals or groups reject them. Conflict emerges when individuals willingly consent to have their own rights violated (Asad 1997). In this case, the right to identity as defined by a name, nationality and family ties assumes that such things are assigned and consequentially fixed by birth. As Claudia Fonseca argues in her analysis of adoption child rights in Brazil, this belief is based on typically Western representations of fixed identity, a closed nuclear family, and exclusive state jurisdiction (Fonseca 2002:221). The right to identity, as discussed in the Grandmothers organizational literature, assumes this position. It projects a subject who believes knowledge of ones biological identity is necessary in order to find out the truth of who they are and to be a whole person. This is similar to beliefs found among adopted children who demand access to their birth records. As Kaja Finkler writes in describing an adoptees need to know her biological identity: Biology and genetics will establish for

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Mira a permanence that her adoptive parents cannot give because they fail to share the same genes, the same blood. Only the same genes and the same blood can give Mira, and the others, her personhood (2000:164). The distinctive context of mass human rights violations, however, distinguishes this case from other legal struggles resulting from tensions between biological and cultural definitions of parenthood and personhood (e.g., Dolgin 1997). Stephan (2007) analyzes the use of genetic technologies as a form of identity arPalmie bitration. Writing about African Americans use of genetic technologies for ancestry tracing, he argues that rather than challenge existing racial hierarchies, these technologies stabilize and reproduce the cultural order that creates the need for their usage (2007:210). In postdictatorship Argentina, the use of genetic technologies to ascertain the identities of children of the disappeared has the same stabilizing effect. However, genetic technologies are not reproducing a cultural order but rather attempting to reform a cultural order broken apart by state terror. Recourse to a biologically essentializing and consequently fixed assertion of identity (finding out who people really are) is a means of fixing the dictatorships radical experimentation in social reorganization during the dictatorship (what the junta termed a process of national reorganization). One of the consequences of state violence is the destruction of kinship ties (Das 1996; Reynolds 2000). Families separated as a result of violence frequently have no means of knowing whether their missing relatives are alive or dead. In the aftermath of violence, surviving relatives struggle to ascertain their fate. For human rights organizations like the Grandmothers, the restoration of broken kinship ties is considered fundamental to the reparation of the social fabric and the constitution of civil society. Forensic anthropologists have been assisting in this effort by exhuming mass graves in order to locate and identify victims, often using genetic technologies to verify their identities. Argentina presents a rare case in which these technologies are used to identify not only dead bodies but also living persons endowed with volition. The Grandmothers are attempting to restore biological relationships that were ruptured by state violence. Difficult cases like Evelyns result when those biological relationships are disavowed and victims of state violence refuse to acknowledge the crime committed against them. According to the Grandmothers, Evelyn does not have the autonomy to choose her identity. The state must sanction it. Evelyns situation was a product of the unlawful action of the state. The Grandmothers appeal to the coercive power of the state as a means of redressing the states prior actions. The states obligation to restore a relationship broken by the dictatorship trumped Evelyns individual volition. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, argued that Evelyns individual rights to privacy and psychological and physical integrity prevented the state from imposing upon her an identity that she did not choose. In advocating for the rights of family

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members to know if she was their relatives, the Grandmothers argued in terms of the rights and obligations entailed by kinship that transcend individual volition. Traditional anthropological perspectives on kinship also focus on the rights and obligations of kinship. A popularly held global belief exists that in the postmodern permeable family (Elkind 1995) characteristic of contemporary societies, kinship has lost its traditional authority. As kinship loses this authority, individuals have increasing freedom in defining who they are. At the same time, with the advancement of modern genetics, kinship is increasingly seen in a more rigid biological form and shaped by an ideology of genetic inheritance (Finkler 2000). One view offers choice. The other is fixed at birth. Marilyn Strathern (1996) argues that modern conceptions of identity are caught between these two discourses: one of cultural enablement (individuals are autonomous and independent and can choose who they want to be) and biological determinism (based on the primacy of genetic relationships). Those who support Evelyns decision argue that she should not be compelled to take on an identity she does not want. In the words of one editorial defending her decision: Nobody is more an owner of ones identity than oneself. If an individual does not question it, neither can a third party can force her to do so against her will.25 The Grandmothers and their supporters argue against that she cannot choose her identity because she cannot choose who she is. In the words of Penal Law and Criminology professor Bernardo Beiderman, Identity is a nondisposable juridical good. Nobody can fully renounce it, exchange it, change it, cancel it, or modify it. Personal identity y cannot remain free to the mere will of the person y 26 The Politics of Identity The conflict over Evelyns identity appears to be trapped between these conflicting understandings. The Grandmothers appear to advocate an essentializing notion of a biological identity fixed at birth. However, I believe the Grandmothers position is more complicated than this. While a genetic identity implies a fixed and unchanging identity, the Grandmothers simultaneously advance a view of identity that is more malleable. This conception of identity reflects a more positional perspective; one normally associated with cultural rather than biological understandings. The Grandmothers use the term restitution to describe the process by which their grandchildren reconstruct their identities after they are located and identified. Holland et al. (1998) theory of identity formation is useful in examining what this process entails. Their work describes the cultural figuring of identities, the way in which persons are malleable, changeable, and subject to discursive power (1998:5). As an example, they document the way in which the identities of individuals who join Alcoholics Anonymous are transformed through a process of discrediting not only the old identity as such but also the figured world that gives it

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meaning. They term this a process of identity devaluation and identity formation (1998:73). The process of restitution as described by the Grandmothers similarly entails a process of identity devaluation and formation. The old identity of their grandchildren is discredited not simply through the discovery of their biological identity but by accepting the fact that their parents lied and deceived them. My entire world was a lie, one child of the disappeared who had recovered his identity only one year earlier told me. In such a view, an individuals identity is not a matter of mere choice because of the social and political frames of meaning that constrain the process of identity construction. Identities are social products linked to power (see also Fonseca; Seligmann, this issue). Evelyns identity was constructed within the frames of meaning imposed upon her by the dictatorship and by the people who raised her. The work of the Grandmothers is to reposition her within another frame of meaning, one that requires accepting a radically different view of what occurred during the dictatorship. Accepting this history requires the breaking of kinship ties. Signe Howell (2006) uses the concept of kinning to describe the process by which children who have been adopted transnationally are remade into children of the people who adopted them. According to Howell, kinning is the process by which identities are constituted through relationships, a process that transforms the autonomous individual into a relational person who becomes fixed in a set of relations expressed in a conventional kinship idiom (2006:228). The dilemma the Grandmothers face is that of dekinning: how to unfix relationships. Howells theory of kinning can also show how the Grandmothers resist biologically essentializing views of the person. Howell criticizes the discourse around open adoptions for how it is predicated on the ideology of the right to choose, the right to know, the iconic status of the autonomous individual, and the increasing emphasis being placed on the biological rather than the relational quality of personhood (2006:156). In the case of the Grandmothers, the right to know and the right to choose are not entangled in the same ideology. The Grandmothers embrace a right to know but not a right to choose. This put them at odds with an ideology predicated on choice but premised on biology. This explains why Quienes Somos (Who We Are), an Argentine adoption rights organization who had been uninspired by the Grandmothers efforts when they formed in 2002, supported Evelyns decision, issuing a press release that she should be given time to choose. The institutional narrative of the Grandmothers assumes a process of dekinning and rekinning: that the ties with the kidnappers are broken as new ties are formed with their biological families. Restitution is not simply a single legal action but a lifelong process. In many cases, the recovered grandchild broke off all ties with the family that raised them. These were generally cases in which the grandchild was located when still

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young or cases in which the adult grandchild came forward on their own accord. However, the Grandmothers have also faced more ambivalent restitutions in which the biological identity of the grandchild was legally restored but the grandchild resisted their new identity. In some cases, the recovered grandchild rejects their biological families. In others, they celebrate two birthdates (their biological one and their false one), keep two names, and maintain two sets of families. Shes a computer engineer. Its not what she wanted to do but the kidnappers pushed her into it. Buscarita is describing her granddaughter Claudia Victoria to me. Claudia Victoria was kidnapped as a young child when her parents were disappeared and raised by a military officer and his wife. She was eventually located by the Grandmothers and summoned by a federal court in the year 2000. The judge asked her to undergo a genetic proof of her identity. She reluctantly consented although remained close with the people who raised her. During the initial stages, Buscarita tried not to bother her. Claudia Victoria asked for her privacy. She did not want any photographs of her in the media. The customary practice of the Grandmothers is to display photographs of the recovered grandchildren in their office and on their website. Claudia Victoria requested that her photograph not be displayed. A year after her restitution, she was still living with her kidnappers. Buscarita thought this was due to economic reasons but did not know for certain. When I spoke with Buscarita in 2004, she did not know much about Claudia Victorias life and refrained from asking her many questions. I want to ask her how shes doing in her daily life but I dont know,she told me. Claudia Victorias reappearance resulted in a key moment in the history of Argentine human rights. Her legal situation (the Poblete Case) became the basis upon which the countrys amnesty laws were first ruled unconstitutional in 2001. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court which definitively decided in 2005 to overturn the laws. Prosecutions restarted and the first to be convicted was Julio El Turco Simon, a former police officer and one of the most notorious torturers from the dictatorship. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on August 4, 2006 for his role in the 1978 disappearance of Claudia Victorias parents and for kidnapping Claudia Victoria. After 20 years of impunity resulting from amnesties and pardons, this was the first sentence passed for disappearances and torture. After the Supreme Court ruled to overturn the amnesty laws, Claudia Victoria emerged as a public figure. In 2005, she gave her first interview. She spoke of the need to pursue justice against military perpetrators. No sentence is going to take away the pain I had to go through. But it is important that these unjust laws be annulled. In order for justice to take place, there has to be justice for everyone. In this case, she was speaking as a family member-activist actively seeking justice for her disappeared parents. By justice for everyone, she was implicitly referring to her kidnappers, a relationship which she did not wish to talk about although she admitted still being in contact with them. She even implied that they deserved the punishment they received

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for kidnapping her (they were both convicted and sentenced to prison but were allowed house arrest since they were over 70 years old) with the remark: Everyone is responsible for their actions. Most importantly, she embraced the idea of restitution as a liberating experience. In doing so, she narrated her life story through the frames of meaning provided by the Grandmothers institutional discourse: I later realized that I had an unconscious weight before that I hadnt noticed, that I didnt say or do certain things. Now I feel more complete, more peaceful and I wouldnt have made these changes without knowing who I was. Her words also reveal a complete transformation that accompanied her restitution: I discovered a new world. The world opened up for me. She even endorsed compulsory extractions of blood. There has to be a uniform conduct and the decision should not fall on the kids. To let that decision fall upon them is cruel.27 A year later, Claudia Victoria emerged as an even more public figure. In interviews, she admitted to finally distancing herself from the people she grew up with, including many friends and even her parents. In explaining her situation, she states, All the memories of my childhood, all the good and bad, all the colors, they are these people, and I cant ignore that. Its a horrible story, but its our story.28 The our story that she is referring to is not only her personal life story or that of her family but the history of Argentina. The movement of Claudia Victorias narration of her experience from the sphere of the private (individual and familial) to the larger public and collective experience of all Argentines represents not only a successful repositioning of her identity but also an essential triumph for the Grandmothers. Her recontextualization of her experience as part of the larger history is the end goal of the process of restitution. This stands in sharp contrast with Evelyns personal narrative that frames her experience strictly within the domestic sphere:
My mother was destroyed. On top of that, she has heart problems, and my father has high blood pressure. [y] From that point, people imagine that there is a bigger story to tell but there isnt y . I imagine it must have been really difficult for them to keep such a thing a secret for 21 years. I dont know but I imagine if I didnt change now, I would not have changed earlier. Im not sorry about it, and I dont say, Ouch, I wish they had told me that before. I never reacted against them.29

The Slippery Boundaries between Public and Private Spheres What did Evelyn mean when she claimed there was no bigger story? Evelyn omitted reference to the larger historical context in her public statements. The dictatorship is unmentioned. She could have argued that she was lucky that her

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parents saved her from being killed. She could have argued that she was lucky to have been raised by a religious family instead of leftwing subversive terrorists. Her case is a private affair, a family ordeal. However, the private, domestic sphere from which Evelyn positions her narrative was precisely what the dictatorship ruptured. The dictatorship collapsed the distinction between public and private realms through its actions (compare Van Vleet, this issue). This is evident in its handling of children of the disappeared. As one editorialist stated, Evelyn doesnt deserve to have her life aired out by the media but proceeded to argue that, Evelyns history is part of the history of this country.30 rgen Discussions of human rights often refer to a public sphere (e.g. Over 1999). Ju Habermas (1991) originally defined the public sphere as a societal space for political debate and participation and cited the salons of France and the coffee houses of London as the paradigmatic sites for its emergence. The public sphere is seen as a space for people to exercise their rights as citizens. The notion of a public sphere has been criticized for its implicitly gendered dichotomy (malepublic/femaleprivate). As Van Vleet writes (this issue), the distinction between the private and public spheres is a symbolic one linked to political power. In fact, the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo are often cited in the feminist literature as a key example of a group that challenged this dichotomy (Franco 1999). The initial choice of the Plaza de Mayo by the Mothers for their silent protests during the dictatorship was related to its proximity to the seat of presidential power. However, as Setha Low argues, plazas in Latin America have historically occupied a central role both in political struggles and in the circulation of public discourse (2000). In Argentina, like in much of the Western world, grief and suffering over the loss of family members is generally understood to belong to the private sphere. In contrast to the public rituals of lamentation that take place in many cultures throughout the world (such as in Inner Mani as documented by Seremetakis 1991), conspicuous displays of grief in the public sphere over private grief in Argentina are unusual. During the dictatorship the Mothers and the Grandmothers were both ignored and discredited in the national media. To make their suffering public, they silently protested through weekly marches in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to call attention to the disappearances by carrying photographs of their children and uelos engraved with their childs name and date wearing their emblematic white pan of disappearance. The political power of the Mothers and the Grandmothers in protesting the disappearance of their children stemmed from how they made their private and personal suffering public. In doing so, they made the invisible and unacknowledged actions of the dictatorship visible and forced official recognition of a grief that was not previously acknowledged. For the human rights movement, the children of the disappeared are potent symbols of how Argentina addresses its past. Restoring the identities of the children

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of the disappeared and reuniting them with their biological families plays a key symbolic role in the human rights struggle. The genetic identification of the children of the disappeared serves a similar function as the Mothers protests of making the dictatorships actions visible by forcing public recognition of a broken kin tie. Evelyns denial of her biological identity is more than a rejection of a kin tie. It is simultaneously a rejection of the history that accompanies it, a refusal to recognize zquez family. This is why the the events that led to her being raised by the Va Grandmothers insisted on the need for a compulsory extraction of blood. The states registration of Laura Pegoraro Bauers identity would be an official acknowledgement of what happened to her biological parents. Letting her continue to live as zquez would perpetuate their disappearance. Evelyn Va Postscript Recent developments have rendered compulsory extractions obsolete. In June 2006, the identity of the 83rd missing child of the disappeared was confirmed. Like Evelyn, she had refused to undergo an extraction of blood. Instead of pursuing a compulsory extraction, the judge issued a warrant for police to search her residence. From genetic evidence gathered from her personal belongings, her biological identity was revealed. After 20 years in the courts, the case was resolved. In February 2008, authorities searched Evelyns house. Several of her personal effects were taken to the National Genetic Data Bank for analysis. Two months later, the court announced that Evelyn was the biological daughter of Susana Pegoraro n Bauer. This time, Evelyn did not legally challenge the ruling but another and Rube child of the disappeared who was identified in the same manner did. In June 2008, the Attorney General of the country confirmed the constitutionality of the measure. A search warrant that allowed authorities to confiscate personal items to gather genetic material from personal belongings was considered less invasive and less harmful than a compulsory extraction. They deemed the harm of a compulsory extraction of blood not to be found in its ends (forcing someone to know their biological identity) but in its means (a prick of the needle). Acknowledgment I thank Linda Seligmann and Jessaca Leinaweaver for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. I also thank the anonymous reviews and the editors of JLACA for their constructive feedback. Funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Internal SSHRC Research Grant from McGill University supported this research.

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Notes
The total number of disappeared is contested; 30,000 is the number used by most human rights groups. Numbers ranging between 12,000 and 20,000 are considered more official. 2 The Grandmothers branched off from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the group of woman who gathered during the dictatorship to protest the disappearance of their children. For an oral history account of the Grandmothers, see Arditti (1999). 3 This suspicion, according to the Grandmothers, would stem from such things as a lack of family resemblance and from no photographs of the pregnant mother or newly born child. 4 gina/12, Sucursal de la ESMA en Mar del Plata, January 8, 2000. Raul Kollman, Pa 5 zquez as a deacon of Opus Dei. For more In a later press conference, the Grandmothers identified Va on the religious ideology of the dictatorship, see Graziano (1992) Themes of rescue and salvation are often associated with the circulation of children. See Seligmann, this issue. 6 n, March 18, 1999. Clar 7 s, August 19, 2001. El Pa 8 Similar arguments were made during and after the Chilean and Peruvian Truth Commissions. 9 stor Kirchner took power in 2003, he overturned the pardons and amnesties and human When Ne rights trials restarted. 10 s, August 19, 2001. El Pa 11 gina/12, October 1, 2003. Victoria Ginzberg, Pa 12 gina/12, September 17, 2003. Pa 13 n, October 1, 2003. La Nacio 14 Ibid. This highlights the importance of legal documents (see Van Vleet, this issue, on their importance in a different context), Yngvesson and Coutin (2006) also write of the importance of documents in certifying belonging for adoptees. 15 Ibid. 16 gina/12, September 26, 2003. Pa 17 n, September 16, 2000. La Nacio 18 n. Va zquez Ferra , Evelyn Karina s/incidente de apelacio n. Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nacio V. 356. XXXVI. Fallos: 326. (30/9/2003). 19 s, August 19, 2001. El Pa 20 n, October 3, 2003. La Nacio 21 n. Va zquez Ferra , Evelyn Karina s/incidente de apelacio n. Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nacio V. 356. XXXVI. Fallos: 326. (30/9/2003). 22 gina/12, September 26, 2003. Pa 23 n, October 1, 2003. La Nacio 24 Article 5. Right to Humane Treatment, American Convention on Human Rights, Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica. (Drafted 11/22/1969). 25 n, October 3, 2003. La Nacio 26 n, May 29, 2000. Saber es necesidad de todos, Bernardo Beiderman, Clar 27 gina/12, June 15, 2005. Pa 28 Miami Herald, April 16, 2006. 29 s, August 19, 2001. El Pa 30 gina/12, October 1, 2003. Pa
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