Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/ARGENTINA: Tracking Dictatorship’s Missing Children on TV

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 11 2005 (IPS) - For more than 27 years, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been searching for young people who were kidnapped as small children during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship or were born topolitical prisoners in clandestine detention centres.

So far, the Grandmothers, whose sons and daughters were the victims of forced disappearance, have tracked down 75 of their missing grandchildren. Now they are turning to television to help them in their task.

“To find our grandchildren, what is needed is a society that is aware of what happened in the past and is able to understand the right to an identity,” said Irene Strauss, who is in charge of coordinating the human rights group’s work in schools, in which posters, videos, films and radio and TV programmes are used.

Starting last month, the vehicle chosen for these efforts is the weekly educational TV programme “Foro 21”, which has incorporated a monthly section called “Schools for Identity”, showing efforts to teach students about what happened during and since the de facto military regime and about everyone’s right to know their real identity.

“The ideal would be to focus on the right to an identity in the broadest sense, including the issue of cultural diversity and the right of immigrants to be proud of their origins. But since there are still many grandchildren that we haven’t found yet, we cannot afford to take such a wide focus,” Strauss told IPS.

Between 11,000 (according to government figures) and 30,000 (according to human rights groups) people were forcibly disappeared by the dictatorship.

Many of the adults were seized along with their small children. In addition, women who were pregnant when they were kidnapped gave birth in the concentration camps.

The great majority of these children, slightly over 500 according to the estimates of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, are young people who are living today with the false identities they were illegally assigned by those who kidnapped or raised them.

So far 75 of them have recovered their true identity, thanks to the untiring work of the Grandmothers, an organisation that was created in 1977 to search for the children who were “disappeared” along with their parents and raised by military couples or given in illegal adoption to families who were genuinely unaware of their origins.

Many of these children had never been seen by their biological grandparents because they were born in the torture camps.

One of the achievements of the Grandmothers was their successful fight to get the right to identity introduced into the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In their effort to raise awareness on the issue in Argentina, they have organised writing and short film contests as well as photo and art exhibits, have produced videos, held “theatre for identity”, “music for identity” and “rock for identity” festivals, and carried out educational campaigns in the world of sports.

The Grandmothers also take part in TV programmes, documentaries, films and radio shows that can help further their objective, and enthusiastically offer their assistance in fictional programmes that address the issue of young people plagued by doubts about their true identity.

In the past few months, an ad titled “The Applause” has reminded the public that the work of the Grandmothers is far from finished.

The idea behind the spot is based on the Argentine custom of clapping hands when a child is lost in a public space, to call everyone’s attention to the search.

In the ad, the clapping begins on a beach and expands to show many well-known artists, actors, writers, journalists and sports stars clapping alongside the president of the Grandmothers, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, who has not yet found her own grandson.

“People often think that if the children were raised with love by the family that took them or by a family that adopted them in good faith, it doesn’t matter so much that their real identity was hidden from them,” said Strauss. “But that has to change, because we’re talking here about a grave violation of their rights.”

She said education must play a role in defending these rights, which is why the Grandmothers for years have been visiting schools in order to explain the work they do, which is also a way of teaching children about what happened during and after the dictatorship.

Up to now, their efforts had been limited to schools in Buenos Aires. But with support from the Ministry of Education and a team of specialists, the Grandmothers designed a video and educational booklets for use in classrooms nationwide.

The booklets, which also contain a brief summary of Argentina’s recent history, were distributed around the country by the Ministry of Education. They provide teachers with guidelines and suggestions on how to address the question of violations of the right to an identity, in accordance with the age of the students.

Some of the classroom experiences were captured on video, which was aired during an episode of “Foro 21”, a nationally broadcast TV programme.

“We know they reached many schools, and that there are teachers who use them. But we have also received reports about provinces where the booklets have ended up in a drawer,” said Strauss.

In the central province of San Juan, for instance, the local Ministry of Education’s council of school supervisors decided not to distribute the booklets.