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Related Projects
Identity Network (Red X la Identidad)
It is a fact that, over the years, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo has recovered the identities of young men and women who live not only in the capital, but also in the country's interior. The organization continuously receives inquiries from other provinces, and many times, due to economic adversities or to emotional impossibilities, it is difficult for these young adults to travel to the city of Buenos Aires.
For that reason, from April of 2002 to 2005, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo traveled around the country to collect inquiries from people who question their identity. This was part of a program financed by the European Union which also mandated the establishment of a National Network for the Right to an Identity. Currently, this Network is in charge of information and training related to the right to an identity in the provinces, and of advising and accompanying young people who have doubts in the search for the truth.
In relation to this project, training seminars and promotional activities are held throughout the country so that each city can count on having competent people to solve their doubts and to advise young people who question their origin.
Each Network is comprised of governmental and non-governmental organizations, civil institutions and associations, professionals, and any other people wishing to collaborate with Abuelas' struggle to locate their grandchildren and to defend the right to an identity in general. It is not only important to solve the appropriation cases that have occurred during the last military dictatorship, but also to raise awareness of the right to an identity so that these crimes will never be committed again.
Throughout the country, the Network holds training seminars, itinerant exhibitions and other local promotional and training activities. All this information is available at
www.abuelas.org.ar/redxlaidentitad
CONADI
CONADI is the National Commission for the Right to an Identity.
Its objectives are the search and location of the children disappeared during the last military dictatorship in Argentina, and simultaneously, to ensure compliance with sections seven, eight, and eleven of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. Argentina's Senate and Chamber of National Deputies enacted this Convention through Law Number 23,849.
What Does CONADI Do?
CONADI receives both requests and reports from Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, and also receives cases directly submitted to them.
Young people come of their own accord to ask for help when they suspect to be the sons/daughters of disappeared people.
CONADI is also in charge of new cases of "Disappeared Pregnant Women."
To Whom Does CONADI Report?
CONADI reports directly to the Secretariat of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, and the Undersecretary is the President of the Commission.
How Is CONADI Organized?
CONADI is organized into three principal divisions:
Investigation: this division is in charge of interviews and documentation necessary to learn the facts of reported cases, as well as the creation of the corresponding dossier.
Legal: this division analyzes each case and advises on cases of illegal adoptions and falsified relationships. It is in charge of issuing legal reports on such matters. It also advises professionals and officers who request previous information regarding the case.
Genetic: all reported cases are solved through immunogenetic tests, which permit a young person to be conclusively included or excluded from a given biological family. Tests are performed at the National Genetic Data Bank at the Durand Hospital.
Tests are performed at the Banco Nacional de Datos Genéticos (National Genetic Data Bank) (see) at the Durand Hospital.
How do I contact CONADI?
Schedule: Monday to Friday; 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Address: 25 de Mayo 552, 2nd floor, Capital Federal
Phone Number: (+54-11) 4312-6648
e-mail: conadi@jus.gov.ar
For more information see the CONADI website: www.conadi.jus.gov.ar
Biographical Family Archives
Biographical Family Archives of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and Investigation Project: "Reconstruction of the Identity of the Disappeared".
With the help of the Archives, we aim to reconstruct the life story of the disappeared, the family members of the abducted children and/or of those born in captivity during the last military dictatorship, as well as both children who are still with their appropriators and those who have already recovered their identity.
We aim to revive the identity lost with the construction of the idea of "disappearances", which created a new social subject by denying the previous identity. At the same time, with the reconstruction of the family and social background, we intend to track a map of the environment to analyze the process of historic rupture (social mobility, cultural identity) that the military dictatorship imposed upon Argentina.
Relatives and people close to the disappeared, living in any part of the country, were interviewed for this purpose.
The project methodology is based on three axes:
A biographical family archive for each of the appropriated young persons, with three mediums: verbal (the voices), written (interview transcriptions) and photographic (current and historical records).
A summary document for each appropriated young person with the life stories of the disappeared.
A public document linking and relating the life stories.
The consolidation of the Biographic Family Archive, its permanence, and its intent to reawaken and impact the public spirit will make possible its establishment as a material framework and in support of collective memory.
Project Organization
A group of 30 investigators from various departments of the University of Buenos Aires developed this project and carries out all tasks related to the investigation, coordination, management, filing, interviews and their correction, and photographic records. More than 100 undergraduate and graduate students have participated in the project as interviewers, for which they were duly trained. This training and experience, as well as participation in the organization of the First Conference of Young Investigators in October 2002, account for the existence of Social Science professionals committed to the reality of our country.
In September 1999, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo submitted this project to be included in the planning of the Secretariat of Science and Technology of the University of Buenos Aires for the period 1998-2000 (Project TS063). The category was maintained for the periods 2000-2001 (Project S047) and 2004-2007 (S129), directed by Professors Enrique Oteiza and Mónica L.Muñoz.
Current Awareness on the Topic
Although some studies on the forced disappearance of people exist, no other empirical investigation in Argentina has been conducted that is similar to this one in terms of the systematic reconstruction of the life stories of the disappeared belonging to a certain group (in this case, the environment is the presence of appropriated children in the family of origin of the disappeared).
This reconstruction assumes that the "disappeared" is the product of identity loss that begins with the arrival to the concentration camp. "Numbers replaced names and surnames, living people who had already disappeared from the world of the living beings and now they disappeared from inside themselves by a process of "hollowing" that attempted to erase the smallest clue. Bodies with no identity, dead with neither a corpse nor name: the disappeared."
Abductions and disappearances followed by death created a "new" social subject, a product of genocide, which led to the denial of a particular past (family, social, cultural, political) and the creation of a gap in family and generational continuity. The condition of "disappeared" resulted from all that was ignored about them (their captivity, their death, the disposal of their remains, and in the case of those taken to the concentration camps and not identified, their identity). What is ignored about them, what is denied, is what defines them.
The denial of the identity, which began at the concentration camp, corresponded to the outside world. The relatives, in the first moment of accusation, constructed the image of the "innocent victim." This was an essential step for two reasons: first, faced with the subjection of the most basic guaranties, it was necessary to remind the authorities that the detainees (the disappeared) were innocent until the legal system proved otherwise; secondly, the presumption of innocence protected relatives from social exclusion, stigmatization, and even their own disappearance.
Genocidal processes are defined in terms of material fulfillment (the physical elimination of a social group characterized as the enemy), but are only completed through the insistence of a symbolic definition. Different political, social, and religious groups become homogeneous and are hidden behind a new identity structure: the disappeared.
According to Daniel Feierstein, an investigation seeking the recovery of individual and of collective identity of the disappeared, "far from constructing a justification [of the extermination], should allow for a re-appropriation of the victims as social beings. The opposite process leads to what we have called the symbolic realization of genocide: those bodies physically eliminated are also symbolically erased; even the capacity to recover their memory is lost."
Taking into consideration Tzvetan Todorov's concept of exemplary memory, in its new phase, the project proposes to investigate possible analogies between the repressive practices implemented by the most recent military dictatorship and genocidal processes. "The exemplary memory generalizes, but in a limited way; it does not make the identity of the facts disappear; it only relates them among themselves, establishing comparisons that permit one to distinguish similarities and differences."
To recover the identity of the disappeared as social subjects with their own histories and practices, and not only as victims of crimes against humanity, constitutes a exercise in memory that is not limited to remembering the past and that allows the possibility for this past to redefine the present. Memory, as a social practice, requires supporting materials and instruments. It is not a spontaneous record but rather constructed through certain frames that make its existence possible. In this sense, the Family Biographical Archives become a factual memory support, operating on two levels: first, the identity of each of the disappeared is reconstructed, and second, the archives as a whole enable the recovery of this social group's identity.
Considering the innovative character of this task, a theoretical-methodological structure has been developed, organized around three different types of narratives: the biographical accounts, life stories, and biograms. Biographical accounts, the result of in-depth interviews with relatives and people close to them, recount the life experience of the disappeared. Multiple cross-biographical accounts constitute polyphonic structures in which different narratives converge towards the same point of interest. In this particular case, they are not subject to verification because interviews gather information without censorship. In fact, contradictions among the narratives reveal the multiple dimensions of the existence of the disappeared. And in reality, such contradictions do not exist, they merely reflect contradictory representations. In each of the Archives created, the multiplicity of cross-biographical accounts constitute a life story, a narrative with neither a unique narrator nor a precise chronological order, but one that nonetheless recounts the life of the disappeared. Biograms, on the other hand, are concise biographical records designed for quantitative studies and gather information from the interviews in chronological order.
The massive amount of information about families which started the investigation, as well as the volume of data gathered from the families, required the development of software that could manage the data gathered from the hundreds of relatives and people close to the disappeared, the relationship between them and the disappeared, the interviews, priorities in accordance with the age of the people to be interviewed and their geographical location, monitoring of what has been done, etc. This software was designed to cover the needs of the project, without any direct precedent as to the application of this kind of technology to a quantitative and qualitative research, and can be used in other projects with similar characteristics.
In 2001 an agreement with CONADI (National Commission for the Right to an Identity) was implemented to reconstruct the life stories of those whose disappearance had been reported to CONADI. CONADI discovered 60 new cases of disappeared minors and pregnant women that were not registered by Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. In 2003, this number grew to 74 new cases and about 20 of them were in the preliminary stages of investigation. CONADI corroborates their information, creates pertinent records, contacts the family groups, and submits this information to the Family Biographical Archives to begin the reconstruction. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo also continues to receive new reports regarding the abduction of minors, which are integrated into the Family Biographical Archives.
Considering the impact produced by submitting the Archives to the young people who have recovered their identity, we reached the following conclusion: even for the sons and daughters of the disappeared who were not appropriated and who are searching for their siblings, as well as those who were restituted before starting this investigation, access to their parents' life stories, reconstructed through the multiple cross-biographical accounts, is fundamental for the appropriation of their family history and the construction of their own identity.
Results Achieved by May 2004:
More than 1,000 interviews conducted throughout the country.
More than 400 life stories of disappeared people in reconstruction.
More than 40 Archives completed.
More than 100 Archives in process.
14 Archives delivered (5 to restituted young men and women and 9 to the children of disappeared people who are searching for their siblings or cousins).
More than 10 national academic events where the project was presented.
Theater for Identity
Theater for Identity is a theater series in which hundreds of actors and actresses, from those with long careers to those who are just beginning, serve Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's cause by, as a gesture of absolute solidarity, offering their day off (Mondays) and their talent to collaborate in the recovery of the approximately 500 children who are still disappeared, that is to say, with their identities changed.
It is an activist stance, that of reasserting the historic commitment of dramatic art to reality. And it is also a way to gather actors, directors, writers and audience for a good cause, to join us all together in the search of our own identity.
Identity to perform our conflicts on stage.
Identity to express our painful history.
Identity to take advantage of what we have achieved.
Identity to not be consumed by the devastating market.
Identity to stand on our own two feet... and to grow...
All information and shows schedule can be found at the website:
all information and shows schedule will be found at the website:
www.teatroxlaidentitad.net
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