Since the opening of democracy, science has made valuable contributions to the construction of memory, truth, and justice.

The work of anthropologists, archaeologists, and geneticists has already made it possible to identify and return 1600 bodies of missing persons to their families and to recover the identities of 137 grandchildren born in captivity and appropriated during the last civil-military dictatorship.

“Our mission is humanitarian,” says UNR professor and researcher Juan Nóbile, who is part of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), created in 1984. “In all cultures, for families to be able to grieve and close the cycle, they need the truth, the bodies, and to fulfill the ritual of death.”

The anthropologist explains that the word "disappeared" is forced and remains permanently latent. That's why, since 1976, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been searching, wanting to know what happened and where their children and grandchildren are. "When a person is identified and restored, there is a complete recovery of that person's life story."

The work of the EAAF is an operation to "compare bodies that have no identity with identities that have no body." To this end, every year they hold campaigns so that families who have not yet provided blood samples can contribute.

This ongoing work of memory-building has been carried out in the country for 41 years. Currently, the team has 500 unidentified bodies in its laboratory due to the lack of genetic samples from relatives for comparison.

Regarding this, the Professor acknowledges that there are families who don't want to donate blood because "they're in pain," so they respect their time, their privacy, and their perspectives, but they know they can change their attitude in the future. It also happens that, especially in small towns, the missing person is negatively stigmatized because "they must have done something," and the burden of doubt falls on the victim.

The identification process involves four stages. The first is the preliminary investigation, which consists of gathering as much information and documents as possible about the individuals and the circumstances of their disappearance. To do this, they conduct interviews with family members, gather information across the country, and compile a database.

The Team has evidence of three systematic forms of disappearance during state terrorism. One was burial as unknown persons in various cemeteries. Another was burial in clandestine graves in detention centers. For example, in Santa Fe, bodies were buried at the San Pedro military training camp. And finally, there were "death flights," whereby some bodies that appeared on the Argentine and Uruguayan coasts were buried as unknown persons in the nearest cemeteries.

The second stage of the identification process is excavation. Where? In unidentified graves and in places where they receive reports of clandestine graves. There, investigators apply forensic archaeology techniques not only to recover the body but also all the elements associated with these remains, such as clothing and projectiles.

The third stage is the laboratory stage. Bioanthropology can be used to determine whether the remains are male or female, as well as their age and height, and to observe perimortem wounds on the skeleton. The fourth stage is genetics, which involves taking a segment of these remains to extract genetic material.

"All the information provided by the body is compared with what the missing person's relative described, and from there we generate an identity hypothesis. This is definitively confirmed by cross-referencing genetic samples, and if there's a match, an identification and return is made," Nóbile explains.

The EAAF, on the one hand, fulfills this humanitarian mission and, on the other, acts as an expert witness in the trials of those responsible for state terrorism. In all of these instances, the perpetrators were convicted. It is worth noting that between 1991 and 2004, while the laws of due obedience, final point, and pardon were in place, the search continued under the guise of "historical investigation," regardless of whether those responsible were brought to trial.

This forensic science methodology is not only applied in cases related to the dictatorship but also to cases of missing persons during democracy. It was also developed in the anonymous graves of the Darwin Cemetery in the Falkland Islands to identify those who fell in the war.

Grandparenthood index

Another social demand in the early 80s was to guarantee the right to identity for hundreds of children abducted during the dictatorship. Blood tests to determine paternity were already known in the 70s, but in the case of disappeared mothers and fathers, could the blood of grandparents and other relatives be used to identify their grandchildren? The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo visited academies and universities with this question until a group of researchers in the United States took on the challenge of answering it.

Thanks to advances made by geneticist Mary Claire King and the collaboration of a group of scientists, a "grandparenthood index" was developed that guarantees 99,99% accuracy in determining the relationship between a grandchild and their grandparents based on the analysis of genetic material.

In this way, the Grandmothers promoted the creation of a bank to store genetic profiles and guarantee the identification of their grandchildren, even after their deaths. In 1987, the National Congress created by law the National Genetic Data Bank, an autonomous and self-governing body under the purview of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation.

All the samples from relatives searching for children—now adults—disappeared due to state terrorism, as well as from all those suspected of being children of disappeared persons who have already submitted their samples, are stored there. 

Since its launch, 137 suitable grandchildren have been identified, and more than 300 remain to be found. "If you were born between 1975 and 1983, you could be one of the grandchildren we've yet to find," say the Grandmothers, who have continued searching since day one.

To demonstrate how the "grandparent index" works and what the right to identity entails, the UNR organized a public intervention called "Science and Memory: Where do scientific questions originate?" For the past two years, the event has been held in several faculties, the University's School of Social Sciences, the Museum of Memory, and the National Flag Monument, and plans to expand it to more schools in the city.

This is a recreational and educational device to highlight the collaborative framework that made possible the return to their biological families of the grandchildren appropriated during the last dictatorship, organized jointly by the Human Rights Department and the Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation for Development.

According to Cecilia Di Capua, PhD in Biological Sciences, the intervention begins with a question: Where do scientific questions originate? She explains that they generally originate from researchers, but in this case, they arose from the Grandmothers, and the sciences came together to address a social problem. She then details how the grandparenthood index works, from the moment the sample is taken to the moment the patterns in the two DNAs are compared and the formula is applied to establish the probability of kinship.

This article presents the case of Sabrina Gullino Valenzuela Negro, who was born in March 1978 at the Military Hospital in Paraná, Entre Ríos, during the captivity of her kidnapped mother, who was seven months pregnant with twins. The baby was left at the Rosario Orphanage and given up for adoption to the Gullino family, who lived in Villa Ramallo, Buenos Aires province.

She always knew she was adopted. When she began studying at the UNR School of Political Science, she approached the Rosario branch of the Grandmothers, and through the analysis, she learned her story: that she is the daughter of Tulio Valenzuela and Raquel Negro, murdered by the dictatorship. Since learning she was the daughter of disappeared children, she began a new search: that of her twin brother, whom she has yet to meet and is waiting for.

“When I received the DNA result, I was shocked to see that the whole family was searching for me,” Sabrina says, emphasizing: “I like to think that identity isn't just about biology, but also everything one has built and will build.”

Journalist: Victoria Arrabal/Photos: EEAF and Camila Casero