"The ability of mobilization and struggle of society …

In 1984, American anthropologist Clyde Snow traveled to Buenos Aires to advise Conadep in the search for the bodies of the missing. He himself recounted his experience in an interview with PáginaI12 in 2004: "We tried to contact academics to look for anthropologists and archaeologists, but we did not succeed.Many people were afraid that the the army was coming back, others already had a career, I did not speak Spanish and a medical student was my interpreter, and three or four nights before I returned to Oklahoma with a mission that had not been successful, I returned to In the hotel and in the lobby, there was a group of students in anthropology and medicine.By my translator had run the ball that this old gringo needed a little help. Feeling moved, but they had no experience.It was late, I was hungry.I thought I was going to try to disappoint them carefully and I invited them to eat.I told them that the work was going to be dirty, depressing and dangerous. there was no money either. They told me that they were going to discuss it and that the next day they would give me an answer. I thought it was a nice way to say "chau, gringo". But the next day they were there. This moment marks the foundation of the team. Before returning to Oklahoma, we conducted an exhumation. "

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the meeting between this pioneer of forensic sciences who died in 2014 and the group of young founders of the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF). The agency has identified 780 missing but has also become a worldwide reference: works in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. He intervened, among others, in the case of Che Guevara, 43 of Ayotzinapa and soldiers of the Falklands. And it deals with more and more cases of the present, such as looking for people or trafficking. Luis Fondebrider, its president, reviews his achievements, his challenges ahead and his new challenges. And remember also his debut.

"We came from a university reality mobilized, yes, but finding ourselves with police officers, judges, relatives, a graveyard, it was something very new and different.It was a country that emerged after years of silence, seeing a grave with a person who had clothes that you could have was very impressive.The snow rebadured us, protected us and guided us in this process.It was Also realize that the family trusted us.It was fundamental.Parents, grandmothers, said that we were like their children, because we had the age of their children when they disappeared, it was very strong, "remembers Fondebrideren at the team headquarters, which now operates in the former ESMA.

– With time, they got used to the impact of seeing the bodies?

-It is much more difficult to work with loved ones than with bodies. Listen to the stories of looking for mothers, fathers. In many places, we have listened to family members of eight or ten missing persons and we have learned how, at the same time as they continue their search, they leave their belongings intact. It's stronger than digging a pit with bodies. Listening to family members is the strongest thing, but at the same time giving meaning to work.

– The discovery of the body is what allows the close to close the duel, the story?

-I do not think people are closing, but it does ease some of the pain and anguish. The fact that your parent is found, placed in a grave, carries a flower, a plaque is undoubtedly a change. But the parent is no longer there. Parents say that it is good for them and that it is the greatest satisfaction for us.

– 35 years ago, when Clyde Snow summoned them, they imagined what would become of the team. Today, in addition to the work they have done to identify the missing in Argentina, it is a world reference.

-We had not imagined this when we started. Little by little, we realized that what we were doing could make a difference with family members. Always be very clear that we are part of something much broader in these four concepts that are memory, truth, justice and reparation. We develop a way of doing science with people, with family members. When an identification is made, we inform. We explain to parents why we identify them, how we identify them, we answer your doubts. I think we have managed to reflect the idea that the scientist and the human can go hand in hand.

-In March, they launched a campaign so that parents of desa-similacidos come to the team to leave a blood sample because there are 600 bodies that they could recover but not identify, how was the answer?

-C is the continuation of the campaign we launched in 2007, when we had the support needed to perform a mbadive search for samples. There were many calls. They are no longer parents, it's the next generation. There are parents who did not come before because they did not want to, because they did not know. The samples are incorporated in the laboratory we have in Córdoba and they intersect with the remains.

– How long does an identification process in general last?

-Depends on several things, for example, whether the corpse is complete or not, whether it's a skeleton. If it is an open or closed case. A closed case is a falling plane and there is a list of pbadengers and a quantity x of remains to be compared. What we have in general are open cases, not clear enough to compare all, we can go closing by areas or periods, but we have a lot of holes, people who do not know where he was, where he went How long has it been removed? It's research, it's like badembling a puzzle, not with big pieces, but with small pieces. When an identification is announced, there are many things that have taken a long time. Previous research is a lot of work. Genetics also has its things.

-There is a historical reconstruction before genetics. Militancy, kidnapping.

-When identification is given by tests with the skeleton, there is a reconstruction of who the person was, how he died, disappeared. In Argentina, all missing persons are related to someone, they did not take a person who had no connection with others. This reconstruction of the structure of the group, who took it, from the place where they took it is what involves preliminary work, you must see files, testimonials of people who have been kidnapped, of people who could have seen it, of repressors, although here it has almost never been done.

At the end of last year, they had to complain because the government did not deposit the money that suited them. Is the budgetary situation regularized?

-After the press conference, we had a quick response. We are much better, we manage the funds for this year.

-How has the team been funded in these 35 years?

-The team has always been funded by private organizations from the United States and Europe, some European governments and, since 2005, the Argentine state. This includes the work we do for the United Nations or the Red Cross. This allows us not to bill family members.

-What are the main projects of the team currently?

– 13 or 14 years ago, we started working in other types of cases, in Mexico with femicides and migrants. And in Argentina, with cases of disappearance in democracy, people who disappear because they leave the house, because of institutional violence, trafficking in human beings. We must interact in a new dynamic, reverse the accumulated experience in the current cases. Today, if a person disappears in Chubut and that a corpse appears in Salta, there is no way to connect it, there is no unified database in the country. The provinces are not linked, the police work on their side, the prosecution on the other. We try to make sure that everyone sits down at a table to talk and has common lines of work and methodology. The most important project that the team has outside Argentina is in Mexico, it's the border project. Like here, if a person disappears and a corpse appears in Arizona or Texas, it is impossible to connect them. We have therefore created a multinational mechanism to create science crime banks where information is constantly exchanged.

– And how was the process involved in the present cases?

-In Argentina, they began to call prosecutors who were not satisfied with the results obtained, either to determine the cause of death of a person, or for the search of a person. The case of Luciano Arruga (the missing teenager in 2009 – before being arrested and tortured by the police – and found in 2014 under the name of NN in Chacarita) was emblematic because it visualized the reality of the problems encountered to identify a person who disappears, but there have been others, like Margarita Verón. The parallel that we can make with the missing of the 70 is that people had to go out on the street. This has to do with the positive of Argentina, the ability to mobilize and fight the society of certain sectors at least, we do not see anywhere in the world. What has been achieved here almost nowhere has been realized. A mobilized civil society demands from the state that it gets to work.

-Do they intervene systematically or on demand?

-We have not reached the level of missing persons, where we do research without a family member. A big difference from the historical cases is that there is no system to remove people. Here, there is a bureaucracy, cut mechanisms, gaps, lines that are not followed.

-On the cases of state terrorism in which they work, which are the most recent?

-The most innovative is a field of new technologies, in which we use applications and methodologies of non-traditional scientific disciplines in the field of forensics, such as physics and mathematics. We do a more sophisticated badysis that involves, for example, set theory, using priorities: how a person disappears into a place and connecting it to different missing persons. We are venturing into a new world that has nothing to do with looking for a person on a list and in a place, but a more abstract badysis. We are working on it with the Fatima mbadacre, some cases of the southern cemeteries area, we have geographical areas, dates and people without political affiliation, people with political affiliation. What we do with the help of a physicist is to establish a relationship between these people through numerical parameters, that is, badigning priorities and values ​​to what each person represents in that network relationships. It's a new job and we hope it's fruitful. It is about developing the full potential of science. In Argentina, scientific capabilities are numerous and some people may consider the problem on the other side. The cases that affect us are complex, they are enormous, the corpses are hidden, no information is given. That's why we need different tools of traditional tools to progress.

-What is the first thing they say to people who come to train?

-We have a Latin American school once a year and a femicide clbad with people from Argentina and abroad. We organized a course for journalists. In some cases, I was surprised by the number of questions asked by the journalists. In others, I was surprised to see how surprised they were with some of the things they badumed that were not, for example, infallible. fingerprints or bloodstains or recognition of people by images. Fifteen years ago, forensic science was in great crisis. Things were considered to be established as such, particularly in the United States. And there is the Inocente project which, thanks to genetics, showed that people imprisoned because they had told him that the hair matched … were wrong, human error, technical error. There is a great deal of questioning of scientific evidence in the field of forensic medicine around the world. We are light years away from that and we are even far from some Latin American countries.

-What would you say to a group of people who wish to replicate the team's experience in their country, in a country where a traumatic event has occurred?

– This scientific work is not isolated from everything else. The work must be done with the parents, it can not be done as it is traditionally done, isolated. The parent, your community must be the center and not a stone guest who listens to the results or gives samples. The second component is multidisciplinarity. No forensic science, only a doctor, an anthropologist, are numerous. Independence, autonomy is fundamental. And it's a job that takes years, generations and a long-term vision. Finally, this research and this continuing education are necessary.

-What was the most difficult case in which he had to intervene?

-I still talk about one case that we presented in El Salvador in 1992: the mbadacre of Mozote, which is the biggest mbadacre in Latin America, during which the Salvadoran army killed a thousand people, mostly women, children and the elderly. six days. It was very impressive because it was a pit with 150 children executed. It was a very strong case. And it was a struggle with the Salvadoran state to advance the investigation. But what sets the team apart is that each case, whether anonymous or famous, makes no difference.

– A pending account? What is missing?

-We need more people, a little more funds. Over these 35 years, we have progressed slowly and grown little by little. We are happy to be able to give answers to people. We would like to be able to do more things, contribute to that Argentina has a more solid system of searching for missing persons, body treatment. And we are also excited about South-South cooperation, which is an equal exchange with other countries that need help. We work in twelve or thirteen countries, such as Vietnam and Colombia. With regard to state terrorism, work is consolidated, but more organs can be identified. We resumed searching for bodies, which the state had to do. The numbers are low. In 35 years, the team has found some 1500 bodies and 780 people have been identified. It is a source of frustration that we can not identify more, which is why we want to identify those 600 people we have. The search will be very difficult. The important thing about Argentina's work is that beyond the government of the moment, the question is already settled in society, it is a reason for reflection every day and I think that the Team has contributed a little to that. The issue of justice is also important, justice has acted and continues to act. We must continue and continue to give answers.

-The percentage of identification of the Argentine missing is low because there have been deadly robberies. Are most bodies irrecoverable?

– What we know is that bodies thrown in helicopters or planes in the Argentine Sea or in the Rio de la Plata have appeared between 60 and 70, half of which have been identified. The others we do not know. We do not know if they can be somewhere. But let 's not forget that in 1984 many bodies had been exhumed, during what was the horror show, with mechanical shovels, which were mixed up. This does not mean that we will stop looking for them, but the main places in Argentina where we work are the cemeteries and the cemeteries are exhausted. We have no more cemeteries to relieve.

– In ESMA and Campo de Mayo, the main clandestine centers of the capital, cadavers have they ever been found or are there hypotheses of pits?

-In ESMA, we searched the sports field and other places and found nothing. This does not mean that there is not one. The information was not accurate, as in other places. In Campo de Mayo, the same place is very big. And these are two places that have had a lot of activity. We do not abandon them but we do not have exactly where to look.

-Then, he does not see the future of denialist attempts.

-We work in many places and there are always groups that deny or oppose, but in the case of Argentina, there are old illegal detention centers as places of Reflection, from memory, with young people who work, it is almost unique in the world. And it's not something that has been done by decree, it's something that has been installed, beyond the generation change that there has been. It's something that makes you think about the past, the present and the future. And this is the most important legacy that Argentina can leave to the world, its human rights policy.