Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense

(EAAF)

    / Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team

   A pioneer in using forensics in cases of human-rights violations, the EAAF was founded in 1984 in Argentina at the behest of human-rights groups such as the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP, National Commission on the Disappeared) and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. A nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization, EAAF has since expanded its work. In 1995–1997 a team of EAAF scientists identified the remains of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and other guerrillas in Vallegrande, Bolivia. More recently, EAAF has conducted investigations in the Ciudad Juarez region of Mexico, where over 400 young women have disappeared or been murdered in the past few years. In 1983, with the return of democracy in Argentina, judges began ordering exhumations from cemeteries suspected of containing the remains of the missing (desaparecidos). The problem was that Argentine forensic doctors had been trained to exhume and analyze cadavers, not skeletal remains. In some cases, they used bulldozers, which dispersed and destroyed many of the remains. Moreover, many of the supervising forensic doctors had worked for the previous police and judicial systems, leading in some instances to charges of complicity in the crimes they were being asked to investigate. At this point, Argentine human-rights groups appealed for help from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Science and Human Rights Program of the AAAS soon organized a delegation that traveled to Argentina. Among the members was Dr. Clyde Snow, one of the world’s authorities on forensic anthropology. Dr. Snow helped found the EAAF, and under his aegis, a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, and physicians began analyzing the human remains.

   The EAAF undertook legal proceedings on behalf of the family members of desaparecidos, making use of a peculiarity in the military dictatorship’s treatment of its victims—the unusually detailed level of documentation given to bodies buried in so-called paupers’ graves. Many of the victims executed by military authorities were abandoned in public places. The local police, alerted by anonymous telephone calls, would then recover the bodies and tag them as “unidentified.” Unidentified bodies were fingerprinted, photographed, and, in some cases, perfunctorily examined by police or forensic physicians, who would then issue a death certificate leading to an official burial certificate. The information contained in those police dossiers has aided EAAF in identifying the regime’s victims. Following the Argentine initiative, other forensic-anthropology groups were founded in Latin America, such as the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team and the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation. Both groups labor to identify cases of human-rights violations in their countries. In Argentina, the latest initiative of the EAAF has led to a massive effort to identify human remains found in cemeteries in the Buenos Aires and Córdoba provinces. In November 2007 the Iniciativa Latinoamericana para la Identificación de Personas Desaparecidas (LIID, Latin American Initiative for the Identification of the “Disappeared”) began a national media campaign, which includes the participation of journalists, actresses, and actors in popular television and radio spots aimed at encouraging relatives of desaparecidos to donate blood samples. In June 2008 the drive was expanded to Spain, where the Argentine Embassy in Madrid, as well as consulates in Barcelona, Vigo, Cadiz, and Tenerife, has acted as a temporary collection center. EAAF currently works to establish its own genetic laboratory in Buenos Aires as part of its mission to identify victims of human-rights violations.

   Current members of the EAAF include Carlos “Maco” Somigliana, a former Montonero (not Carlos Somigliana the playwright), and Mercedes Doretti, cofounder of EAAF and recipient of a 2007 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition, EAAF received a 2008 Konex Award for its contribution as a Science and Technology Organization in Argentina.