Ana Broccoli
The US biotechnology industry has turned Argentina into the world’s third-largest soybean producer, but the chemicals powering the boom are contaminating soy, corn, and cotton fields, as well as homes, classrooms, and drinking water. A growing chorus of doctors and scientists warns that their uncontrolled use could be responsible for the increasing number of health problems across the South American nation.1 This essay seeks to reveal the history of how the genetically modified organism (GMO)–agrochemical business model became established and demonstrates the symbolic links between Argentine mothers’ struggle for justice and the well-being of future generations.
Populated by little more than forty million inhabitants and occupying an area of nearly four million square kilometers, with a variety of climates and fertile soils, Argentina has been globally recognized as a food producer and exporter: a “world granary” and breeder of cattle, which graze on the vast Pampas. Agriculture allowed this nation to become one of the most prosperous on the continent, enjoying a powerful economy and comfortable lifestyles until it was beset by a series of economic crises, inflationary spirals, and capital flight in the mid-twentieth century. The deregulation that had been pursued by the corporations and facilitated by the state was retained and reinforced during the construction of the neoliberal model during the 1990s, with a particularly significant impact on Argentine agriculture. In the twenty-first century, the national agribusiness model resembles a corporate dictatorship: a dictatorship that is gestating more “bad memories” for the future.
In Argentina, workers’ organizations and social movements are often portrayed in images of the Plaza de Mayo, traditionally the center of Argentine civic life, and perhaps best known for the fight for justice that was initiated in April 1977 by the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.” Over the years since their demonstrations began, drawing strength from each other, every week the mothers and grandmothers of thousands of young people who were “disappeared” during Argentina’s military dictatorship marched together in public wearing their emblematic headscarves, demanding to know what had become of their loved ones. Despite, or perhaps because of, their weekly marches around the Pirámide de Mayo that occupies the center of the plaza, the military government tried to marginalize and trivialize their struggle, branding them “las locas” (the madwomen). Together with the number of kidnapped persons, the movement grew and gained international attention, seeking to put pressure on the Argentine dictatorship, particularly from other governments, by publicizing the many stories of the “disappeared,” especially in 1978, when Argentina hosted the World Cup soccer tournament and the Mothers’ demonstrations were covered by the international press corps.2
Today another group of mothers is seeking justice; this time they are fighting for the rights of their “contaminated children.” They are the “Mothers of Ituzaingó” (a city in the province of Córdoba, to the west of Buenos Aires), who, more than ten years ago, first reported the impact on their children of excessive agrochemical use associated with GMO agriculture. Their struggle for justice is supported by popular gatherings, people’s organizations against pesticide use, and peasants driven from their lands because of the violence of the industrial model of monoculture crop production.3 They took their case to court in the famous “Fumigation Trial”4 of 2012 and are leading national resistance against the GMO giant Monsanto’s plans to build a seed processing plant at Malvinas Argentinas in the peri-urban area of Córdoba City.
Before relating the story of the Mothers of Ituzaingó’s struggle, a few more details about the Argentinean context need to be explained in order to help us understand how this resistance movement was shaped. To borrow a euphemistic war metaphor, collateral damage among the country’s human population became apparent as people were exposed to agricultural spray drift, although both combatant and civilian casualties were denied by the corporate dictatorship. As the world’s second-largest adopter of GM technology, Argentina has become the premier ecotoxicological experiment, planting almost twenty-five million hectares of transgenic crops in 2013. Contrary to Argentine law, however, the precautionary principle was never applied.
The Argentine state has validated genetic engineering as a safe technology and does not consider that GM foods carry any risks to human health.5 Biotechnology research is strongly supported and considered likely to foster a national transgenic industry and intellectual property that could one day challenge the dominance of global seed corporations. Meanwhile, the Argentinean public has no awareness of the possible dangers of consuming genetically modified foods. The national mass media supports the biotech industry and promotes a narrative of safety and freedom from any risk to consumers.
In 1996, the Argentine Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Fishing and Food authorized GMO technology by means of two straightforward resolutions: N° 115 of March 14, 1996, established the protocol for seeking authorization for “experimentation or release of transgenic soybean seed”; while N° 167 of April 3, 1996, authorized production and commercialization of soybean products and subproducts that are “glyphosate resistant.” This authorization, which radically changed Argentine agriculture, was granted in an administrative process spanning just three months. Argentina approved the cultivation of GM soybeans without undertaking any independent research, relying solely on studies carried out by Monsanto.
Thus, the Roundup Ready (RR) soybean gained rapid access in Argentina, and subsequently in neighboring countries that adopted GM technology without adequate legal frameworks for the regulation of transnational interests. RR soy is smuggled (as contraband seeds) into other countries, and was baptized in Brazil as “Maradona Soy.” In 2004, reflecting the rapid spread and dominance of GM technology, Syngenta, one of the six global seed giants, created the advertising slogan “The United Republic of Soy,” presenting a map of this imaginary territory that unified growing areas of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. Indeed, corporations in the region encountered no barriers to the development of their transgenic empires: agribusiness production processes operated en bloc, with land tenure systems (sowing pools) and export companies completing the oligopolistic complex.6
The glyphosate + GMO “technological package” incorporates cultivation technologies that are advertised as promoting soil conservation and minimizing environmental impact while ensuring the reduction of pesticide use. Citing the view that the herbicide glyphosate displays low toxicity in the wider environment and therefore carries little risk of damage to human health, Dr. Lino Barañao, the current minister of science and technology, told the media that “people who had consumed a glass of the chemical to commit suicide had met with no success.”7 Despite claims to the contrary, the use of glyphosate has increased a hundredfold, while the application rate per hectare has increased from 2–3 to 8–12 liters. In the face of social movement claims about the harmful effects of glyphosate, in 2009, the government created the National Research Commission on Agrochemicals (NRCA) with a mandate to research, prevent, and treat the effects of agrochemicals on human and environmental health. Further, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) issued a report8 on glyphosate that related any of its possible negative effects to poor application practices and, in the absence of sufficient research to establish otherwise, claimed low toxicity. Peers have criticized the CONICET report, claiming that it is biased toward research that regards glyphosate as safe, and that its conclusions lack independent corroboration.
In 2012, an audit of National Service of Agricultural Quality and Health (SENASA)—the agency responsible for registration, authorization, and control of agrochemicals—raised serious concerns regarding the agency’s work and the health of the population exposed to glyphosate fumigation. In a report, it claimed that agrochemical pollution leads to “silent poisoning” because negative health effects result from long-term, repeat exposure, with chronic toxicity leading to enhanced morbidity and/or death.9 Thus, glyphosate-related diseases are naturalized. By 2012, transgenic crops subject to systematic fumigation covered an area of twenty-two million hectares, inhabited by some twelve million people, excluding the population of large cities. The state has glossed over the highly critical SENASA audit, and no progress has been made regarding the need to proceed in accordance with the precautionary principle and for the agency to undertake its own scientific research independently of the agribusiness corporations.
Public acceptance of GMOs is also facilitated by the positive image presented by a coalition of government agencies, farmers, academics, and the media that projects a discourse of approval. The Argentina Society of Nutrition (SAN) contributes to the positive image of GMOs, employing the rhetoric of food security, which is often interpreted as food safety. In a 2008 report, SAN employed the principle of “substantial equivalence” and concluded that “studies to establish the safety of GMOs have shown, in all cases, that these foods are just as safe and nutritious as conventional crops.”10 The discourse of approval is also forwarded by those who claim that GMO agriculture has the ability to maintain a sustainable and healthy environment for future generations, supported by the myth of using fewer chemicals. All these narratives are propagated by university researchers and others involved in the production and industrial processing of foods, in health services, or in law. None of these areas of knowledge attempts to decode or deconstruct discourses that favor GMOs. The only exceptions are institutions such as the University Network for Environment and Health (REDUAS) and independent professors in transdisciplinary fields, such as Free Chairs of Food Sovereignty, Family Farming and Agroecology. It is only actors such as these who undertake field studies documenting the diseases that have accompanied the spread of the GMO-based agro-industrial model, and bring to light and denounce the tragedy that is unfolding in “The United Republic of Soy.”
The neighborhood of Ituzaingó is located in the southeast of the city of Córdoba. Established in the 1950s, it comprises an area of approximately thirty blocks, home to around five thousand people. The main source of employment is industrial manufacturing, but the neighborhood is surrounded by productive agricultural land.
In 1997, Sofia Gatica lost her newborn daughter, Nandy, due to a kidney malformation. Months later, when her son suffered paralysis of his legs, she began to realize that many people in the neighborhood too were suffering from similar afflictions. This gave birth to the Mothers of Ituzaingó.
The women of the neighborhood, alarmed by the increasingly frequent cases of cancer, especially leukemia, and birth defects, decided to meet at Sofia’s home. They began to record all of the known cases systematically, undertaking a door-to-door survey to compile their own statistics, which they recorded on a map drawn by a neighbor, the only man who attended the initial meeting. Most of the people out of the two hundred cases they noted lived in the area bordering the fields sprayed with agrochemicals. The map was used as evidence presented to the courts and the authorities. They drew attention to the suspected link between the herbicide sprayed and health problems, and tested blood samples of local children as well as water, air, and soil samples.
Finally, in 2001, the Mothers of Ituzaingó association came into being and, thus, sixteen mothers set off on a long and painful road to spread word and seek recognition and redress from the authorities. The struggle that began in the streets continued in the offices of the public health authorities, with mothers demanding an investigation into the cause of unexplained illnesses. However, it was only when the mothers took their story to the media that the authorities finally agreed to investigate. With the help of the NGO Environment Defense Foundation (FUNAM),11 three groups of contaminants to which the local population was being exposed were identified: arsenic, heavy metals, and pesticides. In combination with pesticides such as DDT and endosulfan, these contaminants acted as endocrine disruptors, with the continuous spraying of glyphosate and other toxic products on the fields surrounding the neighborhood completing the picture.
In 2006, analyses of thirty children revealed that twenty-three, including all three of Sofia’s children, had higher than permitted levels of agrochemical residues in their bodies. A subsequent study commissioned by the government found that in the areas of Ituzaingó with the greatest exposure to glyphosate, 33 percent of residents had died of cancer, compared to less than 17 percent of the whole population. Rates of respiratory diseases, neurological problems, and infant mortality were also far higher than average.12
The repercussions of the mothers’ struggle for recognition of their plight forced the national authorities to finance further tests. The presidency launched NRCA, which as mentioned above, concluded that the toxicity of glyphosate was low. Fortunately, other scientists such as Dr. Andrés Carrasco, a professor at the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine, who died recently, published results that demonstrated otherwise, that is, the damage caused by glyphosate in amphibian embryos. According to his study, published in the magazine Chemical Research in Toxicology in 2010, the herbicide was extremely toxic to amphibian embryos, even in doses much lower than those used in agricultural spraying.13 Dr. Carrasco supported the mothers in their struggle until his final days. Under pressure from the Mothers of Ituzaingó, who had mobilized themselves in defense of their rights to health care and environmental and sanitary safety, the province opened a public center, set up the Cancer Hospital of Córdoba, and in April 2010 created the Provincial Tumor Registry,14 perhaps the most terrible object of registration measured in the absence of precautionary principles. During 2002–2003, three municipal ordinances were passed including the “sanitary and environmental emergency,” which prohibited fumigation by hand within 500 meters of the neighborhood and aerial fumigation within 2,500 meters, creating a buffer zone around the community.15 But it did not stop fumigation altogether.
Ten years after the association had been born, in 2011, the Mothers’ painful and lonely journey started to show results. In February 2008, the health subsecretary of Córdoba City, Dr. Medardo Ávila Vázquez, denounced the use of aircraft to fumigate the Ituzaingó neighborhood. The aircraft owner and the two soy producers and businessmen on whose behalf the fumigation was carried out were booked as instigators of clandestine fumigation using highly dangerous products risking a helpless population. Several chambers rejected the conflictive cause until June 2011, when the 2008 lawsuit was finally brought to trial, “setting precedent for defending the right to health of vulnerable populations against the greed of soy businessmen who do not doubt in poisoning rural school, entire populations, original communities and, water wells in their race to increase the agrarian rent.”16 On September 4, 2012, the First Criminal Chamber of the city of Córdoba gave its ruling, sentencing the accused, an agrarian producer and a pesticide-spraying pilot, to a three-year conditional jail term for intentional environmental pollution, thus setting the precedent for future claims.
A few days after the Fumigation Trial had begun, on June 15, 2012, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner17, speaking from New York, praised Monsanto for its investment, that is, the construction of a plant, in Malvinas Argentinas, a county near the capital of Córdoba province. On August 21, 2012, the day after the trial ended, the minister of agriculture, Norberto Yauhar, also announced official approval for Monsanto’s “Intacta RR2 Pro,” a soybean variety developed in the United States for non-US territories that uses stacked genes to resist insects and herbicides, and suggested the need for a “necessary change in the Seed Law” (N° 20.247/73), giving more control from the state to collect its right to intellectual property as well as controls that would avoid circulation of “outlaw” seeds damaging profitability.18
In Argentina, Monsanto started its activities of conditioning hybrid maize seeds in Pergamino, in the province of Buenos Aires, during 1978. Until 2014, it had five plants: two processing seeds (María Eugenia Plant in Rojas and Pergamino Plant); one producing herbicides (Zárate Plant); and two experimental stations (Camet and Fontezuela). Its project currently under construction in Malvinas Argentinas, in the province of Córdoba, includes another GM seed producing factory, supposedly the largest in the world, and two new experimental stations, one in Río Cuarto (Córdoba province) and the other in the province of Tucumán.19
Interestingly, Monsanto executives have been exhibiting the plant in Rojas, in the province of Buenos Aires, including visits organized for Malvinas’s neighbors along with Monsanto-labeled gifts, in the belief that it adds credibility to the operation of their seed plants. This new plant would work on similar lines, processing the stacked genes variety “Intacta RR2 Pro” seed on a bigger scale. Environmental concerns regarding the transportation of the crop, around 216 grain elevators weighing 137 tons, and its agrochemical wastes, in addition to the subsequent processing of seeds that would be impregnated with highly toxic substances, forced the University Network for Environment and Health to publish a second report on the risks the population of Malvinas would be exposed to.
The environmental and health risks of the new plant to the population of Malvinas Argentinas were yet another challenge that Sofia and the Mothers of Ituzaingó began to deal with soon after the court trial ended. The announcement of the construction of this new plant triggered major protests throughout the province. Indeed, protesters, including mothers with their children, have been camping at the Monsanto construction site and maintaining roadblocks on all five entrances to the plant ever since. The campaign against the plant is led by Asamblea Malvinas Lucha por la Vida (Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life), a resistance movement against the construction of the plant, comprising people from the neighborhood of Malvinas as well as other neighborhoods and communities in Córdoba. The Mothers of Ituzaingó have been an integral part of these protests too. These protesters claim that neither Monsanto nor the government has the social license required for such construction; moreover, they have not conducted any credible study on the environmental impact on the province either. On July 24, 2013, the movement celebrated a year of struggle with demonstrations, claims, and artistic interventions as a form of exposing the nexus between provincial and municipal officials and the seed giant. Moreover, the demonstrators revealed that many local residents were not taking part out of fear of losing their municipal jobs as well as the social assistance they receive from the government. Such declarations rupture the claims of the industry and government about the creation of jobs and employment levels that these plants are set to achieve.
The following are testimonies of two mothers who are camping at the construction site:
Soledad Escobar has four children who attend a school located next to the lot where the plant is being built. She says: “I’m worried about the silos and the chemical products they use … because of the changes in the climate, it’s now windy year-round in Córdoba.”
Beba Figueroa, another mother, says: “What the TV and newspapers are saying, that there are political parties involved in this, isn’t true … most of us are mothers who are scared for our children.” Referring to the environmental impact caused by this construction, she mentions, “Strong north winds whip you in the face and legs because there are hardly any trees left in Córdoba.”
The plant was to begin operating in March 2014. But construction work was brought to a halt in October 2013 due to protests and legal action by local residents, who have been blocking the entrance to the site permanently since September 18, 2013. On the morning of Saturday, November 30, 2013, troops escorted several trucks out of the construction site.20 The trucks had forced their way past the roadblock on Thursday, November 28, 2013, when members of the construction union stormed into the camp set up by local residents, with the aim of breaking the blockade. More than twenty people were injured; the police suppressed the campers with batons, gas, and rubber bullets.
In the last few months, the police have cracked down on the protesters on several occasions. The demonstrators have received threats, too. When Soledad Barruti, a journalist and author of Malcomidos: How the Argentine Food Industry Is Killing Us, the best seller about the Argentine agro-food system, went to the Malvinas camp to express solidarity with the campers, she received an email from the head of government relations for Monsanto threatening her: “Soledad: I don’t mean to offend you, but I don’t think you are acting like a journalist, more like an activist. Take care.” In the email, he even said it was a shame that she had a picture taken with Sofia Gatica.21
Sofia was attacked and brutally beaten just seventy-two hours after receiving a death threat. She later recalled: “They didn’t speak. One jumped on top of me and they kicked and beat me. I screamed loudly and the neighbors came out to help me.” On another occasion, she was threatened with a firearm on public transportation: “We will scatter your brains over Malvinas.” They sometimes even threaten to harm family members by saying: “Your family members do not want to see you anymore in the camp or your children will suffer the consequences.”22
Nevertheless, on September 19, 2014, the protesters celebrated “2nd Spring without Monsanto: First Year of Resistance.” The fight against the seed giant has only grown stronger and reached Río Cuarto: “The mayor of Río Cuarto issued a decree ratifying the ban on a proposed Monsanto seed experimentation centre in the town, after the company also lodged an appeal asking the local government to re-consider the ban established in November 2013.”23
Further, the Malvinas Assembly now wants a public consultation using the secret ballot. Such a ballot would comply with the environmental law and “guarantee citizens’ full rights to decide on which model of local development and what kind of social and economic activities they want for their daily life, and what environmental risks they are prepared to take.” In particular, an environmental impact assessment should include a public consultation so that citizens can provide the “social license” necessary for developing any social, economic, and productive activity that may affect their environment and health.
In March 2013, a group of academics from CONICET revealed that 57 percent of the Malvinas Argentinas community rejected Monsanto. And if there is a referendum, 57.02 percent of the community would vote against the installation of the plant, according to the CONICET data published in September 2014 as a result of the “Survey of public opinion and citizen behavior of Malvinas Argentinas,” conducted at the request of the organization Avaaz. Besides, the report revealed that the survey participants consider health as the most important factor, then the environment, and, finally, employment or work.24 With regard to the actions against the establishment, in particular those of the Assembly Malvinas Struggle for Life, 73 percent supported the resistance movement, with only 21 percent rejecting it. Also, the shareholders of Monsanto and government officials were considered the sole beneficiaries of the plant, with the entire community of Malvinas viewed as the main loser.
About this epic struggle, Sofia Gatica says:
This was born from a loss and no one prepares you for that. We happened as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo … And we seek the same thing: that there is no impunity, that multinationals must not be allowed to commit genocide … What I learned is that we are fighting against injustice. And along the way I lost the fear and won the conviction that we will win. I do not know at what price, but we will win. Of that I’m sure.25
To conclude, I agree with the concept that Rita Arditti, the author of Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, develops in her work about the activism of the courageous women who came together to fight for the identity of their “missing” grandchildren.26 According to her, they did not seem to be
challenging the gender system and the sexual division of labor; the Mothers were committed to the preservation of life, and they demanded the right as “traditional” women to secure the survival of their families … creating a new form of political participation, outside the traditional role and based on the values of love and caring.… [They] transformed themselves from “traditional” women defined by their relationships with men (mothers, wives, daughters) into public protesters working on behalf of the whole society.
I see too in the struggles of the Mothers of Ituzaingó an expansion of the feminist movement to embrace the values of motherhood—the traditional role of a woman in the household as mother, nurturer, protector, and educator of the family and the children.
1. Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko, “Birth Defects, Cancer in Argentina Linked to Agrochemicals: AP Investigation,” Associated Press, October 20, 2013, www.ctvnews.ca/health/birth-defects-cancer-in-argentina-linked-to-agrochemicals-ap-investigation-1.1505096#ixzz3CyUOLBz2.
2. Lester R. Kurtz, “The Mothers of the Disappeared: Challenging the Junta in Argentina (1977–1983),” summary of events related to the use or impact of civil resistance, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, 2010.
3. Blog of the Mothers of Ituzaingó, http://madresdeituzaingoanexo.blogspot.com.ar/.
4. Blog of the court trial, Collective Stop Fumigating and Mothers B° Ituzaingó, www.juicioalafumigacion.com.ar/lacausa/.
5. Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Fishing and Food, Strategic Plan 2005–2015 for the Development of Agricultural and Livestock Biotechnology, 2004.
6. A. Broccoli, “ArGENtina: Transgenic Homeland,” B.O.G.S.A.T./The Responsibility, Bergen Assembly, an initiative for art and research, Bergen, Norway, 2013.
7. Interview of Minister Lino Barañao by Hebe de Bonafini, president of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, in “Pariendo Sueños,” La Voz de las Madres (“The Voice of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo”), Radio 530 AM, April 17, 2012, www.herbogeminis.com/IMG/pdf/lino-hebe_madres-2.pdf; http://tunein.com/radio/Pariendo-Sue%C3%B1os-p328134/.
8. “Evaluation of Scientific Information Related to Glyphosate in Its Impact on Human Health and the Environment,” July 2009, National Research Commission on Agrochemicals Decree 21/2009, Interdisciplinary Scientific Council, CONICET, www.msal.gov.ar/agroquimicos/pdf/INFORME-GLIFOSATO-2009-CONICET.pdf.
10. E. Ridner et al., “Alimentos Transgénicos: Mitos y Realidades” (GM Foods: Myths and Realities), Argentine Nutrition Foundation (FAN), Buenos Aires, 2007, www.sanutricion.org.ar/informacion-226-Alimentos+Transg%C3%A9nicos.+Mitos+y+realidades.html.
12. 1st National Meeting of Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, Córdoba, Argentina, August 2010.
13. Alejandra Paganelli, Victoria Gnazzo, Helena Acosta, Silvia L. López, and Andrés E. Carrasco, “Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling,” Chemical Research in Toxicology 23, no. 10 (2010): 1586–1595.
14. By Provincial Law N° 9769, dated April 7, 2010.
15. C. Carrizo and M. Berger, “Estado Incivil y Ciudadanos sin Estado: Paradojas del Ejercicio de Derechos en Cuestiones Ambientales” (“Uncivil State and Stateless Citizens: Paradox of the Exercise of Rights in Environmental Issues”), Instituto de Investigación y Formación en Administración Pública (IIFAP), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Proyecto Ciudadanía, 2012.
16. Blog of the court trial.
17. www.presidencia.gob.ar/discursos/25918-almuerzo-en-el-council-de-las-americas-palabras-de-la-presidenta-de-la-nacion.
18. Dario Aranda, “The Corporation,” https://darioaranda.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/la-corporacion/.
19. Raúl Montenegro, “Monsanto Invades Malvinas Argentinas,” text in memoriam of Cristina Fuentes, a Mother of Ituzaingó, www.ecoportal.net/Temas_Especiales/Transgenicos/Monsanto_invade_Malvinas_Argentinas.
21. “El Periodismo según Monsanto” (“Journalism according to Monsanto”), interview with Soledad Barruti, Revista Anfibia, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, March 20, 2014, www.argentinaindependent.com/tag/monsanto/.
22. “Protester Sofia Gatica Attacked,” November 23, 2013, http://revolution-news.com/monsanto-protester-sofia-gatica-attacked/.
23. “Monsanto Appeals Rejected,” Argentina Independent, March 26, 2014, www.argentinaindependent.com/tag/monsanto/.
24. “Malvinas Argentinas Does Not Want Monsanto as a Neighbor,” https://secure.avaaz.org/act/media.php?press_id=593.
25. “A Woman: Sofía Gatica,” Mu, Buenos Aires, 8, no. 79 (August 2014), www.lavaca.org/mu/mu-79-los-nuevos-consumadores/.
26. Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Mary Kirk, “Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (review),” Feminist Teacher 18, no. 2 (2008): 160–163.