While Argentina experienced seven separate coups between 1930 and the reestablishment of democracy in 1983, it is the country's "Dirty War" that is perhaps the most infamous.
This period, which spanned 1976-1983, was one of brutal repression, with those deemed "subversive" systematically disappeared, tortured and murdered by the nation's military government. Before reading Haley Cohen Gilliland's gripping, true narrative, A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, I hadn't realized that among the missing were hundreds of women who were pregnant or were kidnapped alongside their infants.
Gilliland's first book (of many, we should hope) tells the remarkable story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo ("Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo"), a group of courageous grandmothers who spent decades searching for their stolen grandchildren. Their name refers to the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, where the grandmothers held weekly marches outside the presidential palace, demanding justice and answers. Some of their grandchildren were illegally adopted by members of the very regime that had disappeared their parents.
The central figure Gilliland follows is Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit, whose pregnant daughter, Patricia, became one of the desaparecidos — the disappeared — in 1978. Patricia and her partner, Jose, had once been active in the Montoneros, a leftist Peronist group. But by the time of her kidnapping, much of the group had been killed or forced into exile. With a young daughter and a child on the way, they ended their involvement. This, however, made no difference to Gen. Jorge Videla, who had assumed power during the 1976 coup.
Videla's junta targeted "not only militants but those on the further peripheries of the left. Students. Artists. Journalists. Union leaders. Lawyers who defended unions. Musicians. Poets. Priests who ministered to the poor. Nuns who helped desperate families looking for their missing relatives. In the eyes of the dictatorship, they were all 'subversives,'" Gilliland writes. After the junta collapsed, then-newly elected President Raúl Alfonsín established the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. The commission's report documented 8,960 disappearances, though it warned the number could be higher as the military had destroyed all relevant records. A classified memo from Operation Condor — a transnational alliance of Latin American military regimes intent on eliminating "leftists, communists, and Marxists" — estimated that by 1978, 22,000 Argentinians had been disappeared. More recent estimates suggest that the actual count approached 30,000. As for the stolen children, the official count is 392, though the Abuelas believe the figure could be as high as 500.
Though Rosa Roisinblit's story provides a throughline, Gilliland weaves in the real-life experiences of many other grandmothers, powerfully capturing both their heartbreak and their unyielding determination. These women marched, appealed to religious leaders, wrote letters to journalists and diplomats — efforts that put them at enormous risk. The Abuelas were infiltrated at one point, and three of their leaders were kidnapped and murdered — thrown from a plane, just as so many of their disappeared daughters had been after being kept alive only long enough to give birth, Gilliland writes.
Still, the Abuelas pushed on, developing ingenious strategies to continue their search. They passed information at fake birthday parties at cafes (where large groups attracted less suspicion), posed as mourners at cemeteries to gather intelligence, pretended to be "saleswomen promoting a new baby product," and went for "pedicures to extract information from salon owners who had also polished the toenails of suspected kidnappers." In one case, a grandmother arranged to be committed to a psychiatric hospital to gather intel.
If Gilliland had solely focused on the true stories of the Abuelas, her book would still be a noteworthy achievement. But she goes further, guiding the reader through Argentina's complex political history — and illuminating the many ways the United States was complicit in Argentina and beyond, as, she writes, when "Kissinger backed the assassination of a prominent Chilean general in hopes of facilitating a military takeover of socialist president Salvador Allende."
Despite the brutality Videla's junta inflicted upon its own citizens, A Flower Traveled in My Blood is not without hope. Their quest led the Abuelas to Mary-Claire King, the geneticist who discovered the inheritability of breast cancer and who later helped the women apply DNA in their searches. In fact, "King herself posits that she and the Abuelas were among the pioneers of genetic genealogy," Gilliland writes. Their efforts ultimately result in dozens of grandchildren being located.
It's unfortunate, but understandable, that some of these reunions created a new set of complications. In certain cases, children had been adopted by loving families who believed the children had been abandoned. Others did not want to provide DNA to confirm their lineage.
Nonetheless, it's hard to see the Abuelas and their accomplishments as anything but inspiring. Grandmothers came together across social divides to fight for their families, sometimes discovering reserves of strength they didn't know they had. The Abuelas remain united in their struggle to this day and Gillibrand does a masterful job conveying their extraordinary story. As the author notes, "The Plaza de Mayo seemed to take individual grief and transform it into collective determination." If that's not an impressive testament to resistance and solidarity, I don't know what is.
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