Author chronicles “lost” grandchildren

Speaking at the Women’s History Month keynote lunch Wednesday, March 2, author and biologist Rita Arditti will recount the long fight of a group of women who challenged the “dirty war” conducted by the dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

Arditti, author of Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, traces the plight of the generation whose adult children had been imprisoned, tortured, and killed under detention, and the efforts of women to locate their missing grandchildren. Acting as detectives and human-rights advocates, they helped identify and recover 57 of an estimated 500 such children born in detention centers and given away to live with other families. Their work also led to the creation of Argentina’s National Genetic Data Bank.

During her research, the author interviewed dozens of Argentinean women, many of whom not only lost sons and daughters branded as political subversives, but came to learn that their grandchildren had been secretly given to families deemed “patriotic” and “worthy” by the government. Against the political backdrop, the book uses family testimony to tell this story of courage and tenaciousness.

An RSVP to wcenter@studaff.caltech.edu is required to attend the event, to be held noon to 1 p.m. at the Athenaeum.

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