wow moment in class

My fantastic professor for Métodos y Técnicas de Trabajo de Campo, la doctora Rosana Guber, did this fantastic application of the classic anthropological genealogy chart applied to Argentina. She put it in the context of the different groups that were created in around the idea of justice for the perpetrators of the violations of human rights during the last military dictatorship. She used three groups to represent three different generations: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo (who I believed celebrated their 33rd anniversary on this past Friday, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, who seek to find the children of their disappeared children, many of which were "adopted" by military families, and HIJOS, who seek justice for their parents, and many of which discovered their identities of children of the disappeared due to their own doubts surrounding their origins and sought out genetic testing to find out who their biological parents were).

Usually, if we start with the oldest generation, a grandmother would be the highest part of the matrilineal chart, followed by the mother, and then the child. But what happens when the children, HIJOS, are really the grandchildren of the grandmothers, and the mothers are of the same generation of the grandmothers, because both of these groups represent mothers of the disappeared. When there is a whole generational absence in the chart, these groups start to redefine a simple and classical chart. When one entire layer of the chart has been wiped out, these easily definable terms, children, grandmother, mother, signify something other than their simple and traditional meanings.

It was quite a moment, and provoked a silent and intense reaction, reflected in the faces of my classmates. "I wanted to apply this classical model to our own society," she stated so simply. I was in awe, and I felt something very deep inside move me. I felt a collective sorrow, but I also felt this alterity, because this is not my society, so I don't want my fellow students to see me react so strongly, because for them this is etched into their national identity as Argentines. And yet, after the time I have spent here, and the intrigue that such a devastating and fairly recent part of Argentine history provokes, it was hard not to feel so drawn in by such a brilliant application of model that is so taken for granted when studying classical forms of classification, usually found in the older and classical texts.