TheDaak review

Who Do You Think You Are? The Search for Argentina’s Lost Children by Andrew Graham-Yooll, Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2011, 104 pages, 18.5 x 11 x 1.5 cm,  ISBN: 9781906497774, 395 INR

by Shriya Malhotra

Rarely does a small book comprehensively encompass a heavy and layered account of history using multiple narrative forms, but Who Do You Think You Are manages exactly that. Grappling with past narratives and their present consequences, the book contextualises Argentina’s military dictatorship—and its use of targeted, tactical violence under General Videla—through a mix of official history, personal anecdotes and playwriting.

Between 1976 and 1983, 10,000-30,000 Argentines were kidnapped and killed, their whereabouts and fate often still unknown. These men and women had their lives and identities erased by the junta, while their children were seized and later raised by the same personnel. Those targeted were academics, activists, left-leaning thinkers and liberals who opposed the right-wing military regime. 

At the time of these ‘disappearances,’ Argentina was considered among the most advanced societies in South America. The author emphasises this point to demonstrate that systematic violence is usually, by design, perpetuated by the pursuit of power and appealing to historical justification. The repressions were considered unnecessary, and although never directly admitted to, Videla is noted for stating: ‘the disappeared do not exist, they are neither alive nor dead, they simply do not exist’ (p. 6).

A generation of voices and thinkers were thus silenced — annihilated by a single regime. Graham-Yooll highlights that ‘it is not surprising that military regimes that seized power in what became one of the most highly literate countries in Latin America burned books, destroyed universities and demolished cultural centres in the name of combating foreign ideologies and strange religions to erase a section of society as an identity’ (pp. 49-50). He notes: ‘it is still open to debate whether the military came to government in Buenos Aires to eliminate the children of their captives’ (p. 34).

Who Do You Think You Are contextualises ‘the disappeared’ as part of the many lives lost and forgotten in what the author calls the twentieth-century catalogue of horrors. The book delves into the numerous examples and forms of state-sanctioned genocide in the 21st century: the Armenian genocide, the holocaust, South African apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Russia, China, Rwanda and Eastern Europe. The devastating evidence of humanity’s cruelty in pursuing political power while destroying and disregarding people, history and identity is unavoidable. The author reminds us, with examples that span the beginning of the twentieth century, that organised mass slaughter of people of specific political, ethnic or religious groups is often planned by educated people using naturally devised strategies to annihilate ‘others’ (p. 13). The title of the book itself contains a much more difficult suggestion: how are we to face stories and truths about ourselves, and what happens when we consider that our identity might be different from the officially stated?

The book can be divided into two halves: non-fiction and fiction sections. The non-fiction section is further divided into five topical chapters. The first half of the book, if not more, sets out the historical context for how the experience of ‘the disappeared’ echoes the demands for people-led justice to this day. The second half of the book contrasts and punctuates this narrative with short plays— demonstrating how art can indirectly infer the past and evoke the seriousness and confusion of a violent, traumatic legacy. The interaction of fiction and non-fiction creates a valuable liminal space to consider what is known, what is reported and what is expressed. It also reflects the current reality of this historical topic: these children are still discovering their true identities around the world.

The book presents the reader with some fundamental broad questions about the social construction of public memory and the falsification of identity. Graham-Yooll explores Argentina’s Spanish colonial past, explaining how their colonial ideals and way of mythologising the past made way for the justification of future oppressions. The book then discusses official censorship and the memories of those whose identities were erased: the children of the desaparecidos or ‘the disappeared.’ The children adopted by their appropriators — the term given to describe the people who adopted the children of the disappeared— were often the same ones responsible for killing their parents. These children were sometimes raised as slaves and only discovered their identities later in their lives, if at all. This difficult subject is carefully treated through the craft of multiple narratives. 

The book is one example of how the right-wing military violently targeted the left in South America, in the context of the Cold War, continuing the frightening inhumanity and legacies of ‘othering’ people. It highlights the important fact that narratives are built around questions asked and the desire to uncover truths that are often difficult to tell or to face. Particularly striking is the author’s mention of the plight of the Roma in Europe, noting that, as a group, they continue to face societal injustices (p. 23). In a parallel to ‘the disappeared’, children or subsequent generations often bear the difficulties of past realities and narratives of exclusion rooted in racism or other differences. The important point is that “attention span in children is one of the cornerstones of education because it helps to build memory which is a necessary part of identity; yet society in the 1970s was intent on developing a conditioned personality, a different identity, by altering memory through censorship” (p. 41-42). 

Graham-Yooll’s book begins with “A Question of Identity”, and the simple facts surrounding the inhumanness of what was made possible by the right-wing military regime, the actions taken to silence ideological opposition and to continue a project of cleansing its subversive elements. The work in its entirety raises the issue of social constructions of the identity, of collective memory, and of the ways in which fiction and reality can engage through constructed narrative. One of the profound statements in the chapter suggests: ‘Sometimes, nostalgia takes the place of reality, and the longing for something remote becomes an exercise distorted by sentiment. Memory becomes shadowy, a cloudy reflection of the past. Recollection loses its power to hold real images, and certain aspects of identity are thrown into doubt’ (p. 3). He further notes that ‘the destruction of native cultures was never seen as a loss, only a necessary by-product of progress, a view that persists today’ (p. 15).

“Fabricating the Past”, considers the role of fiction to re-tell, reformulate and explore narratives about the past, referring to different types and roles of fictional history.  “Argentina: A Suitable Case for Treatment” summarises the political transformations leading up to enacting a disappearance policy. Videla’s military regime had sought to quell its opposition following his ascent to power via a coup. To avoid negative publicity, the government maintained a secret policy — using a para-official terror group— to stifle political dissent through what can only be described as a form of ‘ideological cleansing’.

As a result, a generation of left-leaning activists, liberals and thinkers were erased from the continent. And a generation of their children had their identities erased and replaced after they were adopted by military or terror personnel. The very people often responsible for getting rid of their parents later raised and adopted the offspring. The trauma of this twisted legacy is something yet to be addressed, with children of ‘the disappeared’ still being located worldwide. 

The book’s second half is structured around two awareness-raising plays (translated by the author), selected from the Theatre of Identity: A Propos of Doubt by Patricia Zangaro and In Labor by Marta Betoldi. Both use playwriting as a means of storytelling through theatrical dialogues, revealing the personal pain and confusion of not knowing one’s identity, and of the lasting connection between a mother and her child. The role of fiction is partially a necessity to cope: “Too much documentation has been lost… thousands will never know the whereabouts of the bones of their next of kin, friends and children. Argentina lost a considerable chunk of the story of a generation by the action of an archaic military establishment with its eyes on ‘ideological cleansing’ ” (p. 39). Yooll further notes that “it has been fiction that captured the public imagination” (p. 20).

Storytelling is a way of dealing with the discrepancies between sense-making and facts. The second half of the book presents two very moving theatrical dialogues, which offer different points of view and temporalities to the complex emotionality and experiences of the children of the disappeared. Using the negative space of suggestion and imagination rather than articulation shows how the power of arts  can fill in for the gaps in memory and communicate difficult truths steeped in trauma and emotionality.

Grave atrocities may seem commonplace in history, and perhaps outnumber the loss of life recounted in the case of Argentina. Yet, the examples in the book seek to prove a bigger point: that facts can explain heaviness and complexity much less than when we attempt to understand history, its omissions and oppression through art. Whether as poetry, or as theatre, stories can reveal meaning without a betrayal of truth: “Though the full story of the policies and the victims or the military may never be known, the experience may help to set patterns of awareness and responsibility for the widest possible audience” (p. 29). It may never be known, but it can be inferred. 

A Propos of Doubt offers a seemingly fictionalised dialogue between the Grandmothers of the Disappeared, the appropriators and the missing children who do not know their real identity. Using mise-en-scene and simple sentences, it repetitively poses a haunting question: Do you know who you are? “For as long as there is a single person with their identity stolen and forged, the identity of all is in doubt” (p. 59). The provocation and eeriness surrounding this question is a lasting one. The play, like the injustice of the disappearances, is a search for identity, justice and reconciliation that continues to this day. 

In Labour presents a dialogue of private exchanges between a mother and her future child, marking her hopes and dreams for it. It concludes with the physical pre-labour pains that likely mimic her emotional state as the open-ended question of what a child may look like, suggesting that the mother may be the child of a disappeared. The dialogue does not directly state anything; it only implies and leaves the reader to infer the parallels between the mother’s identity and her daughter’s anticipated birth. It also reflects the strong love and ties between a mother and her child.

Storytelling methods such as personal narratives, local memory campaigns, and art empower people to pursue justice. In the case of the grandmothers of the disappeared, their demonstrations reflect courage and resistance while calling for accountability for the human rights violations inflicted by the military dictatorship. The book appears to challenge the idea of a cohesive national history as being of a fixed and unified concept— one that is rejected by a rejection of state terrorism and its surrounding opaque narratives. It does so by offering more voices, versions and questions. 

What defines fiction and non-fiction? What is truth, and what is reality? The contrast in sections reveals that far too often, they are similar or tend to fill in for one another. The fictional half of the book is powerful, able to communicate aspects and emotionality of the time that the first part of the book could not directly articulate. Both plays bolster the facts raised in the book’s first half, supplementing people’s voices as they struggle with the past. These two parts of the book —fiction and non-fiction — speak to each other and the reader effectively, providing a glimpse into the traumatised psychologies of those affected and the murky terrain between knowing and not knowing.

Overall, Who Do You Think You Are shows that these difficult truths are often too traumatic to face. But, even more compelling is that it resonates deeply in an era where alternative facts challenge officially held national narratives. The author deftly combines history and art to balance official and creative narrative constructions while making space for questions about the forgotten. This helps to imagine spaces for alternative realities while showing us that, more often than not, history risks repeating itself. It raises questions about the legacies of violence, the forms of hidden violence that persist across generations as trauma, and how realities, histories and memories are constructed over time.

The official narratives extend from the past to the present through the lives of the children, stolen and appropriated in a form of trauma that cannot be fathomed. It is an example of what happens when systems and power become self-serving and obscuring—at all costs. These are the stories that cannot afford to be forgotten. They are not easily simplified, categorised or explained as black and white. And they are told, retold and revised because the questions surrounding the official narratives are often too disturbing for people to deal with. Memory, memorialising and forgetting are aspects of official history. Many societies are struggling with their consequential reality. Many of these are interconnected stories, but the main point about alternative and expressive narratives is this: they defy being censored, and they articulate alternative spaces for emotions to ensure that the atrocities people are capable of will never be forgotten or repeated. Nunca más: Never again.