[pleasant music] ♪ ♪ - It's not easy  to do what we do.
It can be a danger  to your wellbeing, a danger to your life.
- Every skeleton that we find adds more knowledge  of a system of repression.
- These are not simply bones.
These are people.
Th ey had a life.
- Y la posibilidad  de poder recuperarlos, saber dónde están,  saber cómo murieron, es un pedido que lo vemos  en los casi 50 países donde hemos trabajado.
- There's absolutely  a lack of accountability.
In some cases,  there is cover-up.
It's very hard to know  who to trust.
- Nosotros también  tenemos que poner nuestro grano de arena para que esto salga a la luz.
- "El Equipo," now only on Independent Lens.
[dramatic music] - [vocalizing] ♪ ♪ [soft dramatic  tango music playing] ♪ ♪ [soft dramatic music] ♪ ♪ - Every skeleton that we find, every skull  wi th a bullet hole in it adds a little more  to  our knowledge of how this system  of repression and mass murder operated.
♪ ♪ - When I started as a consulting  fo rensic anthropologist, I was doing maybe  40 or 50 cases a year.
The majority turned out  to  be homicides.
The first big case I had  was John Wayne Gacy, who had murdered 28 young men and buried them  un der his house.
Around 1984, as I recall, I get a call  to go to Argentina for a few weeks.
Down there, the military had  been getting rid of people.
And thousands of families wanted to know the fate  of their disappeared.
They wanted to see  if I could organize a team for exhuming the remains.
And that's how I came to know a really remarkable group  of  young people.
♪ ♪ - I did most of university  under the military government.
And, um, it was an awful time.
From one moment on, we all have to carry IDs  al ways with us.
Immediately, it was clear we could not talk about  a lot of things in public.
It was a very strong  imposition on every moment of your life.
♪ ♪ - En la Argentina  se  vivía en paz.
Pero en el mundo se expande el cáncer  de la violencia ideológica.
Los grupo subversivos quieren destruir  y amedrentar.
Muertos.
Heridos.
Sangre!
Las Fuerzas Armadas se ven en la obligación  de asumir el poder.
[tense music] - The army seized power  in Argentina, vowing to put the terrorists  ou t of business and promising  to restore order.
- People charged  as  leftist sympathizers were rounded up  by the secret police and were never  heard from again.
The victims came to be known  simply as "the disappeared."
♪ ♪ - It was very scary.
You could feel it everywhere.
It was the feeling that there  was nothing you could do.
There was no--no way  of defending yourself.
- In many cases, they say, the authorities haul people  off in the middle of the night with no explanation--  in nocent people, with no connection  to terrorist groups.
Officially,  the Argentine government says it has no information  on all the missing people.
- Los argentinos  no tenemos nada que ocultar.
Eso ocurrió en defensa  de  los derechos humanos del pueblo argentino, gravemente amenazados por una agresión  del terrorismo subversivo que pretendía cambiar  nu estro sistema de vida.
- He's a very intelligent, very dedicated man who is doing what is best for his country.
- Thank you very much.
all: Con vida los llevaron!
Con vida los queremos!
- Nosotros solamente queremos saber dónde están nuestros hijos, vivos o muertos.
- Mi hija estaba embarazada de cinco meses cuando se la llevaron.
Mi nieto tiene que haber nacido en agosto del año pasado.
Hasta ahora no he podido saber nada de él.
- ¿Cuántas son ustedes?
- Miles.
- Miles.
Miles de mujeres.
Miles.
Miles.
- Miles.
Miles en todo el país.
Miles.
- Cuando iba a empezar  la facultad fue el golpe militar y, bueno, las facultades estuvieron cerradas  durante dos o tres meses.
Y después,  al  entrar a la facultad, se armaban filas enormes donde la policía  revisaba tu mochila y todo eso,  y todos los días lo mismo.
- I met Patricia  at the university.
We were both studying  anthropology there, though she was more into  th e archaeology.
- Yo tenía nueve años  cu ando falleció mi papá y 12 cuando falleció  mi  mamá, entonces mi hermana y yo  vi víamos solas.
- The apartment that Patricia  and Claudia shared together-- they had this gigantic view  on the big avenue that's in Buenos Aires.
And we spent hours and hours  studying and studying there.
For me, it was great to go  to a place where, you know, there would be no parents,  you know?
[laughs] Everything was pretty dark  in those days, so it was a nice place to go  and to be together.
- En un momento  aparece Luis, y le decíamos "bebé" porque era el más chico  del grupo.
- Yo tenía 19 años, había recién ingresado  a la facultad y mi práctica desde el  principio fue con arqueología.
Yo hubiera preferido  se guir jugando al fútbol en esos años, pero bueno, la vida me llevó por el otro camino.
Con Patricia  habíamos trabajado en cuestiones de  ar queología tradicional en el sur del país.
- Patricia met him  and they start dating.
And Luis was very funny.
We were very different,  I think, the three of us, but I don't know, we trust each other very much,  I  think.
♪ ♪ I didn't participate in any political party  or anything like that, but my mother was  a journalist at the time.
And because she had  a daily radio show, she received a visit of what then became the group  of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers.
And they were showing her  all this information of the children  that were missing.
And she was--  she just couldn't believe it.
She started talking on  the radio about these things, and so, um, at one point,  she was constantly receiving death threats, and the family also.
So we, several times,  thought about leaving the country  during those years.
- About 1976,  I found myself in Argentina.
It was the 24th of March when the military coup  took place.
I happened to be on  the streets with my brother.
We were both  arrested and detained just for one night.
But what we saw that night is  something I'll never forget-- so other young men our age who had been tortured  and beaten up.
My brother and I were expelled  fr om Argentina, but I always wondered  what happened to those other young men  th at were held with us.
[ominous music] ♪ ♪ It was later established  th at there were over 400 secret detention centers  around the country in which suspects would  be  tortured and killed.
- At the naval  me chanic school, pregnant mothers were  im prisoned and tortured until they gave birth.
Their babies were given to  childless military families.
The mothers disappeared.
♪ ♪ - In the early 1980s,  of course, Argentina was engaged  with the Falklands War with Britain, and they lost.
- And tonight, there are signs that the last casualty  of the Falklands War could be  the Argentine military junta.
There were 10,000  in the square, many chanting for an end  to the military government.
- Argentina's  military authorities weakened and humiliated  by the loss to the British have been forced  to promise elections.
[crowd chanting] - El presidente  de la República Argentina se dirigirá  al pueblo argentino en esta jornada memorable donde la democracia  ha vuelto a la vida de la nación.
- On the one hand, it was  this enormous, hopeful moment.
But at the same time,  it was very unclear how far the democratic  go vernment was gonna go in terms of accountability.
- Vamos a ser el país que nos merecemos!
[cheers and applause] - Raúl Alfonsín campaigned under the banner  of  human rights, and when he came into  th e presidency, he established a commission  on the disappeared, and by that time, I was hired by the American Association  for the Advancement of Science to find information about  sc ientists who had been detained or disappeared  around the world.
So I received a letter from  the head of the commission asking if I would bring  a forensic team to Argentina to help advise  on  how to exhume and possibly identify  th e disappeared.
So I picked up the phone  an d I called Clyde Snow.
[dramatic music] - As one of the world's foremost  forensic anthropologists, Dr. Clyde Snow is often  called upon to investigate skeletal remains  in  murder cases.
Recently, he went to Brazil to help identify the skeleton  of Josef Mengele, the Nazi concentration camp  do ctor.
- Ooh.
♪ ♪ Well, well, well.
- There had been  so me occasional stories in "Time" magazine about people disappearing  in Argentina.
But I wasn't aware of the  scope of the problem.
Looking at the statistics...
When I got down there, by that time, I think we had  around 10,000 people who'd been reported  as  disappeared.
Thousands of families  wa nted to know the fate of their "desaparecidos."
Many of the disappeared  ha d been buried in municipal graveyards  in unmarked graves.
- With the new  civilian government, well-meaning judges working with families  of the disappeared had started  to order exhumations of these unmarked graves.
- This was a disaster.
They literally went out  wi th bulldozers and destroyed evidence.
- Gravediggers were just  pulling the remains out of the graves  an d then stacking them, and here are the families  st anding around.
And there was no order.
There was nothing  professional.
There was nothing scientific  being done about this.
- After they dug up maybe  400 or 500 of these skeletons, families became concerned because nobody  wa s getting identified.
- Even at that very early time  within the euphoria of new democracy  and human rights, there was already  so me official resistance to digging too deep  into the past.
But there was  a group of remarkable relatives of the missing who were the grandmothers  of Plaza de Mayo, and they had actually  been absolutely instrumental in ensuring that Clyde Snow  and Eric Stover's delegation visited Argentina.
- Buenas tardes, señor.
- Buenas tardes.
Dos paquetes de Parisiennes Fuertes.
[tense music] - I'd agreed to stay down to see if I could  or ganize a team for exhuming the remains.
But I couldn't find anybody  who was trained enough and willing.
It was considered dangerous  because at that time, there were rumors that the military would come  back in power almost any day.
When that happened, people who would be  working in this area would be on the next round  of disappearances.
A lot of the forensic doctors had actually been involved  in covering up the disappearances.
So we didn't want  those people.
Unfortunately,  after about a month, I was just unable  to recruit a team.
[crowd chanting] - The clock was ticking, Clyde was meant to leave, and this was not looking good in terms  of its implementation.
So I offered Clyde to call out on some students of anthropology  an d archaeology that could help.
His initial reaction was,  "No way."
But he soon realized that  that was the only option.
- So apparently, word had gotten  to  the student grapevine that this old "gringo"  needed some help.
- We were at a demonstration with a lot of friends  from the university.
- Durante la demostración se acercó alguien y dijo que había un americano,  un gringo, en un hotel que buscaba ayuda  pa ra hacer exhumaciones de personas desaparecidas.
- And we just thought he was,  yo u know, drunk, period, you know, and nobody paid  much attention, and then-- but he insisted, "He is in this hotel  and he's inviting students."
- I came back to my hotel and there was a little group, kind of ragtag students there  wa iting for me.
- Cuando entré al hotel,  encontré un yanqui.
Un típico realmente tejano con el sombrero  y las botas tejanas, fumando habano,  pipa, cigarrillo... - I told them, I said,  "Look, let's go out and have a steak  and talk this over."
- Snow nos propone  ayudarlo a realizar la primera exhumación, que era en un cementerio de la Zona Norte  del Gran Buenos Aires.
Nunca habíamos exhumado  un  cuerpo humano y eso nos daba un poco  de miedo.
- Ninguno de nosotros  ha bía hecho exhumaciones en un cementerio.
Entonces para nosotros era  todo un mundo completamente nuevo.
- I was kind of touched  by their willingness, but really, I was trying  to discourage them.
You know, I pointed out that  this work could be dangerous, be dirty, and depressing.
They said,  "Well, we'll talk it over, and we'll come back tomorrow  and let you know."
- None of us was jumping  with happiness to start doing this because if we started  to  work on this and a new military coup  was coming into the country, then we will be on the list of  people that could disappear.
- Porque el yanqui,  viene la mala y se va. Quedamos nosotros.
Carne de cañón, digamos.
- But at the same time, if we were consistent  with what we believe, we couldn't say no.
- Nosotros también  tenemos que poner nuestro grano de arena para que esto salga  a la luz.
- And sure enough,  they talked it over, it sounded like  a pretty good deal, and when could  th ey go to work?
[soft dramatic music] ♪ ♪ We went out to this graveyard  ve ry early that morning.
It was very cold.
Initially, we actually had  kitchen utensils.
Luis had swiped  a  window screen from his mother's house, and that was  all the screen we had.
- That first morning,  we  have no idea how we were going to react  to doing this work.
- Like in any medical  legal exhumation, you have to have  po lice present.
Well, that kind of  freaked the kids out because the police,  they had functioned as the fourth arm  of the repression, along with  the military services.
- Sí pensamos que  er a un poco inquietante el ambiente,  con mucha policía... Todo era muy reciente.
- Las agresiones  eran verbales.
La policía que decía: "Si nosotros hubiésemos hecho  bi en el trabajo, ustedes no estarían acá".
O sea, cosas así indirectas que,  en  ese momento, estando en un cementerio  en  un día gris lluvioso con la tensión del trabajo  que íbamos a realizar, escuchar eso  no  te ayudaba para nada.
- During exhumation, the victims' family  had come out, but police had set up  this cordon and were telling them  to stand outside.
- The family asked us  if they could get closer.
And so I talked to Clyde  and I said, "Listen, they've been waiting  fo r this moment "for a very, very long time.
So we think  they should be included."
- And they said  th ey weren't gonna work if the family  had to remain outside.
- They have been  denied information.
The state has lied to them.
We thought we could not  continue on that lie.
- So I talked to the judge  and we agreed that they could stay.
Along about 10:00 or 11:00, we were beginning to expose  the bones of this young woman.
- Habíamos trabajado  en yacimientos arqueológicos.
Era buena en huesos  de lobo marino y guanacos.
Esta circunstancia  er a totalmente distinta.
Cuando yo me encontré  con la ropa, era como diciendo:  "¿Y ahora qué hago?".
- We exposed the skull, and you could see  a  gunshot wound.
This was  their first confrontation With the desaparecido.
It was a kind of  a  crisis moment, particularly  Patricia Bernardi.
She was crying.
Meanwhile,  Morris, the medical student, was down there with a teaspoon doing the fine work  around the skull... and after about five minutes, Patricia came up and she said, "I need the spoon.
I'm making coffee."
And that's when I knew  I had a team.
[determined music] ♪ ♪ - We clearly saw when we  started exhuming these people were probably our age when  they--when they were killed.
But at least myself,  when I was doing the work, I was not thinking about that.
I found a passion  on doing this work that took me completely  by surprise.
- Creo que éramos  muy jóvenes pero teníamos una pasión que era difícil de frenarnos.
- Human bones are revealing  the secrets of Argentina's holocaust.
One by one, the desaparecidos, the disappeared,  ar e identified.
- The people  who dig up the bones with such care and precision are all  yo ung graduate students who only a few years ago might themselves have been  among the disappeared.
- Cada día que íbamos  al campo con Clyde era como una clase práctica de un montón de cosas.
- We didn't have any time  for didactic lectures.
We had to go out and work, and they were very receptive.
- Nunca lo vi  co mo un profesor de esos que está nada más  pa ra dar clase.
Clyde se tiraba con nosotros  al  piso.
Si había que comer  dentro de la fosa comía dentro de la fosa.
O sea, lo que hacíamos todos,  él lo hacía.
- Siempre fumaba, tomaba, le gustaba la buena vida... - Y siempre  su s sombreros terminaban en la mano de alguien y generalmente de aquellos  que le hacían el Martini bien seco.
[soft music] ♪ ♪ - Estas son épocas pre-ADN, que hoy parece increíble  pero así era.
Entonces teníamos  muchas limitaciones para hacer identificaciones.
No se podía hacer huellas,  obviamente, porque era esqueleto y entonces teníamos que contar  en  datos odontológicos, fracturas antiguas  y cosas por el estilo.
- Clyde was instructing them  on how to reconstruct a skull, how to determine  it was a close or, long-range gunshot wound, how to determine  th e age, gender.
They were being trained  in all of these techniques in forensic anthropology.
And at that time,  the team was actually receiving calls  at  their office threatening them with death.
And they had a joke  in which they'd say, "We're really sorry.
We only take death threats  after 4:00 p.m.," and hang up.
- They were doing  da ngerous work.
Clyde called one time  and he said he was changing hotels.
And he said, "I've been  getting threatening calls," and they discovered that  they're coming from inside the hotel.
But he had  a layer of protection because of his  pr ess attention.
He realized those kids were going through  that kind of danger without backup, so they weren't gonna be  noticed if they disappeared.
♪ ♪ - One day, we were approached by a mother by the name  of "Coqui" Pereyra.
Her daughter,  Li liana Pereyra, had been a law student  in La Plata.
She and her boyfriend were  living in a pensión, and one day, a naval death squad arrived and the two of them  we re taken away.
At the time, she was about  six months pregnant.
Her mother, Coqui,  had spent quite a bit of time researching where she could  possibly be buried and found a site.
[somber music] So Clyde and the young  students went to the site and carried out  th e exhumation.
♪ ♪ Once Clyde Snow had made  a positive identification that this was, in fact,  Li liana Pereyra, he also was able,  by looking at the pelvis, to determine that she had  had a term, or near-term birth.
- She was one of several  hundred young women who were pregnant  when they were kidnapped.
And when the death squads found out that  a young woman was pregnant, they would keep her alive long  enough to deliver the baby.
Then the baby was taken and farmed out to  military or police families, or sometimes just sold  on the black market.
Then they would kill  the mother.
♪ ♪ - Coqui, the mother,  wanted to come and see the remains.
And this was the first time that the Argentine students had to lay a skeleton out and to show it  to a family member.
♪ ♪ Coqui Pereyra comes in with her other daughter and they stood there  and Clyde describes how she was identified.
And that, in fact, he believed that she had  had a baby.
After everyone left, the daughter came back  and asked me if she could go back in the  room to look at the skeleton one last time.
And I noticed she reached down  and picked up a bone and took it with her  to  remember her sister.
♪ ♪ - Sometimes, in the lab, they'd see something  they had-- for example, a child-- and they were having some difficulty with that.
But if you start letting  your emotions influence your findings, then you lose credibility  as an expert.
[projector clicks] On the other hand, if you just begin thinking  of these bones as objects, you lose something because you always have  to  bear in mind that these were people whose lives, or at least  th e ends of their lives, you're trying to tell  the story of.
♪ ♪ And I finally told them,  I said, "Look, if you have to cry,  cry at night."
And that, I think, became  a kind of a mantra with them.
And I think there were  a lot of tears shed in Buenos Aires at night during that period.
These murders were planned and executed by a bunch of rational men sitting around  conference tables in their fancy uniforms  an d $500 suits.
There were planned and executed very cold-bloodedly, and to me, that is a very frightening-- those are the kind of people I'm afraid of.
all: Asesinos!
Asesinos!
- During seven years  of military rule, as many as 30,000 Argentines  disappeared.
Civilian president  Raúl Alfonsín has charged nine senior  military officers including  th ree former presidents, with kidnapping, torture,  and murder.
Repressive military regimes  ha ve ruled this country for more than half a century.
For most of the people here,  what is happening now was previously unthinkable.
- Yo estuve detenido un año y medio en el campo de La Perla.
Todos los detenidos eran torturados.
- Me atan, me ponen un trapo húmedo en el pecho y me empiezan a pasar corriente eléctrica.
- En ese momento, no me dejaron dormir ni de día ni de noche.
Constantemente me decían que me iban a matar.
- Nos encontramos en presencia de otro terrorismo: el del Estado, que reproduce en sí mismo los males que dice combatir.
- The junta trials  were amazing.
All this evidence  wa s coming out publicly for the first time in years.
And there was no way  anybody could ignore what was going on.
-  Pero no me siento culpable.
Sencillamente porque no soy culpable.
- Se llama al estrado al Dr. Clyde Collins Snow.
- When the junta trial  ca me up, we can't talk about  12,000 desaparecidos, but one can sometimes  st and for many.
The bones of the skull  as  we found them were very fragmented form.
Along with the fragments, we also found pellets from a shotgun consistent with the police and army security weapon in Argentina.
- When Clyde had to testify, there was absolute silence.
We were all so proud.
- Putting all this information together, we were able to identify the individual as Liliana Carmen Pereyra.
- He end up with a photo  of Liliana Pereyra, and for us,  that was one of those moments that stayed forever  in  the sense of, never forget that these  are not simply bones.
These are people.
They have a face.
They had a life.
Don't lose that connection.
-   Quiero utilizar una frase que no me pertenece, porque pertenece ya a todo el pueblo argentino.
Señores jueces, nunca más!
- Silencio en la sala!
Silencio.
[cheers and applause] Personal policial, desaloje la sala!
- Asesino!
Culpables!
- A través de  la reconstrucción de la vida de una persona, contribuimos en esta tarea  colectiva que es: más verdad, más justicia, más reparación y más memoria  para que nunca más suceda lo que sucedió acá.
- Fue una experiencia  tan fuera de lo común, tan fuerte y al mismo tiempo  tan extraña, que no había una idea de cuánto tiempo íbamos  a hacerlo.
Y fue así como aceptamos.
Diciendo: "Bueno, vamos  a  hacerlo por un tiempo y una vez que terminen  los juicios, pues cada uno volverá  a  la academia".
Pero nunca pensamos  qu e se armara el equipo profesionalmente.
- Después que se va Snow, seguimos con nuestras vidas, hasta que Snow regresa,  creo que a los cinco, seis meses y nos convoca nuevamente.
En esos años,  ya  teníamos la confianza de los familiares,  no s pedían más casos... Práctica a mí se me hace... - El tema de tomar  el  colectivo a la mañana para ir al cementerio  de Avellaneda a excavar... ...eran cosas que, en  la sociedad de ese momento, aparecían como muy extrañas.
Era como una especie  de  secta y generaba rápidamente un espíritu de grupo  muy fuerte.
- Los dos primeros años  fueron voluntarios.
Clyde siguió viniendo mucho.
Y no parábamos de trabajar, o sea, la cantidad de trabajo  era enorme.
A mí me parecía  que era importantísimo que nosotros empezáramos a tener una documentación,  aparte de la fotográfica, en video.
Entonces, ahí fue donde  empecé a documentar en video.
- Ah.
- Ahí... ¿Justo en frente de mi cámara?
¿Esto es los fragmentos de rótula y todo eso?
- Sí.
- A ver.
- [indistinct].
- Tíralo por ahí.
[determined music] - El equipo,  a  lo largo de los años, fue creciendo  en número de personas y se incorpora gente nueva.
Era muy gratificante  trabajar en conjunto con otros amigos y colegas.
Junto con la información que obraba en el expediente, nos permiten asegurar en un ciento por ciento de... [laughs] De certeza... [laughter] - Danos más.
- Que me come!
Que me come!
Nos dimos cuenta de que  estábamos funcionando como un equipo y que nos gustaba  lo que estábamos haciendo y que teníamos que empezar  a pensar en formalizar esto de alguna manera para poder  tener una oficina, para poder tener fondos, para ser vistos  en forma más consolidada... Entonces, en el '87,  le dimos forma legal a lo que ya teníamos  desde hacía tres años, formando una asociación civil  sin fines de lucro y eso fue, digamos,  el paraguas legal, a pesar de que ya  veníamos trabajando sin eso.
[soft music] - You know, by this time,  they were the experts.
They had had  th e only real experience of anyone in the world, and it touched off  a revolution.
- Después nos empieza él a llevar a misiones  in ternacionales.
- In Chile,  Pinochet was still there.
But Clyde wanted to see if we could form  a Chilean team there.
Clyde had that vision that it could be reproduced  in another country because it was extremely  useful and necessary, and he was right.
- After Clyde started  the Argentine team, a lot of international work  st arted.
So they were everywhere.
You know, in Latin America, the Argentines are seen  as stuck-up.
But Mimi, Luis, they were rock stars to me.
I was born in Guatemala and had to leave in 1980 because of some death threats  to my father.
So I grew up in New York and I didn't wanna know  an ything about Guatemala till I got to college.
When I was in college, I started going  to forensic academy meetings, and in one of those, the first talk was  Dr .
Clyde Snow.
The first picture he showed, it was a slide of Guatemala and a team of young people  digging in the grave, and it was as if  I was struck by lightning right there and then.
I was like, "This is it."
And immediately,  when he was done, I just, you know,  rushed him and I said, "How can I get involved?
Wh at can I do?"
And he invited me down  to a course, a training course.
♪ ♪ Clyde came to Guatemala  in  1990, brought the Argentines  and the Chileans with him, and then it was about 1992, created the Guatemala Forensic  Anthropology Team.
- Pretty good.
Nice to have you.
- Yeah.
Great.
- Clyde was  a larger-than-life character.
He became sort of  a  mentor of life for me.
It wasn't just about  the anthropology.
The conflict in Guatemala  was fueled by race, and there was an old saying that witnesses would hear  from the military: "Indio visto, indio muerto."
Indian seen, Indian dead.
So I think Clyde made a point to include those families.
Argentina marked him so deep,  it made him who he became.
And then I think Guatemala  ju st gave him a place to put that into practice.
- [laughs] [both laugh] - [laughs] - En las primeras,  indudable, que Clyde era, o sea, nuestro  referente, acompañándonos.
Y después ya Clyde dijo-- ya dejó de llamarnos  "los chicos" y éramos los pares.
- At the end of that time, I was learning from them, which was all right,  but it meant that I had taught them  everything I knew, and that's when  I kinda told them, "I've gotta kick you  out of the nest now."
- Habíamos ya empezado  a trabajar en muchos lugares distintos.
Y, de hecho, en el 92  en particular, hicimos esa  primera exhumación sobre la masacre de El Mozote  en  El Salvador.
Para nosotros,  de sde Argentina, Centroamérica era una zona sobre la que conocíamos  muy poco, la verdad.
Cuando llega el pedido, quienes podíamos ir éramos  Pa tricia Bernardi y yo.
Los hombres del equipo  dijeron que Centroamérica era un lugar muy peligroso  y que les parecía que tenían que ir hombres.
Y nosotros, con Patricia, que no estábamos  muy convencidas si ir o no, nos dio tanta bronca  ese comentario que dijimos:  "De ninguna manera.
Vamos nosotras".
Entonces fuimos Pato y yo,  muertas de miedo.
[tense music] ♪ ♪ Cuando llegamos  a El Salvador, había habido un grupo  de sobrevivientes de El Mozote  y habían puesto una denuncia en un juzgado local.
Entonces, lo que ellos  pedían eran exhumaciones.
[indistinct chatter] De Centroamérica,  lo único que sabíamos es que habían sido un horror.
Eran conflictos mucho más  parecidos a una guerra abierta de lo que había sido  la nuestra.
[gunfire and explosions] [crowd screaming]  - The people of El Salvador are caught in a web of terror, trapped between  the military forces and the guerilla forces  of the FMLN.
No one is safe  in this civil war.
- And I can tell you tonight democracy is beginning  to take root in El Salvador.
[applause] - This is the height  of  the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan  had come into office determined to draw the line  against "Soviet expansionism," as he called it.
He wanted to greatly increase  aid to the Salvadoran military and it made what would have  be en a civil war probably in any event  much, much worse.
- The Reagan administration  in  Washington is backing the government drive with  arms, money, and advisors.
- The spearhead  of  the operation is the new Atlácatl brigade, a quick response unit trained  by the American Green Berets.
- The Atlácatl Battalion  was an elite battalion in the Salvadoran army.
And they were ferocious.
They were notorious  for killing civilians.
- [sobbing] No!
No!
¿Por qué lo hicieron?
- Toda la población  de El Mozote-- mujeres, hombres,  ancianos y niños-- fueron masacrados fríamente  por las tropas... - What did the Reagan  administration know about what some are calling  the worst massacre in Central American history?
[somber music] - Los niños solo lloraban  y gritaban a las madres  que estaban matando.
A mí me mataron los cuatro  niños y el marido.
Del caserío de El Mozote  no salió ninguna persona.
Solamente mí.
Porque ahí a todas las  mataron con toda la familia.
♪ ♪ - Within six weeks,  it  was on the front page of "The New York Times"  and "The Washington Post."
What happened  as a consequence?
It was denied by  th e American government.
- Assistant Secretary of State  Thomas Enders told Congress  and the American people... - There is no evidence at all to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operation zone.
- The Reagan administration  essentially succeeded in their denials.
And aid was increased  for the Salvadoran government.
But in '92, a peace plan was put forward, and as part  of the end of the war, the government,  albeit very, very reluctantly, agreed to investigate some of the major war crimes  that had happened.
♪ ♪ - Donde fue la masacre masivamente fue aquí.
- Solo la pared quedó al frente.
Por lo menos señálalo.
- Estos son humanos, se nota.
- Ajá.
- Es un fragmento de tibia.
- Ajá.
- Abarcaron siete sitios diferentes.
Entonces, en cada uno de esos lugares es que hay masacre.
- ¿Y hay gente que conoce los sitios donde fueron enterrados?
- Sí, son los sobrevivientes.
- Sí.
[wind whooshing] ♪ ♪ - ¿Cuántas personas, aproximadamente, fueron asesinadas?
- Pues, aquí dicen que... Pues, según las historias de la gente, aquí murieron como 40, pero aquí están unos pocos, allá unos quemados.
Dicen que posiblemente hay una sepulturita por ahí.
La casa fue incendiada con toda la gente adentro... niños... Y se quemaron.
- Una de las cosas  que yo me acuerdo es cuando tomábamos  testimonio.
Vos veías que estabas  tres o cuatro horas tomando testimonio  a la misma persona que había perdido  20 familiares, o sea, era una cuestión así  en que decías: "Guau, pero entonces esto  abarcó muchísimo, esta masacre".
- Estas familias  no tenían la duda, como en Argentina, de dónde  es taban sus familiares.
Sus familiares, para ellos,  no eran desaparecidos.
Ellos mismos  los habían enterrado.
Lo que querían era  que hubiera una constatación legal, oficial,  de  lo que había pasado.
Que realmente  ha habido una masacre, frente a la versión  del gobierno, donde decía que había habido  un enfrentamiento en esa zona.
♪ ♪ [chattering] ♪ ♪ - A 50 centímetros de altura del suelo, se observa un proyectil de arma de fuego que ha quedado incrustado sobre la pared.
Un vestido verde.
Esta es la parte trasera.
Acá están los huesos del pie dentro de la chinela.
- Había mucha  propaganda de fiscales y demás diciendo declaraciones  en  los diarios, que esto había sido  un enfrentamiento, que solamente íbamos  a encontrar combatientes, que la gente  iba a estar con uniforme... Cuando empieza la exhumación  de los restos y empieza a aparecer  un  niño detrás del otro, empieza a haber  como una especie de silencio.
- Cuando empezábamos  a ver las batitas, los escarpines, era una cosa  que te iba asfixiando porque decías:  "No puede ser que esto haya sido  tan atroz.
O sea, la mayoría son niños".
Está todavía sin numerar.
Encontramos una pelvis y dentro de la pelvis, huesos diminutos.
Y corresponderían a un niño recién nacido; recién, recién nacido, o a un feto.
El--parte del tórax, el 68... Por debajo, aparece... - Mimi was bent over separating these tiny bundles  that had once been children.
And she eventually came across  the little toy in the pocket of one of these  children's pants, and swore.
And it was the first sign  of emotion I saw from her.
- When you go to  a place like that where so much horror  had occurred and it's pretty much abandoned  and a mess...
There is something  kind of comforting when you start organizing it and cleaning it.
Somehow, it's as if you're  restoring some order just from the start.
It's as if  you're bringing them back to be with all of us.
[classical music playing] ♪ ♪ Por un lado, era un caso  técnicamente muy complejo.
Los restos estaban  dentro de una casa que había sufrido fuego y había sufrido  una explosión.
O sea que también  había multifragmentación, una enorme cantidad también  de  evidencia balística, pero además, en este caso, nos tocó, sin saberlo,  ex humar el sitio donde estaban  más de 130 niños.
Trabajar restos de niños  es bastante complejo.
- Tenerlo a Clyde  en el laboratorio con otros dos científicos  no rteamericanos fue sumamente importante porque nosotros  no teníamos realmente una experiencia  tan grande en niños y en lesiones  con ese tipo de proyectiles.
- All right.
[sighs] What you have here, is a child.
I'd say it's probably around five years old, plus or minus 16 months.
- En ese caso,  nosotros lo llamamos a Clyde para trabajar.
Nos parecía muy importante que científicos  no rteamericanos en quienes  nosotros confiáramos dieran su opinión.
Justamente por lo que había  significado Estados Unidos en el conflicto  co n El Salvador.
This was just one.
Nos parecía que si  solamente nosotros dábamos nuestra opinión, lamentablemente no iba  a  tenerse tan en cuenta como si había  ta mbién un grupo de forenses norteamericanos.
[helicopter whirring] - There's no longer much doubt about what happened  at El Mozote.
- Both the  Salvadoran government and the Reagan administration  said no massacre took place.
Now it seems clear  th at was wrong.
- Relatives are demanding that  the soldiers be prosecuted and that El Salvador  finally admit that a massacre occurred.
[soldiers shouting] - No duró mucho.
Siguiente que salía  el informe, la asamblea en El Salvador  vota una amnistía.
No solamente que perdonaban  de una manera abierta a todos los que hubieran  podido estar involucrados en violaciones  a los derechos humanos sin que hubiera investigación, sino que además prohibían  la  continuación de una investigación.
- Consideramos el informe injusto, incompleto, ilegal, antiético, parcial y atrevido.
- Según ustedes, una situación de impunidad ¿ayuda en algo para olvidar el pasado?
- Es una disyuntiva falsa, muchas veces, pensar en justicia versus paz.
Y también creo que tampoco es correcto cuando la gente dice: "No hagamos exhumaciones", o "No investiguemos, porque esto abre viejas heridas".
Las heridas, en nuestra experiencia, están abiertas.
Cuando cosas tan graves suceden en un país, las heridas están abiertas durante varias generaciones.
No hay que tener miedo a la verdad, digamos.
La verdad no puede, este... El ocultamiento de la verdad no puede ser el modo de reconstruir una situación.
all: Ahora, ahora, resulta indispensable, aparición con vida y castigo a los culpables.
Ahora, ahora...!
- Esto igualmente pasó  en Argentina.
- The government plans  to impose a deadline for prosecutions against  hu man rights atrocities during military rule.
The protestors say  it'll allow notorious human rights offenders  to evade justice.
- La Ley de Punto Final, la amnistía, ya las madres las veníamos denunciando hace mucho tiempo.
- Hubo un cambio  fundamental en el trabajo de Argentina cuando se pasan las dos leyes  de impunidad, en donde se acaban  gran parte de los juicios.
Se permite seguir  haciendo el trabajo forense con fines de recuperar  evidencia y de identificar restos, pero nadie es penalizado o sentenciado por esos casos.
En ese momento también  nos hicimos un planteamiento de decir: "Bueno,  ¿qué hacemos?
", porque... una de las columnas  fundamentales de la institución era aportar  pruebas a la justicia para que la gente  fu era condenada.
Entonces dijimos:  "Bueno, ¿qué hacemos?
"¿Seguimos trabajando?
¿Tiene sentido  que sigamos trabajando?".
Y los familiares nos dijeron:  "A bsolutamente.
"Para que podamos encontrar  los restos "de nuestros familiares,  pero también, "más todavía, "para que haya  una documentación histórica de lo que sucedió".
Entonces el equipo  trabajó durante muchos años sin que tuviera  un a consecuencia en términos de culpables.
One of the major thing,  I  think, that we all face-- not only the forensic teams working on human rights, but in general, the human rights field, is the issue of accountability.
In human rights in general, there are very few cases in which their perpetrators are brought to trial.
- Entonces,  te quedás sin respuestas, porque la gente  qu e cometió estos hechos sigue viviendo entre nosotros.
Y eso pasa en todo el mundo  y eso se llama impunidad.
Y es la mejor garantía  para que las cosas vuelvan a suceder,  la mentablemente.
[solemn music] ♪ ♪ - Nadie tenía  del equipo la idea de que esto iba a ser  un equipo y que íbamos a ser  reconocidos mundialmente.
De los 22 a los 35  el tiempo se pasó volando, porque era una cosa  tras otra... "Bueno, me voy a El Salvador", "Bueno, me voy al Congo".
Y vos decías:  "Guau, qué movida!".
♪ ♪ - Y así,  poco a poco, a través de que se corría  la  voz, nos fueron llamando.
Nosotros ya habíamos crecido,  ya éramos un equipo propio, con mucho desarrollo... - Queremos verte.
- Nunca hicimos  lobby ni ofrecimos trabajo, la gente nos llama y así se fue dando siempre.
♪ ♪ Los casos tienen  diferentes patrones.
Tiene que ver con el contexto  de cada país.
Formas de eliminar  a otro ser humano, hay miles de formas  en  todo el mundo y hemos visto de todo.
Lo que sí es muy similar  es lo que les pasa a los familiares.
Más allá de su ideología, religión, idioma o país, para ellos, tener  un  familiar desaparecido y no saber qué pasó con él  es una angustia constante.
Incertidumbre, dolor.
Y la posibilidad  de poder recuperarlos, saber dónde están,  saber cómo murieron, es un pedido que lo vemos  en los casi 50 países donde hemos trabajado.
[all singing solemn tune] ♪ ♪ Y también es constante  que nunca hemos escuchado a familiares hablar  de reconciliación con los perpetradores  que cometieron estas cosas.
Pero sí hablan de reparación,  de justicia y de memoria.
♪ ♪ [solemn music] ♪ ♪ - He did get a call about doing some bodies in Iraq.
They called him about  working those mass graves.
But he said "Naw."
He said, "That's a young man's game," which I thought was kind of interesting because... Perhaps he realized that he didn't have the strength  to do it.
I remember that his clothes hung on him.
Instead of him wearing his clothes, his clothes were wearing him.
[birds chirping] We had to rush him to the  hospital three different times and the third time,  I realized there was no way he was coming home.
- Jerry told me that he very much wanted to-- to talk with all of us.
So I flew to Oklahoma.
Um...
I wanted to see him.
[sighs] - Cuando veo que en  el teléfono me estaba llamando Mimi, dije: "Mm, algo malo pasa".
Y ahí Mimi me notificó de que Clyde había muerto.
- Fue muy doloroso, pero al mismo tiempo fue-- bueno, tuvo una vida  maravillosa, hizo lo que quiso y... es el ejemplo que seguimos y eso es lo que se extraña de él.
- Clyde wished to have  hi s ashes spread in three different places.
One was sector 134 of the Avellaneda cemetery in the outskirts  of  Buenos Aires.
Then in one specific place  in Guatemala where he also worked with  Fr edy and Fredy's team.
And another was in Koreme  in Iraqi Kurdistan, where we also worked with him.
- After dedicating his life to search for the desaparecidos, he was comfortable being buried among them.
It just reaffirmed  ev erything he taught us and the things  we had to continue doing.
♪ ♪ - Este trabajo tiene un costo personal  mu y alto donde uno pone mucho.
En mi caso,  yo  trato de preservarme, pero también pongo mucho.
Y son cosas que hemos descuidado bastante en el equipo durante muchos años, ¿no?
Cuando ya habíamos  crecido mucho, teníamos 60 o 70 personas, varias oficinas, de a poco me fui dando cuenta que me gustaba más la cuestión  de preparar las misiones, de hacer la coordinación  general... Mimi se comenzó a dedicar  a México, a Centroamérica y México fue otra dimensión.
[somber music] ♪ ♪ - Nosotros empezamos  a trabajar en México en el 2004.
Y el trabajo fuerte, donde estábamos  mucho tiempo, era el trabajo de feminicidios  en Chihuahua.
[distant sirens wailing] - Up until then, we work in environments  where the worst had happened, and now we are working on investigating  what had happened.
Not in the case of Mexico.
Kidnappings and disappearances  were ongoing as we were working.
When we started working on  the cases of Ciudad Juárez, of the feminicide cases,  several of the people that we were working with  were killed.
The director of the medical  legal institute was killed.
Several of the criminalistic  people were killed.
Some of the investigators  were killed.
And so at one point,  we crossed the border and decided to live  in El Paso, but come every day  to  work to Ciudad Juárez because the city was just  getting too violent.
- Si bien el trabajo  era similar a lo que hacíamos  en Argentina, yo vi grandes diferencias.
Comenzaban a caer muchísimos casos, muchos de los cuales no eran de restos óseos, sino que eran cuerpos en estado avanzado de descomposición o de cadáveres.
Una realidad distinta,  en verdad.
En la Argentina, las personas  habían desaparecido hacía 35, 40 años.
Pero acá, un año.
Ocho meses.
La buena noticia no es:  "La identificamos", pues los familiares decían: "La buena noticia  es está viva".
Yo en un momento le dije  a Mimi que, realmente, sentía que esta diferencia me causaba a mí como... no saber manejar tanto  a los familiares.
Estaba moviéndome en arenas donde no me sentía muy segura y que me estaba afectando.
Entonces como que ahí  me  fui retirando y después continuó el equipo  con Mimi a la cabeza.
[tense music] - Aguanta la respiración.
-  No recojas... los casquillos.
- ¿Por qué los recogen, hijos de su [....] madre?
Sabes lo que hiciste, maldito perro!
- Tensions are running high  in southern Mexico where police are suspected  of  participating in the disappearances  of dozens of students.
-  Y le pedimos al gobierno que nos los regrese, que nos apoye con eso en busca de nuestros hijos.
Los queremos vivos.
Que nos los regresen.
- I was really hoping  th ey were alive.
The next Saturday, the director of the  Centro Prodh of Human Rights called me and said, "Would you guys  work on the case?"
But I said to him, "Well, we don't intervene  unless we're completely sure that the families  will agree with this."
So he said,  "Well, let's do a meeting "at the school of Ayotzinapa and discuss it  with the families."
[percussive martial music  pl aying] ♪ ♪ When we arrived at the school, they took us into  this very big room where there were, like,  300 students or more and the parents  of  the 43 kids.
And they asked me, "How do we know that  we can trust you?
"How do we know that  you're not gonna sell yourself to the other side?"
This thing of mistrust-- I only saw it before,  I remember, in Ciudad Juárez too.
In general,  when we go to work, there's like a base  al ready set up of trust.
But I think that has to do  a lot with Mexico.
You know, it's not something  I took personal against us.
There's absolutely  a lack of accountability-- total impunity-- and, you know, in some cases,  there's cover-up, and it's very hard to know  who to trust, so I understood it  kind of within that context.
So they took some time  to discuss among them, and they said, "Well, we want  you to work on the case."
crowd: Justicia!
- Vivos se los llevaron!
all: Vivos los queremos!
- Those days where there was  an enormous pressure on finding the students, there were demonstrations  all over the country, people burning  government buildings in different states.
[loud boom] - La situación  en  México era peligrosa.
Hasta el punto de decirle  a Mimi: "Mira, es muy peligroso seguir allá".
Y tratábamos de no generarle problemas a Mimi llamándola cuando no era el momento adecuado o no era la vía  de comunicación adecuada.
Porque había claras pruebas de intervención de teléfonos, ataques a dirigentes  de derechos humanos por parte del Estado... Pero Mimi  es una máquina de trabajar.
Y seguro habrá tenido miedo,  seguro habrá tenido dudas, pero estaban los familiares  queriendo respuestas.
[tense music] ♪ ♪ - Aquí se sospecha  qu e se podrían encontrar algunos indicios  sobre el paradero de las 43 personas  desaparecidas que provenían de Ayotzinapa.
Peritos de la PGR  e investigadores argentinos intentan ubicar  re stos de seres humanos.
Trabajan en una barranca a más de 30 metros  de  profundidad.
- We arrived there without,  frankly, knowing anything.
The attorney general,  Murillo Karam, was there.
And he said, "Well,  we have received information "that in this  garbage-dumping place, "there are human remains, and this may be the remains  of the students."
At the dump, we found remains that clearly do not correspond  to  the students.
So we don't know if the  students are here or not, but definitely,  there are other people here.
We realized  it was a complex site and it was clear that we  needed different disciplines to work there.
So I particularly thought  about how much I missed Clyde when we got  to the garbage dump.
Because Clyde was really  the one who taught us to think in a very wide way.
I would've loved to discuss,  you know, what disciplines  an d what else can we do and is there something else  we're not considering?
What other conclusion, Dr.
Snow?
- What's that?
- What other conclusions do you have?
- I have a conclusion... [clears throat] That it's time for me to go... - [laughs] - To go home.
- I think you're being very diplomatic on your sentence, Dr.
Snow.
- [laughs] [soft music] I-I miss him quite a bit.
♪ ♪ [soft dramatic music] ♪ ♪ In the Ayotzinapa case, we found all these  irregularities on the investigation, and that evidence  co uld have been planted.
The attorney general's office  said they have found remains in a plastic bag.
But we were not present  when they found the evidence.
I don't recall any other time  in  my professional life in which I was in a situation  like this.
- En ese lugar privaron de la vida a los sobrevivientes y posteriormente los arrojaron a la parte baja del basurero, donde quemaron los cuerpos.
Hicieron guardias y relevos para asegurar que el fuego durase horas.
El fuego, según declaraciones, duró desde la medianoche hasta aproximadamente las 14:00 horas del día siguiente según uno de los detenidos... - The attorney general  laid out and explained their version of events, even though that  was not consistent with what we were finding.
- Es la verdad histórica de los hechos, basada en las pruebas aportadas por la ciencia, como se muestra en el expediente.
- They asked us to be at  that first press conference, and we declined.
And they put  a  lot of pressure on us that we needed to understand that these were  po litical times, not technical times, and that we needed  to act accordingly.
I said, "I'm very sorry,  but we are a technical team, so we're not going with this."
[crickets chirping] - De alguna manera,  co ntra más te enfrentás con una mentira  de parte del Estado, más querés vencer esa mentira.
En mi caso, con Mimi,  muchas veces era escucharla.
Que me contara problemas,  cosas, lo que le pasaba  co n el trabajo.
Era que tuviera  un oído de confianza en alguien en quien confiaba  y pudiera descargarse.
- Of course, I never thought we will have to... you know, come out with conclusions that were going to put us in direct, um, opposition with the attorney general of Mexico, the president of Mexico, and every official, you know, in their government.
But if we don't say something, this is gonna be accepted  as the truth.
El examen multidisciplinario de la evidencia biológica y no biológica no respalda la hipótesis de que hubo un fuego de la magnitud requerida que habría arrojado como resultado la incineración en masa de los 43 estudiantes desaparecidos.
It's very unpleasant  when you see the reaction on the other side.
They really were very upset.
- Ya veré mañana  yo artículos de prensa o críticas fuertes  a su trabajo diciendo que ustedes  lo que están haciendo es vivir del presupuesto  de  este tipo de trabajos o bien que tienen alguna línea  con tal de desestabilizar la versión oficial que ha dado el Gobierno de México.
- Yo creo que ahí... Hace unos meses, el Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas visitó a México y dijo algo que me pareció muy importante.
"Hay que terminar de castigar al mensajero y concentrarse en el mensaje".
Aquí tenemos que concentrarnos en la evidencia.
Creo que es lo mejor que podemos hacer.
♪ ♪ Esta denuncia pública  que hoy hacemos no es fácil.
Pero está dedicada  a todos los defensores de derechos humanos, a todos los familiares  de  desaparecidos y, en mi caso, especialmente,  a todos los forenses.
Que nunca más un forense sea criminalizado por  estar haciendo su trabajo.
Muchas gracias.
[applause] - It's not easy to do what we do.
It can be a danger  to your well-being, a danger to your life.
Clyde...
I remember he apologized  to  Mimi and myself once for getting us involved in  this "mess," he called it.
"You're here stuck with me, you know, in these holes doing this."
And... And he's like,  "You know, you've done enough.
You can just walk away  whenever you want."
But I never could.
He never did.
And so the work continues.
♪ ♪ - Something that always  keep you going are the families.
It's very strong  ev ery time we see them.
You go back to,  "W hy are you doing this?
You know, why..." All this has a meaning.
They're going through so much.
And we wanna be sure that  we completely support them.
- Una familia que puede, de alguna manera,  tener un poco de paz y rehacer su vida...
Ya por eso justifica  el trabajo.
Y por eso seguimos haciendo  esto que hacemos, ¿no?
- We share these very,  very strong bond with them that marks their lives... and our lives as well.
♪ ♪ [soft dramatic music] ♪ ♪ - Meet grandmother  Estela de Carlotto, who led the search for Argentina's  stolen grandchildren in the Retro Report short, "Grandmothers  of the Plaza de Mayo."
- A three-man military junta has taken over the government of Argentina.
- The coup began  in the early morning hours of March 24, 1976.
- The action was swift  and efficient, and the new ruling junta  co mposed of coup leaders seemed in firm control.
- It wasn't long before  the military dictatorship started rounding up  gu erilla groups and those believed  to be left-wing subversives.
Housewife and school principal Estela de Carlotto  wa s 47 years old back in November of 1977 when her 22-year-old daughter,  Laura, disappeared.
- Fue la primera  de  mis cuatro... - She was the first  of my four children.
Laura was a very  re spectful girl, but with a strong personality.
- Fuerte de personalidad.
- She became  politically active because she wanted change.
- Carlotto says she was  frantic to find out what had happened  to  her daughter.
- En ese momento... - At that time, I was the same  as the other mothers-- very naive.
- Nosotros no sabíamos... - We didn't know  that the military were coming to kill people.
We were expecting  the return of our children.
- But it was not to be.
Carlotto would never hear from  her daughter Laura again.
In August of 1978, she was killed by her captors.
Although devastated, Estela de Carlotto was one  of the more fortunate ones.
She was given  her daughter's body to bury.
It was two years later  th at she learned something she had suspected-- Laura had been pregnant and given birth to a son  be fore she was murdered.
- Yo enterré a Laura.
- I buried Laura.
I knew where Laura was.
- Pero...  -  But...
I didn't know where  my  grandson was.
- Not long after,  she joined the grandmothers, or Abuelas  of the Plaza de Mayo.
- Sola era... - Being on my own  was dangerous.
I couldn't share my sorrow.
So to find the grandmothers was to find company-- to exchange ideas and  to look after one another.
[martial music playing] - The dictatorship lasted  seven years.
During that time, as many as 30,000 people  we re tortured and killed at detention camps  all over the country.
Many of the victims were  buried in mass graves.
After the regime fell, the grandmothers were  desperate to not only find out what had happened  to their children, but to also recover  their grandchildren who had been stolen at birth.
- In the beginning,  we were searching, but we didn't have  a way to prove which were our grandchildren.
- So they turned to science, and in 1987, they began storing  their profiles in a newly-created  national genetic bank.
By May of 2014, Estela de Carlotto  and the Grandmothers had found or identified  113 missing grandchildren.
And at the age of 83,  her determination seems stronger than ever.
- I will never  stop doing what I do because there is, inside, a very powerful strength  that is love-- love for our children  and grandchildren.
- Empecé a tener conocimiento de... - I first heard  of the grandmothers and of Estela de Carlotto when I graduated  from secondary school and went to study  in  a music conservatory.
- Ignacio Hurban was born  in  June of 1978 at the height  of the dictatorship.
His parents were farmers  near the city of Olavarria, some 220 miles  from Buenos Aires.
On his 36th birthday in 2014, Ignacio found out that  he had been adopted.
- Fue un shock, sí.
- It was a shock, yes.
The parents who raised me  di dn't tell me.
When I asked them,  they confirmed what I had been told.
- Not long after  his discovery, Ignacio went  to the Grandmothers, who arranged for a blood test.
In August of 2014, just days after  ta king the test, Ignacio got the results from  the head of the commission.
- She told me  wh ose grandchild I was, and that my grandmother was  waiting for me, very excited.
We met immediately  the next day.
- Dentro de su carácter... - Given his good nature  and nice character, he said, in jest, of course, "If I'm a grandson  of the grandmothers, I hope Estela  is my grandmother."
He seemed to have sensed it.
- But it also meant  so mething else.
Her grandson's  ad optive parents would face  a legal investigation.
- Bueno, esas personas que... - The people who raised  my grandson committed a crime.
- Es un delito grave.
- It's a serious crime--  a crime against humanity.
- Tenían un atenuantes... - There are extenuating  circumstances in that they were farm people under a very  domineering master, who one day brought them  a child and told them, "Do not ask questions, and never tell him  he  is not your own son."
I personally  do not blame them, or exonerate them.
- Ignacio Hurban is now  Ignacio Montoya Carlotto.
Although he has changed  his name, he says his bond with the parents who raised him  remains strong and he is proud to be the 114th grandchild  identified.
- Cuando encontré a mi... - When I met my grandson, I could hug him.
He doesn't look like  his mother, but I knew that in his blood  was my daughter Laura, and it was like  I  got her back.
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