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Tatianna Griffin
Dr. James W. Jordan
ANTH 205-50
Forensic Anthropology in Argentina
22 April 2016
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Forensic anthropologists are social scientists who apply the study of biological
anthropology and human osteology to the legal scene. The job of a forensic
anthropologist is to discern human remains from non-human remains and to examine
human remains to analyze the bones for signs of disease, trauma, water damage,
decomposition, and many other things. Then they use that knowledge to help legal
officers identify victims and unidentifiable skeletons. This subfield of anthropology is
relatively new in the anthropological world. As forensic anthropology rose, it can be
categorized into four different periods. First was the formative period that lasted from the
early 1800s to 1938. Then there was the consolidation period that lasted from 1939 to
1971. Finally, there was the modern period that lasted from 1972 until the present.
The origin, and during the formative period, of this subfield comes from the
murder of Dr. George Parkman by Harvard Professor John Webster in 1849. Webster
owed Parkman money and murdered him in order to avoid paying back his debt. Thomas
Dwight is considered to be the father of forensic anthropology in the United States. This
is because “he was one of the first Americans to discuss identifying remains using
information obtained from the human skeleton” (Tersigni-Tarrant and Shirley, 3). Dwight
wrote an essay in 1878 called “The Identification of the Human Skeleton. A MedicoLegal Study” which was submitted to the Massachusetts Medical Society (TersigniTarrant and Shirley, 3). There are many anatomists, physical and biological
anthropologists, as well as many other scientists made efforts to form the subfield known
today as forensic anthropology. Their research and contributions have paved the way for
the start of a thriving field.
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The Consolidation period started in 1939 and ended in 1971. The beginning of the
consolidation period and the end of the formative period was marked by the submission
and publication of “Wilton Marion Krogman’s Guide to the Identification of the Human
Skeletal Material in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Law Enforcement
Bulletin” (Tersigni-Tarrant and Shirley, 5). The submission was basically a summary of
all the discoveries and information involving the identification of skeletal remains. A lot
of other noted scientists have published articles and books that have contributed to the
rise of this field such as Thomas McKern and T. Dale Stewart in 1954 with Skeletal Age
Changes in Young American Males. During this time, technology was also becoming
more advanced. The computer was invented in the early 1960s, so this allowed for
anthropologists to use the technology at hand to use statistical techniques and other
technological crutches that help them to identify certain characteristics of skeletal
remains.
After the consolidation period, the modern period rose in 1972. Many different
things happened during this time that contributed greatly to the world of forensic
anthropology. The American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA) was created in
1977. It was formed in order to set standards for and to give certifications to forensic
anthropologists. Dr. William Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, created the
Body Farm in 1980 at the University of Tenn. at Knoxville. He did this to research
human decomposition and certain effects on human skeletal remains. Then later on,
another world-renowned forensic anthropologist, Dr. Clyde C. Snow, worked in
Argentina training forensic anthropologists to help work with human rights cases and
genocide cases. For example, the first team was the Argentine Forensic Anthropology
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Team (EEAF) that worked on the genocide case of the “Desaparecidos,” or the
disappeared, during Argentina’s Dirty War and military dictatorship.
President Juan Peron was President of Argentina during the 1950s and was
overthrown by a military coup. The coup’s main goal was to restore the traditional and
original Argentine oligarchic government. Ex-president Person was then exiled. There
was an attempt at guerilla warfare and a struggle for power within the government;
however, Peron returned from being exiled in 1973 and regained power. Once he died in
1974, Isabel Peron, his wife as well as his Vice President, took control of the country.
She was not as strong as her husband politically or militarily, so eventually a military
junta led a coup against her government and expelled her from her office. This group
remained in power for many years and had a steady hold on control by implementing fear
into the hearts of Argentine citizens. The leader of this new regime was General Jorge
Rafael Videla. He and his regime launched a war against the overthrowing of his regime.
This became known as the “Dirty War.” It was an effort to get rid of left-wing disruption
and sabotage to the regime. The war lasted from 1976 to 1983, and during these seven
years the government created secret detention centers where subversives, opponents, and
sometimes even innocent people were taken where they were kept, tortured, and
eventually murdered and buried in mass, unmarked graves. The people they brutally
murdered became known as “los desaparecidos,” or “the disappeared.”
Once the Dirty War ended, the search for over 30,000 victims began. Victims
were torn out of their homes and ripped off of the streets in the middle of the night never
to be seen again. Forensic anthropologist, Dr. Clyde C. Snow, acted as a consultant for
the EEAF as they searched and identified bodies of the desaparecidos. Not everyone was
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found, but it was here that Snow did most of his human-rights work. “When we initially
started out work twenty-one years ago, we needed to distance ourselves from legalmedical systems and other governmental institutions that had reportedly committed
crimes and/or had lost credibility during lengthy periods of human rights violations”
(Burns, 289). Snow and the EEAF worked hard and have found many mass graves as
well as secret government detention centers, but they have positively identified only
approximately 30 victims. Snow worked hard to give these people and their surviving
families justice. “Forensic evidence from Snow’s team may be used to prosecute several
other military officers, including General Suarez Mason” (Huyghe). This shows that the
evidence Snow and his team find that identify the discovered skeletal remains as victims
killed by the government during the Argentine military dictatorship can be linked to
certain government and military officers that murdered these people in cold blood.
There are certain characteristics that Snow looked for in victims that he would be
able to use in identifying the victims. Once the team had an idea of whether or not the
human skeletal remains could possibly be a victim, they usually begin investigating “with
a determination of the basic features: sex, age, race, stature, skeletal pathology, and
notation of idiosyncrasies that could aid in final identification (such as healed fractures,
prosthetic devices, and so on” (Appendix B, 500). When determining the sex of a victim,
the team looked at the sexual dimorphism between the skeletal remains. Sexual
dimorphism is the “difference in morphology between the sexes” (Appendix B, 500). The
most reliable difference between the male and female skeletons is the bones, shapes, and
angles that make up the pelvic girdle. For example, a male would have an acute subpubic
angle while a female would have an obtuse subpubic angle. Sacrums are smaller and
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more curved in males, while they are larger and straighter in females. The pubic shape in
males is more triangular while females are more rectangular. The cranium is another
important area to determine sex. The mastoid process, right behind the ear, is more
pronounced in males and less pronounced in females. The rim in the eye orbit is rounded
in males, but sharp in females. There are also other bones in the body that can also
determine sex but are not as reliable as the skull or pelvic area. For determining age, the
team used methods involving dental eruption and bone growth. “The determination of the
ages at which the deciduous and permanent dentition erupts is useful in identifying age to
approximately 15 years. The third molar (wisdom tooth) erupts after this time, but is so
variable in age of eruption” (Appendix B, 502). Looking at when certain teeth have
erupted, or if teeth are still in their shafts, can help forensic anthropologists to determine
the age of an individual. Dr. Snow, assisting the EEAF, helped to extract the secrets of
the desaparecidos as they were exhumed from their mass graves in Argentina. Dr. Snow
did so much to provide for EEAF and the investigation in Argentina such as “supervising
excavations, trained the team, and testified as an expert witness in the Argentine court of
law” (Burns, 289).
The investigations in Argentina were obstructed by the lack of ante mortem
information. According to Patrick Huyghe’s article, No Bone Unturned, “In 1984, when
commission lawyers took depositions from relatives and friends of the disappeared, they
often failed to obtain such basic information as the victim’s height, weight, and hair
color. Nor did they ask for the missing person’s X-rays (which in Argentina are given to
the patient) or the address of the victim’s dentist” (Huyghe). There could be many
reasons why this information was not recorded, but it is mostly because those who
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exhumed, excavated, and identified these mass graves were inexperienced and
incompetent to be doing such things. A lot of the skeletal remains were dug up with a
bulldozer, which destroyed them. In Huyghe’s article, he gives an account of a story told
by Snow in which Snow recalls the case of a seventeen year-old victim named Gabriel
Dunayavich. He disappeared the summer of 1976 when he and his girlfriend were
walking home from a movie and a car with no license plate pulled up beside him and
snatched them off the street. Later, legal officers found his body along with the body of
another female and another male discarded on the roadside outside of Buenos Aires.
Apparently, the police followed through with an investigation, took photographs, etc.,
and then buried the remains in an unmarked grave because they were unidentifiable.
Dunayavich’s family reached out to Snow ten years later. Snow then “traced autopsy
reports, the police photographs, and the grave of the three youngsters. Each of them had
four or five closely spaced bullet wounds in the upper chest—the signature, says Snow, if
an automatic weapon. Two also had wounds on their arms from bullets that had entered
behind the elbow and exited from the forearm” (Huyghe). Snow then goes on to say that
“That means they were conscious when they were shot. When a gun was pointed at them,
they naturally raised their arm” (Huyghe). Figuring out things like this, allows for Snow
to give his family a sense of closure and reality to their family member’s final moment. It
also gives Snow the ability to give the same thing to a jury and a judge when he is
testifying as an expert witness to convict the malicious government and military workers
who committed these awful crimes. Towards the end of the article, Snow states, “These
were such cold-blooded crimes. The people who committed them not only murdered;
they had a system to eliminate all trace that their victims even existed” (Huyghe). Snow
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wanted a lesson from his human rights work, through forensic anthropology, to be known
to the entire world. He wanted governments similar to the one in Argentina from 1976 to
1983, those that murder their own citizens in the name of politics or anything for that
matter, to be aware that murder is wrong and should not be used as a form of fear and
control within society. Dr. Snow was fond of saying that “there are 206 bones and 32
teeth in the human body, and each has a story to tell” (McFadden).
There is a lab in Buenos Aires, Argentina that houses all of the bone fragments
and unidentifiable human skeletal remains that have been discovered and excavated from
mass graves or unmarked burials. The scientists at this lab have positively identified
approximately 600 victims that were tortured and murdered. According to an article in
the Tico Times newspaper, “Written on some of the boxes are the letters, “NN” for “no
name.” Each bone fragment is carefully numbered and labeled in red ink” (Ávalos). In
order to identify what the person went through when they were alive, right before they
died, they examine the no name bone fragments and skeletal remains. Bullet wounds in
the skull can express that they were executed that way, or if they have multiple fractures
on their skulls or any other bones that are recent could express the use of torture during
their last weeks, days, and moments of life. Another way that forensic anthropologists
and forensic specialists use to identify victims from unidentifiable bone fragments and
remains is to gather donated blood from the family members and relatives of the missing
people. Once they obtain the blood samples they can compare that to the genetic samples
of the missing. They can compare it to the DNA they get from their teeth, the DNA
extracted from bones, or previous DNA samples from before they died. In this way, the
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scientists can match the missing victim with their family members just by processing and
comparing DNA samples.
Forensic anthropologist Dario Olmo is another anthropologist that worked with
helping to exhume and identify victims in Argentina. He and his team exhumed a secret
mass grave in Cordoba, Argentina, which is almost 500 miles away from Buenos Aires.
He did his best to identify the dozens of unidentified victims of the junta’s ominous plan
to eradicate all dissidents. After examining and analyzing the remains of a victim, Olmo
states, “This man had something around his neck that strangled him. The savagery is
inexplicable” (Reuters, 7). In the lab, the scientists could not just start analyzing the
bones. They needed to clean them first because of the conditions inside of the mass
grave. “Debris, dirt, mold, dried blood and skin, and hair—all the detritus accumulated in
the 30 years these samples spent in mass graves—were removed by hand, the surface of
bones and teeth carefully cleaned with sand paper and a dental drill” (Smith, 2). In order
to properly analyze and identify the skeletal remains, they need to be clean and free of
debris so that the identification can be as valid as possible. Without being cleaned it can
be hard to examine certain things that are specific to a certain victim, such as a fracture,
because it can be covered by dirt, debris, and other substances that hinder that
characteristic from being shown.
Luis Fondebrider is an anthropologist that works at the University of Buenos
Aires. In an interview he talks about how “one identification can take years” (Brady).
After the rigorous process of identifying the victims from bone fragments and skeletal
remains, the forensic anthropologists, other scientists, and specialists do their best to
return the remains of the victims back to their families. It is the most emotional part of
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the entire process of identifying these people. If placed in the shoes of a family who has
lost a relative to a gruesome fate at the hands of the military junta, receiving the bones
and lifeless skeletal remains of a missing loved one can be as if they died over again. One
day they are seen with such vitality and joy, and with the snap of a finger some pieces of
their remains are given back decades later inside of a box.
Groups have formed in order to advocate for peace and justice for what has been
done to the loved ones of many citizens of Argentina. A group of women called Las
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. This group is made up of women whose children were
abducted, tortured, and murdered by the Argentine government during the Dirty War.
Their children became a part of the “disappeared” who, mostly, were never seen again
and their remains never found. These mothers gather at the Plaza de Mayo to beg
authorities for information on where their children are and to bring back their children.
They hold vigils and are characterized by wearing white kerchiefs; however, no matter
how hard they tried, officials would refuse to give them the information they requested or
to show they knew the slightest bit of information on the whereabouts of their children.
The authorities tried to break up these meetings by Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
because they had forbidden meetings of such large groups, and so to do so, the authorities
demanded they disband or they would have to take action. Sometimes the mothers were
beaten and even arrested for simply trying to get answers. At first they were hoping their
children were alive, but as time progressed and they still did not receive answers, then
they knew they were dead. All they wanted was closure and justice for what happened to
their children.
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Forensic anthropologists, scientists, and specialists that have searched, exhumed,
excavated, and identified the disappeared have brought peace to these families and
mothers that have been waiting for decades. Most of the remains have still been unable to
be identified. Forensic anthropologists use all their training and knowledge to do their
best in returning these victims home and providing closure for their families. They have
trained teams to look for certain anatomical structures in skeletal remains to determine
sex, such as the pelvic area, to determine age, such as dental eruptions, and much more.
They have assisted in excavations of mass burial sites where government officials would
merely throw a decedent’s body into the hole alongside others and just bury them. After
all of the examinations and analysis of the skeletal remains of the disappeared, forensic
anthropologists have served as expert witnesses in order to put the criminals responsible
behind bars. Ever since the beginning of the search and identification of the victims,
thousands of military and government officials have been prosecuted and convicted for
human-rights violations. In such a rough time in Argentine history, forensic
anthropologists have helped to uncover the secrets of mass kidnappings and murders all
throughout Argentina, while also bringing peace, sadness, and closure to their families.
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Works Cited
Alvaros, Sonia. "Identifying Victims of Argentina's 'Dirty War' -." The Tico Times. N.p.,
09 Dec. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Appendix B. “Forensic Anthropology.” Packet. Dr. James W. Jordan.
Brady, Tara. "Identifying the Unknown Skeletons of Argentina's Dirty War: Scientists
Begin the Grim Job of Finding out Who Victims of the Conflict Were." Mail
Online. Associated Newspapers, 09 Dec. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Burns, Karen Ramey. Forensic Anthropology Training Manual. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Print.
McFadden, Robert D. "Clyde Snow, Sleuth Who Read Bones From King Tut’s to
Kennedy’s, Dies at 86." The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 May
2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Parker, Mari Pritchard., and Elvio Angeloni. Patrick Huyghe: Profile of an
Anthropologist: No Bone Unturned. Archaeology. 10th ed. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2010. 81-85. Print.
Reuters. "Mass Graves Giving up the Secrets of Argentina's past - Taipei Times." Mass
Graves Giving up the Secrets of Argentina's past - Taipei Times. Taipei Times
Newspaper, 22 July 2003. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Smith, Lindsey. ""Genetics Is a Study in Faith": Forensic DNA, Kinship Analysis, and
the Ethics of Care in Post-conflict Latin Americaby Lindsay Smith(PAGE 2 of
4)." SF Online. The Scholar & Feminist Online Web Journal, n.d. Web. 22 Apr.
2016.
Tersigni-Tarrant, MariaTeresa A., and Natalie R. Shirley. Forensic Anthropology: An
Introduction. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2013. Print.
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