Abstract

SANCHIS, Fabricio Andrés Laino. Local activism, global knowledge. Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the invention of the Right to Identity. Astrolabio [online]. 2022, n.28, pp.5-10. ISSN 1668-7515.

The "Right to identity" has become over time the ethical, political, and legal paradigm that supports the claim of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) for the restitution of those who were appropriated during the years of State terrorism in Argentina. Today, this right is present with constitutional hierarchy in the Argentine legal order and there are public bodies, such as the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI), which aims to ensure it and repair its violation in the past. However, this right did not always exist as such. Its current formulation is the product of a complex history in which the political activism of the Grandmothers, the intervention of professionals and intellectuals who collaborated with their cause and different actors of the transnational networks of human rights, and the defense of children's rights are intercrossed. Based on the research and analysis of oral testimonies and written sources of diverse origins, in this article, we will investigate the historical origins of the “Right to identity” and the actors involved in its “invention”. We will also examine its impact on the struggle of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and its significance beyond this specific cause. This analysis will allow us to observe how the "invention" of this right was produced in the dialogue between global knowledge and the local activism of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and between the historically situated specificity of its cause and the universalist and transhistorical expectation of Human Rights.

Keywords : of the Plaza de Mayo; Right to Identity; Human Rights; Children’s Rights; Argentine Recent History.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )