As Trump’s masked thugs grab innocent people off the street, who will stand up for the abducted?
During its Dirty War (1976-1983), Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared thousands of its citizens. But grandmothers of the missing weren’t having it. Instead, they fought back.
In her riveting, critically-acclaimed new book, A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, Haley Cohen Gilliland recounts the efforts of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a group of courageous grandmothers who fought to locate grandchildren stolen by Argentina’s junta.
Cohen Gilliland graciously agreed to answer my questions about her book. Here is our interview.
You’re the first author to bring the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo to a broad English-language audience. What compelled you to tell this story, and how might it resonate with readers living under an increasingly authoritarian US government?
I first learned of the Abuelas when I moved to Argentina in 2011 on a postgraduate research fellowship. I was awestruck by their courage and determination, and immediately wanted to read everything I could about them. To my surprise, there was only one English-language book on their movement; it was thoroughly reported and well written, but more of an academic treatment than the type of narrative history I’ve always loved—books by the likes of Patrick Radden Keefe, Isabel Wilkerson, Hampton Sides, David Grann, and Erik Larson, who so deftly weave facts into propulsive true stories. It didn’t yet occur to me to attempt writing a narrative history of the Abuelas myself. I was only 22 and just embarking on my journalism career.
Then, I got an opportunity to work as The Economist’s Argentina and Uruguay correspondent, and I ended up staying in Argentina for four years instead of the one I’d planned to. The longer I lived in Buenos Aires, the more I got lulled into the false belief that everyone in the world already knew of the Abuelas, because, in Argentina, most people do. Several years and job postings later, the Abuelas came up in conversation, and their story flooded back to me. I spoke to a few friends, many of whom had studied history in college, as I had, and was shocked that none of them had ever heard of the Abuelas, nor did they know much about the Argentine dictatorship.
I felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to write about the Abuelas—a drive so strong it manifested in physical symptoms. My heart quickened, my palms grew sweaty, and I felt a little nauseous. (I was also six months pregnant at the time, which probably didn’t help.) The book I had once wanted to read, I desperately wanted to write.
When I officially began working on this book in 2021, I never could have anticipated how resonant it would feel today. The unmarked cars and masked law enforcement officers appearing across the country evoke alarming patterns from Argentina’s past and underscore the importance of protecting civil liberties and upholding due process. Argentina’s history serves as a stark warning of how a government that puts its agenda over the law can descend into tyranny, while the story of the Abuelas is a powerful reminder of how, together, ordinary citizens can resist.
How did the grandmothers’ movement begin, and what kinds of risks did they take?
In 1977, as Argentina’s dictatorship raged and the armed forces abducted Argentines in droves, the mothers of the disappeared began to recognize one another from the interminable lines at government offices and churches where they waited to beg for information. Eventually, they grew sick of all the lines, all the waiting, all the stonewalling from government officials, and instead determined to meet each week in the Plaza de Mayo, the iconic square in front of Argentina’s presidential palace, to demand answers about the fate of their disappeared children. The military had banned protests, so this was an incredibly bold and dangerous act. The rest of the country was paralyzed by terror. Many of the institutions that exist to hold power to account–the press and the church, for example–were completely quiet, either out of fear or complicity. The mothers’ voices alone broke the silence.
A few months after this group of mothers—the Madres de Plaza De Mayo—began protesting, the grandmothers among them, whose grandchildren had been kidnapped along with their children, or whose daughters and daughters-in-law had been pregnant at the time of their abductions, began meeting separately. They knew very little about how to find their stolen grandchildren, or whether the infants and toddlers were even alive, yet they threw themselves into the search, meticulously combing birth registries for signs of falsified certificates and chasing down tips whispered to them by nervous onlookers at their marches.
Less than a month after the Abuelas officially formed, they were confronted with the reality of how risky this work was. In December 1977, three members of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement—from which the Abuelas had originated—were abducted and disappeared.
Even then, the Abuelas did not relent. They continued marching alongside the Madres and engaging in daring investigations. To avoid attracting further danger, they leaned into their camouflage as kindly grandmothers. In one case, they smuggled sensitive documents back from Brazil by crumpling up their notes and concealing them within chocolate wrappers. “Who was going to suspect anything of the little old ladies carrying chocolates?” one grandma would later reflect. They lay knitting needles and fake birthday presents next to their coffee saucers when engaging in surreptitious meetings in cafés, handing one another documents under the table once their waiter had walked away.
All of this difficult and perilous work could have easily led to their disappearance. But the Abuelas’ primal drive to find their stolen grandchildren—and the truth of what happened to their disappeared children—eclipsed their fear.
What parallels do you see between Argentines who were passive in the face of the dictatorship’s abductions and Americans who are currently tolerating ICE’s abuses?
Human rights groups estimate that Argentina’s dictatorship disappeared up to 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983. One of the military’s preferred manners of disappearance was through “death flights,” wherein prisoners were sedated, loaded alive into planes, flown high above the Río de La Plata–the wide and powerful river that runs alongside Buenos Aires—and pushed out so their bodies would be swept away by the current. While some Argentines tacitly supported the disappearances, insisting “por algo será” (“there must be a reason”), many were too terrified to speak out. Others were simply unaware of the horrors unfolding in their midst—the press did not report on disappearances until years after the dictatorship began.
I have been lucky to meet some very thoughtful readers at live events for A Flower Traveled in My Blood. One, a doctor, shared a memorable reflection with me. He explained that by the time he has to operate on someone suffering from cancer, it is often too late to save them. Argentina is a cautionary example of the depths to which a country can sink when civil liberties and due process are flouted. The Madres and Abuelas did boldly raise their voices during the dictatorship, but by then, they were protesting crimes that had already been committed. It was already too late.
Our responsibility now is to recognize the early signs of democratic erosion and act before it metastasizes. Only then can we ensure our democracy endures.
Activism is often considered the province of the young, but we’ve seen many older people taking to the streets across the USA this year. Do older activists have something special to offer? What lessons can we take from the Abuelas’ movement?
The Abuelas’ age and grandmotherly charm gave them a distinct advantage: they were overlooked and underestimated, and that allowed them to quietly focus on their mission. Unlike young people, and particularly young men, they were not outwardly threatening to the dictatorship. By the time the military realized the Abuelas were, in fact, a formidable force, they simultaneously recognized there was little they could do about it. Disappearing wizened grandmothers would have further battered the regime’s already abysmal image.
Older activists such as the Abuelas also tend to be clear-eyed about what they’re fighting for, and their stamina is unparalleled. In November, the Abuelas will mark 48 years of searching for their grandchildren. Though they are now in their 80s, 90s, and even 100s, several grandmothers continue to carry forward this work, aided by some of the grandchildren they have recovered. Just this summer, the Abuelas announced they had located another grandchild—the 140th out of an estimated 500 stolen during the dictatorship.
As the director of the Yale Journalism Initiative, you help young journalists launch their careers. Given the challenges (and dangers) facing journalists today, what kind of advice do you give them?
I try to strike a delicate balance between encouragement and realism. As misinformation and autocratic creep threaten our society, rigorous journalism has never been more crucial. The students I interact with are thoughtful, driven, and intrepid, and the world would benefit from them directing their considerable talents toward journalism. At the same time, the field faces existential threats from AI, a shattered business model, and, more recently, political hostility. While platforms like this one (Substack) have created new possibilities for independent journalism, conventional newsroom opportunities have dwindled. According to The Washington Post, the number of newspaper jobs declined 77% between 2004 and 2024.
What I tend to say is some version of: journalism is one of the most stimulating and rewarding careers you can have. It allows you to follow your curiosity, learn constantly, hold power to account, and strengthen democracy. If you’re passionate about it, why not try it and see what happens? If it doesn’t work out, the skills you learn as a journalist–vigorous research, careful fact-checking, clear communication—are easily transferable to so many other fields.
TBR urges readers to support independent bookstores by purchasing books through Bookshop.org. You can order A Flower Traveled in My Blood here.
I am proud of the many grandmothers in our TBR community who are resisting the Trump regime. ❤️
Yes, my fellow Grandmothers, we must fight this tyrant. Do you remember the night Nixon resigned? We have the power and must unite! Our stories show our country what it means to be an American 🇺🇸