Human rights organizations in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala have been working togeth- er to understand the effects of state terror in second and third generations like Paula's. In Buenos Aires, the Mental Health Solidarity Movement (Movimiento Soil- dario de Salud Mental) has spent more than ten years conducting therapy and research with the children of the disappeared. The Movement's coordinator, Esteban Costa, was interviewed in his Buenos Aires office by Karen Robert and Rodrigo Gutirrez Hermelo. Here in Argentina, what special challenges do the chil- dren of the disappeared face during adolescence? This transition when the child becomes an adult is such a critical stage in any person's life, when there are many crises of values. For these kids, the element that sets the limits to a person's conductwhich is one of the key issues of adolescenceis represented by the parent's absence. This is an issue for any orphan. But here it is also an absence in the society, and most specifically, in the government and the justice system. The serious crisis has to do with the incapacity of the society to assume its responsibility regarding the disap- peared parent. You're referring to the fact that the military personnel responsible for human rights violations were pardoned. Exactly. If we live in an Argentina governed by impunity, there is no social model to "replace" that absent figure. The biggest consequence of this absence is the problem of building a future. What we've found is that for these youths, the future doesn't exist. When asked about their plans for the next year, or next five years, they give answers like, "I'd like to be less crazy than I am now," or simply "I have no idea." When they tell their stories, they almost never mention the future. Everything is in the present. How do these adolescents feel about their parents? Unfortunately, in very many cases it is a kind of hatred. There is a huge weight of blame here. The youths have a big problem identifying themselves with their parents' history. One 19-year-old did not even know exactly which political group his father had been involved in. And because the society doesn't recognize that parent as a victim, he or she figures as a kind of idiot. "Why didn't my father have the sense to leave when it was inevitable that he would be killed?" The contradiction at a personal level is that there is also a process of idealization. The youths imagine an ideal, unattainable figure to replace the missing parent. And then many things in their lives also become unobtain- able: love, social relationships, emotional commitments. What are the possibilities and mechanisms for recover- ing that history and building towards the future? This brings us back to the social. There is no frame- work to help them recover that history. There aren't even many people in a position to help them. In most cases, the family members that raised these kids were fantastic. But the children lived through the silencing of the dictatorship. Even afterwards the adult caregivers were afraid of them speaking out about their situation and attracting further repression. So the history was silenced even within the family. At the social level, if the justice system were to recognize the disappeared as vic- tims, through a monument or some public symbol, that simple fact would be significant for these kids' health. This has occurred in some other countries, like Uruguay. Here there is no recognition of any victims. There was just a "war," an "unfortunate" situation.
