August 2025
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    That since 2023 Argentina thanks to its new and especially controversial (for better or worse, probably more of the latter, see the end of this review for perhaps why) president has been back in the news and has made it an issue of note for those looking to see how countries with rough pasts can potentially right the ship. As someone who has a wanderlust trying to find out more about various parts of the world off the beaten path, no place deserves a better look than one of the most southern countries in the world and a surprisingly large one at that.

    Before reading A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, my Argentina knowledge probably was in line with most everyone coming from a similar background: I know where it is on a map, I’m aware of the new president, I know inflation has been a serious issue, and then there’s this “Peron” guy who some say is great, but others say he’s bad but was the “best of the worst” options for a country that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Sadly, I may have been right, but also very wrong. As it turns out, what came after was really, really…bad.

    A dry history of Argentina would be a tough sell for most anyone and thus what we get in A Flower Traveled in My Blood seems to follow the more digestible path in “conflict theater” books where the author has the book focusing mainly on some specific issue—here, “the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso—a bland name masking their ruthless campaign to crush the political left and instill the country with ‘Western, Christian’ values.” (quoting from the book’s blurb). This of course is tied in with a crash course history of Argentina from its better off years in the 1910’s and 20’s to the mostly continuous downward trend it has experienced since through the 1980’s and beyond. Thus, if you’ve read “conflict theater” books in the past, the flow of this one should come as no surprise. For structure at least, we’re on familiar ground.

    As reviewers have already noted, this is a—and it’s overused, but there’s no better word, sorry!–gripping book that reads closer to a novel than an actual recounting of history. Argentina for the masses seems to have more ups and downs than meme stocks but without the humor attached to it. For our group of mothers seeking children, as years turned closer to a decade and that even longer, there was some respite as children thanks to new genetic matching via Dr. Mary-Claire King (and as an aside, the tangent for her background I feel was just as well-written but somewhat felt out of place in a book otherwise hyper-focused on a specific cause in Argentina). Children were found. Matches were made. But this, as we see, opened up another thorny issue: ethics.

    On one hand, if a child is stolen from their parents, it’s obvious what needs to be done to make things right. But on the other, what if it has been years? What if the child is fully acclimated in their new home? What if their new parents had absolutely no idea the child they adopted came into their family through such nefarious means? After all, a woman giving birth in a concrete torture chamber only to be then tranquilized, corralled onto a plane, and then thrown in the ocean is pretty darn nefarious. In this situation, what really is the right thing to do? Give them back to their living relatives? Split custody? Simply ask the child what they prefer? Thus, as strange as it is to type, later on in the book, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo almost—but not quite, mind you!–begins to feel less like a group of mothers and grandmothers trying to right the wrongs of a junta and more of tragic villains separating innocents from their families.

    In fact, we do see a darker side to this all in the form of those who developed strong attachments to their new parents whom even if were ‘in’ on the initial tragedy of forced separation, may have made amends in the decades since: (In an interview one of the stolen children (now in his twenties) gave to a large newspaper “…in which he revealed that he had begged for the legal charges against Gomez and [his wife] to be dropped, only to be told by his grandmothers (the Abuelas organization) that it was impossible. The matter was in the hands of the state which was duty-bound to investigate and prosecute the crime that had been committed. To officially change his identity in government registries, the state would require [him] to have his blood drawn by the BNDG. The Abuelas had tried to bribe him to do so, he told the interview [for the newspaper], saying that if he gave his DNA to the BNDG, he would receive reparations. He said that not all the gold in the world could convince him when it would almost certainly land his parents in jail.” (transcribed from the audiobook at 75% mark, any errors my own)

    As the past slowly, but surely merged with the present, me with my lack of Argentina knowledge began to harbor a question that finally was answered in the epilogue: What does our anarcho-capitalist Milei think about this? While anarchism has its benefits, they don’t seem to be of use in our tale as predictably, Milei falls into the “it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, there was torture on both sides, those grandmas are really, really mean” camp of thought in spite of a warehouse full of documentation saying otherwise (aside from the latter, those Abuelas have had it rough and deserve to look any way they want).

    4/5

    by kobushi

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