Trigger warning for brief descriptions of state-sponsored terrorism, torture, and rape.
Alexa Hagerty pours out elegiac thoughts in the pages of Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains, thoughts inspired by her fieldwork in rural Guatemala and various locations in Argentina. Hagerty spent long months assisting organizations like the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to recover the remains of people who were forcibly disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s in those countries. Unlike so many other books I’ve read about forensic anthropology, which focus on objective science, Still Life with Bones is a deeply thoughtful exploration of what bones represent. Hagerty’s mosaic essay-style allows her to jump from memories of being in the field; to interviewing survivors and relatives of the disappeared; to meditating on grief, memory, and justice. This book is a marvel.
Hagerty came to Guatemala and Argentina’s mass graves years after the (official) cessations of violence. Guatemala’s Civil War ended in 1996. Argentina’s so-called Dirty War ended in 1983. Even though truces were declared and, in some cases, trials were held to assign guilt, those conflicts left long physical and psychic scars on the people who survived and those who lost family and friends. Compounding the trauma is the fact that people were taken, killed, and buried in ways that make it very difficult to locate and identify remains. Hagerty remarks more than once that closure is something we can only bring ourselves; it cannot be given by others or by events. That said, being able to name and lay the remains of the dead to rest again can go a long way toward healing. I was fascinated by the variety of grief Hagerty presents in Still Life with Bones. There is a lot of sorrow. There is a lot of anger. There’s frustration and commemoration. People tell stories and give testimonios. Some people find closure by taking comfort in their memories of the dead; others still seek some kind of resolution.
Pervading much of this emotional tumult is the wearying fact that there is still so much work left to be done. Hagerty talks about graves, such as the Pozo de Vargas in Buenos Aires (Wikipedia article is in Spanish), that still contain thousands of remains that have been so jumbled together that identifying individuals is most likely impossible without DNA from relatives. There are also graves scattered around Guatemala and Argentina that haven’t even been located, let alone excavated. It’s little wonder that Hagerty talks about organizations like the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team with something like awe. Both groups were founded in the face of opposition by those who would prefer that the dead stay gone and buried. (Members still receive death threats even now.) They’ve struggled in punishing locations on shoestring budgets. The members’ indefatigable determination is nothing short of astonishing and profoundly inspiring.
Still Life with Bones is a moving read, one that forces us readers to think about what the dead might mean to us. I feel lucky that, in the course of my 41 years of life, I’ve only been to two memorial services. At those services, I thought about the stories that my dead took with them, that I would never hear again, and the worlds that were now gone. Although I spent a lot of time with this book, I can barely fathom what the peoples of Guatemala and Argentina had to live through during their times of violent upheaval, when their friends and relatives might be snatched off the street or from their homes and never be seen again. So many stories were lost and so many worlds were destroyed. Having their names and bones back seems like such a small thing, and yet, as Hagerty shows us, it can mean everything.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.