An internship in Buenos Aires led to a deep connection with a movement to help families torn apart by military dictatorship
While interning with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Shai Tratt dealt with sensitive personal information of victims’ families. “It was very moving and really an honor to be trusted with handling that sort of information,” he says. Photo: Alonso Nichols
When Shai Tratt, A26, thought about doing a semester abroad, it was an easy choice. His older sister had studied in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as an international relations and Spanish double major, he decided to follow in her footsteps.
He headed south in January 2025, arriving early and staying with his sister’s host family, and traveled with an Argentinian friend from Tufts before the semester started. That friend’s grandparents had suffered under the military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 1980s, having to live in exile.
That history overlapped with the internship that Tratt chose to do as part of his studies, working with the humanitarian group Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The group, originally made up of grandmothers of young children abducted by the military and given to military sympathizers to raise as their own, has been working since the 1970s to reunite those children with their birth families. Despite government intimidation, the abuelas—grandmothers—held regular protests starting in 1977 at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.
Now Tratt has organized a visit by a representative of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and one of those children to Tufts. The two will speak to a variety of classes, including one in English that will be open to the public from 3-4:30 p.m. on March 30 in Olin Center, Room 011.
What led you to volunteer with the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires?
I had heard of Abuelas before, not just through my friend’s grandparents, but in Spanish classes. And I honestly was kind of blown away that there was this opportunity, because it’s a renowned organization that does amazing work.
Abuelas is a human rights organization that emerged during Argentina’s last military dictatorship, looking to restore the identities of the grandchildren who were disappeared. Political dissidents were taken by the military dictatorship to clandestine detention centers, and some were pregnant at the time of their kidnapping.
The government often held these women captive until they gave birth, then the child would be given a fake birth certificate and appropriated—that’s a term that they use instead of adopted—into oftentimes a military family or to someone sympathetic to the dictatorship. The mother would be murdered and the child would grow up without any idea of who their biological parents were.
What work did you do during the internship?
The first couple of weeks were spent at the ESMA, which is a former naval military school that was a clandestine detention and torture center, and is now a museum and site of memory. Then I started working in the archival department, creating and expanding the biographical archives that they have for family members of the disappeared.
They estimate that there were roughly 500 grandchildren who were disappeared, and so far have found around 130, and restored their identities. For the remaining grandchildren, they collect photos of their biological family members—grandparents, parents, cousins—and store them meticulously in biographical archives with the names and dates of family members.
They have a massive database, so when a grandchild rediscovers their identity, they can see who their biological family was and reconnect with that identity, even if there’s no one left alive.
I also worked with the legal department, helping with orders filed by the government or by Abuelas to exhume the bodies of some of these grandparents for genetic testing, and then to add that information to their National Bank of Genetic Information. I was dealing with very personal information in that regard—it was very moving and really an honor to be trusted with handling that sort of information.
How did you end up organizing this program of talks about the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo?
I wanted to stay involved with Abuelas because the work was so impactful. Sitting with those photos, it’s hard not to feel an emotional connection with the work that you’re doing.
I reached out to my managers from when I was working at Abuelas, and they put me in contact with Héctor Rombola, who’s the director for the North American branch of Abuelas. He was planning a series of events in Toronto on March 24, which corresponds with Argentina’s national Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, including a talk by a restituted grandchild.
I suggested bringing the two of them to the Tufts campus, helping to amplify the impact of Abuelas and talk about the work that they’re doing and share the personal experience of a grandchild who had her identity restored through this work.
