The Foreign Service Journal, January 2010

ing the military government where their disappeared loved ones were. What began as a risky crusade to find missing children became a civic move- ment that was vindicated by the return to democracy. The mothers of the dis- appeared, the grandmothers of lost children, never gave up their quest. Now, with the help of DNA, dozens of adopted Argentines have found their grandparents and learned who their parents were. This was the subject of the documentary shown at the em- bassy. The “Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo” — named for the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace — have spent 30 years demanding justice. Despite threats, amnesty laws and legal ma- neuvering, nine military leaders were eventually brought to trial, though not all the convictions were upheld. The group’s courage was recognized inter- nationally when they received the U.N. Human Rights Prize on Dec. 10, 2003. The Ambassador Human rights is not just a political concept to Ambassador Timerman. His father, Jacobo, the publisher of La Opinion newspaper, was kidnapped from his Buenos Aires apartment in April 1977 by men in civilian clothes. Two years later, after his release and exile from Argentina, Jacobo Timerman wrote a book: Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. In it he described his torture and that of other “disappeared” victims. Three decades after that, his son, the ambassador, wanted to acknowledge the U.S. government official who had de- manded information from the military rulers about his father. That U.S. official was Patricia M. Der- ian, a nurse by training, a veteran of the civil rights movement in Mississippi and President Jimmy Carter’s choice to head a new division in the State Department: the Bureau for Human Rights and Humani- tarian Affairs. She became the State De- partment’s first assistant secretary for human rights in 1977. She was not what the Argentine generals expected when she arrived in Buenos Aires in August of that year. She asked blunt questions about those arrested and disappeared, asking to see them. Patt Derian did not get many answers to her questions from the military government. But the Timerman family — and many other Argentines — credit her with sav- ing lives and preventing worse abuses by her challenge to the junta. The Guests Many of the guests at the embassy last June had played a role in U.S. policy toward Latin America during the Carter administration, along withMs. Derian. One was former Rep- resentative Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., who for 30 years was a J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Patricia Derian was not what the Argentine generals expected when she arrived in Buenos Aires in August 1977. Patt Derian, in a white suit, is seated with her back to the camera. Her husband, Hodding Carter, sits next to her. Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Michael Posner is at the podium, with Amb. Timerman standing to his right. Amb. Timerman holds up a poster that shows a news photo of Patt Derian during her August 1977 visit to Argentina.