Efforts to identify the remains of Argentinian soldiers buried in unmarked graves on the Falkland Islands have been suspended indefinitely after the the centre-right administration of president Mauricio Macri froze funding for the anthropologists conducting the investigation.
The Argentinian forensic anthropology team, Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF), has successfully investigated cases around the world, including the identification of Che Guevara’s body in Bolivia, and victims of the killing fields of Kosovo.
But the institution is now being forced to shut down its operation on the Falklands because it has not received any payment from the Argentinian government in 2018.
Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, known in Spanish as Las Malvinas, is enshrined in its constitution, so the EAFF project on the island has been caught up in the spending cut which covers all of the group’s work in the country.
Projects in other countries, will remain unaffected, as they are financed by US and European NGOs and government institutions.
“This is the first time this has happened to us in our 32 years of existence,” said Luís Fondebrider, EAAF’s president.
Argentina’s government has not explained the finance freeze, and Fondebrider refused to speculate if it was part of broader funding cuts for human rights groups since Macri took office three years ago.
“I would very much like to meet with President Macri for him to explain what is happening,” Fondebrider said.
A government spokesman declined to comment.
Since the project began in 2017, the EAAF has successfully identified 106 of the 122 Argentinian soldiers who died in the 1982 war with the UK and were buried at Darwin cemetery.
The EAAF was founded by Fondebrider and a group of fellow anthropologists in 1986 to identify the remains of victims of Argentina’s 1976-83 dictatorship, who were thrown into the sea from military planes or buried in unmarked graves after being made to “disappear” by security forces.
More recently, the group has worked in Mexico where it has helped identify thousands of victims of the country’s drug violence, and aided in the case of the 43 student teachers who disappeared after they were attacked by cartel gunmen and corrupt police officers in 2014.
The group has also worked to identify bodies of Central American migrants who have died in the desert while entering the US. In Argentina, it helped the security forces in cases of femicide and slave trafficking.