Susan Trimarco Biography

After the disappearance of her daughter, Marita, Susana began her career as an investigator, uncovering a chilling criminal network of human trafficking. In her fight, she has uncovered trafficking networks in Argentina that operate in the La Rioja, Tucumán, Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Santa Cruz provinces.

In the search for her daughter, she has managed to free more than a hundred victims, including 17 Argentine women who were forced into prostitution in Bilbao, Burgos and Vigo, Spain.

She helped many of the women that were rescued by offering them shelter and helping them reconnect with their families. On Oct. 19, 2007, she founded the Fundación María de los Ángeles, through which she continues to receive crime tips and helps human trafficking victims with a team of professionals. Thanks to her work, human trafficking is gaining attention from the public as well as different public organizations in Argentina. In July 2008, she and the Fundación María de los Ángeles opened the first refuge created specifically for human trafficking victims. Many aid protocols in Buenos Aires and in Córdoba have been copied from this project.

In 2008, the fictional show, “Vidas Robadas” (“Stolen Lives”), was broadcasted by Telefe based on the kidnapping of Marita and the fight of Susana Trimarco. Susana, along with the Fundación team, offered guidance to the scriptwriter, Marcelo Camaño, with the hope that the script would accurately relate the methods the mafias used and use in human trafficking. This show was essential in making Argentine people aware of this type of crime.

On Nov. 25, 2008, the play “Mika”, inspired by the story of Susana and Marita, was performed at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In Dec. 2008, she was invited by Mikel Irujo, from the European Parliament, to expose the human trafficking problems in Argentina in front of representatives from different political parties. Sr. Hans-Gert Pottering, the European Parliament president, welcomed her.

In March 2009, she was invited to the Preliminary Meeting of the Civil Society for the Second Meeting of the National Authorities on Human Trafficking, representing Argentina and offering recommendations based on her experiences and the experiences of the institution.

In March 2010, she participated in the “Regional Seminar on Human Trafficking”, sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Swedish government, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Here she discussed the sexual exploitation of women and human trafficking.

In April 2010, the documentary, “Fragmentos de una búsqueda” (“Fragments of a Search”), by Pablo Milstein and Norberto Ludin, was premiered. Filmed in 2007–2008, the documentary follows the path of Susana and her family in their search for Marita.

In September of the same year, she was part of the “Segundo Encuentro María Cher. Mujeres que Inspiran.” (“Second María Cher Conference. Women who Inspire.”), which was directed towards entrepreneurial women, women in executive positions, professionals, independents, and all those who look for inspiration from feminine leadership. Trimarco was able to tell her life story in front of 500 women who were moved by her story.

In Dec. 2010, she opened the Centro Materno Infantil, which offered comprehensive attention to and defense of children of human trafficking victims during their first years of life. At the Centro, the mothers can learn self-help actions and strategies related to education and/or training, among others.

Maria Sonderéguer Bio

Maria Sonderéguer has a B.A in Literature form the University of Buenos Aires and received a D.E.A (Diplome d'Etudes Approfondies) in Latin American Studies from the University of Sorbonne in Paris.  She is a full Professor and Investigator at the Center for Studies in History, Culture and Memory at the National University of Quilmes and a member of the Academic Committee for the Masters in Human Rights and Democratization for Latin America (within the International Center of Political Studies at the National University of San Martín).  She is also associated with the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC) and is a Graduate Professor at various Argentine universities.  Previously, she was the Director of the Human Rights Center “Emilio Mignone” at the National University of Quilmes and is currently the Co-Director of the Human Rights Collection of the UNQ Editorial and directs the Memory, Gender and Human Rights Observatory at the same university.  She has previously worked with Service Peace and Justice (SERPAJ) and is currently a Professor associated with the Center for Peace and Human Rights located in the Political Science Department of the University of Buenos Aires.  She acted as an expert and co-editor of the National Plan Against Argentine Discrimination, a consultant on human rights themes with the Ministry of Education, and was the National Director of Human Rights Training for the National Ministry of Human Rights.  She led investigations about: Crisis and Argentine Culture of the 1970s; The Human Rights Movement in Argentina between 1973 to 1976; History of the Life of the Worker’s Movement: A politics of Memory; Memory and Narrativization of Identity: The Century of the Cacerolazos; Sexual Violence and Gender Violence in State Terrorism; Memory, Violence and Gender in Recent Argentine History, and other Investigations.  Her results have been disseminated in numerous published articles in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, France, Germany and the United States. Her latest books are: Crisis (1973-1976). Del Intelectual comprometido al intelectual revolucionario, redited in 2010 and Género y Poder: violencias de género en conflictos armados y contextos represivos, published in 2012.

Ana Amado Bio

Ana Amado has a PhD in Literature and a B.A. in Political Science.  She is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, and she has also acted as a Visiting Professor at Duke University and Princeton University, the University of Arts and Political Science in Santiago and at the National Autonomous University of México.  For the past two decades, she has directed an interdisciplinary Investigative team, which studies images, violence and memory at the Interdisciplinary Institute of Gender Studies within the Department of Philosophy and Literature.  She was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in 2010-2011 to investigate the topic of “Political Insurgency and Popular Imagery in Argentine Photography: From the Collective Scene of the 1970’s to the Post-Crisis Depiction of the Victims.”  Some of her published books include: La imagen justa. Cine argentino y política 1980-2007, (2009); her co-authored book, Lazos de Familia. Herencias, cuerpos, ficciones (2004); Espacio para la igualdad. El ABC de un periodismo no sexista (1996).  Her texts about film, politics and memory appear in numerous national and international publications.  Some of her recent articles include: “Rituales angélicos. Pueblo, infancia y duelo en Leonardo Favio”, in Mariano Mestman and Mirta Verala, orgs, Masas, pueblo, multitud en cine y televisión (Buenos Aires: Eudeba 2013); “Images from the South of the New World. Contemporary Documentary in Argentina and Brazil”, in collaboration with Dora Mourau, USP, in Brain Winston (ed), The Documentary Film Book (London: British Film Institute/Palgrave-MacMillen, 2013); “Imágenes de cultura y de barbarie”, the prologue to the book Formas de la memoria. Notas sobre el documental argentino reciente coordinated by Gabriel D’lorio and Laura Gallazi (Buenos Aires: Ed IUNA audiovisuales, 2013); “Actores secundarios. Representaciones y auto representaciones de la pobreza” in the book Corporalidades coordinated by Maya Aguiluz Ibargüen and P. Briones (México DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma of México/Center of Interdisciplinary Investigations in the Sciences and Humanities, Iberoamerican University, 2012).  She can currently be found working on a CD-Rom and art installation entitled, “Entre generaciones. Poéticas de la transmissión”, which she is producing and creating in conjunction with the organization of DDHH Memoria Abierta and Ubacyt. She is a member of the Directive Committee of Mora, an institutional publication of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Gender Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In addition, she is a member of the Directive Committee of Pensamiento de los confines, Diótima/UBA/FCE.  She is the lead editor of the collection “A oscuras/ Colihue Imagen”, in Editorial Colihue, Buenos Aires, since 2008 until the present.  She has allows also edited Género y Cultura, the collection by Editorial Paidós (Buenos Aires, Barcelona, México), from 1997-2004 (13 published volumes).  

Participants

Susana Trimarco
Fundación María de los Ángeles.

Ana Amado 
Department of Art, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Karina Ansolabehere
The Latin American School of Social Sciences, campus Mexico (FLACSO-MEXICO)

Susan Berk-Seligson
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Vanderbilt University. 

Shannon Drysdale Walsh
Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota Duluth. 

Rosa-Linda Fregoso 
Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Greta Friedemann-Sánchez 
The Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.

Raúl Marrero-Fente 
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies and the Law  School,  the University of Minnesota. 

Ana Forcinito
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota.

Ileana Rodríguez
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Ohio State University. 

Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba
Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas, Austin.

Maria Sonderéguer
Centro de estudios de Historia, Cultura y Memoria at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes/ Observatorio  Memoria, Género y Derechos Humanos, Argentina

Kimberly Theidon
Department of Anthropology , Harvard University.