This edited book is an examination of the ways in which forensic anthropology has attempted to uncover state crimes such as forced disappearances in Latin American countries. The volume starts with a chapter about the international treaties and conventions that are relevant for protecting the victims of forced disappearances in Latin America. After that essential information, it moves on to empirical chapters on Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala and Mexico. The book is richly illustrated with photographs depicting the clandestine graves and the forensic teams at work; this allows the reader to picture what the authors are describing. It will be an interesting read for science and technology scholars, for academics who study atrocities, and for forensic anthropologists themselves. It is a good overview of the origins and the development of forensic anthropology in Latin America.

The chapters on Uruguay, Argentina and Chile follow a similar narrative. They set the historical context and show the need for forensic teams by describing the military dictatorships of these countries. They describe how these countries’ governments attempted to silence the political opposition, in a Cold War context, by creating a regime of terror and violence against ‘enemies of the state’. Most of these teachers, students and activists were taken from their houses, tortured, and then disappeared in mass graves or anonymous plots in cemeteries, military barracks or clandestine graveyards. The texts show that the dictatorial governments, with the complicity of the military, were not only disappearing and torturing their citizens but they were also aware enough of their crimes to try to hide them. In Operación Retiro de Televisores (Operation Removal of Televisions) in Chile and Operación Zanahoria (Operation Carrot) in Uruguay, the military moved the bodies of the murdered to a secondary grave; effectively disappearing them twice, some of them forever.

After the democratic transitions, forensic anthropologists had to first find the remains of the missing before attempting to learn what happened to them in order to identify them. By doing contextual research they became historians of violence. Their findings are an important part of the record of the atrocities committed during the dictatorships. The effort of finding the bodies forced the ‘seekers’ to understand and expose the violent past that their countries had tried to hide. By unearthing the bodies, they uncovered the patterns of repression – and often the perpetrators – of their violent recent history.

Guatemala's case is different. The state performed individual kidnappings and disappearances of social leaders, as in other Latin American countries. However, most of the bodies that were witnesses of the violence are those of people – mostly indigenous Mayan – who were massacred in their towns and then buried right there. The victims of the genocide were there to be found, as the few survivors and the empty towns told the story and gave clues as to where the grave was.

The book closes with an analysis of the role of forensic anthropology in finding the disappeared in Mexico. This case provides a striking contrast to the previous ones since the situation in Mexico is an ongoing one. The police, the military and the criminal organisations have disappeared around 40,000 people since 2006. The authors show how dangerous and difficult it is to look for the missing when the crisis is ongoing and the perpetrators (governmental and criminal) still rule. The chapter also presents the challenges of creating forensic anthropology teams when there is no political will.

Forensic anthropologists often work without the cooperation of the new regime and have to face the silence of the perpetrators. Their work, dangerous, precarious and done out of a moral sense of responsibility, allows the victims, the community and the outside world to learn about the political crimes that the authoritarian regimes tried to hide. The search for the missing can start a process of memory that can lead, if not to justice, to the acknowledgement of the atrocities committed and the restitution of the missing to society and to their families. Dead bodies can be witnesses of atrocities and an important tool against societal oblivion and denial. Often, through the searching and the finding, families and communities can start a process of collective grieving and healing.

Another strength of the book is that it outlines, through archival research and interviews with pioneers, how the science of forensic anthropology was developed in Latin America. It is fascinating to learn how young students (with the help of Clyde Snow in the case of Argentina) stepped up to the challenge of searching and identifying the missing. They adapted their knowledge to identify recently deceased people. They learned how to interact and cooperate with the families of the missing to collect ante-mortem and contextual data. The authors excel at showing how the scientists slowly learned that their job was as much about science as it was about heart.

Since the book mostly focuses on the role of forensic anthropologists, most of the authors sideline other actors that are important in the search process. The families of the missing are given very little attention, even in the cases of Argentina and Mexico, where the pressure from the mothers of the missing has been instrumental in finding graves and forcing the authorities to react. The book shows how the search process is not merely about digging up bodies, yet it mostly focuses on those who do so.

Octavio Nadal Améndola's chapter on Uruguay questions if there is only one truth to be found. The rest of the chapters take a more uncritical view of the power of science and its ability to find the ‘truth’ of what happened. In contrast, Améndola suggests that we should observe how forensic anthropology's narrative of the tool that will find the ‘truth’ is being created. He suggests that we look at who is able to participate and who is excluded from the process. Only then will we understand that the truth is not absolute and that different narratives are salient at different social and political conjunctures. Right now, we are at a point where forensic anthropology still promises to be the panacea that will bring truth, justice and reconciliation. I hope that the social scientists and forensic anthropologists who will read this book keep in mind that science and forensics are tools and, as such, we still need to be critical and observant about how they are used and for what purpose.