Argentine human rights organization Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo has identified a man who was stolen as a baby during the dictatorship.
Estela de Carlotto, the 94-year-old leader of the organization who in 2014 found her own missing grandson, revealed the news in a press conference on Monday. She described the 48-year-old man as Argentina’s 140th grandchild, referencing the fact he is the 140th Argentinian to have been identified after being kidnapped as an infant.
The man’s full name has not been made public, though he has been identified as the son of Argentinians Graciela Romero and Raúl Metz, who were detained by the military regime and subsequently “disappeared.”
He has also been reunited with his sister Adriana Metz, who has spent several years searching for him. She was a one-year-old when her parents were kidnapped, and was taken into her grandparents’ care.
The man’s parents, Romero and Metz, were members of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PRT), which opposed the military regime. They are believed to have been detained by security forces in December 1976, when Romero was five-months pregnant, according to Associated Press.
The couple were then transferred to “La Escuelita” (Little School) clandestine detention center in the southern city of Bahía Blanca, where they were reportedly subject to psychological and physical torture.
On April 17, 1977, the man was born in La Escuelita. His parents soon became two of the 30,000 Argentinians to be “disappeared” by the regime.
The man was raised by another family and believed he was an only child. That was until the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo received an anonymous tip-off about the man’s true identity, and DNA testing confirmed that he was the son of Romero and Metz.
Adriana Metz was present at Monday’s press conference and was visibly overjoyed at the news.
She told the Buenos Aires Herald: “I never lost hope, but sometimes I got scared that perhaps he did not live to 5 years, or 30. I was going to keep looking for him anyway. But he is 48 now.”
As part of her efforts to identify her brother, Metz set up a blog in 2009 called Poncho de Lana (Wool Poncho), on which she published letters to her brother each year on his birthday. In the letters, she revealed her identity and described the steps she was taking to try and find him.
The two have already spoken on the phone, but Metz emphasized how keen she is to meet her brother- who lives 250 miles away- in person and to hug him for the first time, the BBC reported.
Approximately 500 babies are estimated to have been stolen from their biological parents during Argentina’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 until 1983. Oftentimes, these babies were born in clandestine detention centers to parents who were political prisoners. Many of these babies were given to families or friends of military personnel; others were abandoned in institutions as John Does, while some were sold.
Featured image credit:
Image: Members of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo
Photographer: Mauro Rico – Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/culturaargentina/52428254254
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
