RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Two Daughters of Disappeared Recover Identity

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 3 2000 (IPS) - Two young women recently learned that their parents disappeared at the hands of the military during Argentina’s most recent dictatorship (1976-1983). One had been adopted by a family in good faith, while the other had been given to a military officer who then claimed she was his biological daughter.

The two women, reunited with their biological relatives in February, are 21 and 22 years old and both are named Victoria. Their stories were finally revealed in Argentina Thursday.

The military detained María de las Victorias Ruiz in 1980 when she was two years old, along with her parents and her brother, Marcelo, age four. Her mother was pregnant at the time.

The other young woman, Claudia Victoria Poblete, had been turned over to a military officer after being held in a clandestine detention centre as a baby.

Such restitutions, which continue to come to light in Argentine, are further proof of the crime for which former dictators Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, among others, are under house arrest. They are charged with the appropriation of minors, stealing identities and falsifying public documents.

The Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo is an Argentine human rights organisation that was founded in 1976 to search for the children of the disappeared. The ‘Abuelas’ charge the former dictators with the disappearance of 260 minors. So far, 66 of the children have been found, including many who have been reunited with their blood relatives, as occurred in the two latest cases.

María de las Victorias Ruiz’s parents disappeared after being held prisoner at the Mechanic School of the Armada, where Laura was born, the third sibling.

Maria de las Victorias was abandoned in Santa Fe province by a marine officer who left her wearing a sign that read: “My parents cannot feed me.”

She was then adopted by a local family while, 500 km away in Cordoba province, her brother Marcelo had been abandoned in the same way.

Alba Lanciloto, secretary of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, told IPS that the restitution occurred because the girl had always known she had been adopted, and then recognised her own photograph – taken when she was a baby – when reading a newspaper article in which the ‘Abuelas’ president was interviewed.

María de las Victorias immediately submitted to genetic testing, which is 99.9 percent accurate in determining a person’s identity. She gave a blood sample, as did her biological grandmother who had spent years searching for her. Genetic experts determined that she was the daughter of Olrando Ruiz and Silvia Dameris, both disappeared.

Marcelo, her brother, had been reunited with their biological family 10 years earlier and had sought out his two sisters since then. “Poor Marcelo suffered several disappointments with others who in the end were not his siblings. But this time it was something beautiful, they looked at each other and cried, and were speechless,” Lanciloto recalled with emotion.

María de las Victorias said that as a girl she had always asked her adoptive parents to adopt a boy, “but one older than me, because I want to have a big brother,” she tried to explain between sobs when she was reunited with her brother Marcelo, who she remembered from when she was two years old.

“Now there are more of us to search for Laura,” responded Marcelo, who since finding María de las Victorias is more optimistic than ever about the chances of finding their little sister who disappeared at birth.

He remembers the difficulties when his mother gave birth to the baby girl in prison, and told his adoptive parents the story as a young boy. The family that raised him helped search for what was left of his biological family. Today he has recovered a sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

“They are elated. The love they have for each other is intact. The dictators did not count on the fact that love was going to be stronger than anything they did to destroy our families, killing the parents, separating the children, abandoning them to their fates or stealing them for their own,” affirmed Lanciloto.

The story of Claudia Victoria Poblete’s family is also tragic. Kidnapped at the age of eight months with her mother, they were taken from their home to a clandestine detention centre. Claudia Victoria was later handed over to Lt-Col. Jorge Landa and his wife.

“A military doctor offered her to me. He told me she had been abandoned,” the officer testified before a federal judge investigating the fate of the young woman. A genetic test proved that she is the daughter of Chilean José Poblete and Gertrudis Hlaczik from Argentina, both disappeared.

One day last month, Claudia Victoria found out that the Landa family, who had told her she was their biological child, had really appropriated her and that her real parents had disappeared during the dictatorship. The Landas have been went to prison.

“Poor girl, she is very confused. She did not refuse to meet her true family but she is very scared. She asked her grandmother and her uncle to promise they would never lie to her,” commented Lanciloto.

“These military officers are so perverse, so despicable, that not only were they capable of elaborating a systematic plan to detain and disappear people, they also did everything possible to ruin the lives of their children,” she said.

Lanciloto says the case of these children is a true tragedy. They grew up loving those who had appropriated them and then have to live through the terrible pain of discovering that their adoptive parents often lied to them, and many were even responsible for the disappearance of the children’s biological parents, she explained.

The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo conduct extensive intelligence work and, by providing information to federal authorities, were able to put some of Argentina’s former dictators in prison even after they had been pardoned for human rights violations.

At the time of their official pardon, appropriating children was not considered a systematic crime. But over the last several years, the grandmothers gathered sufficient evidence about children who had been assassinated, disappeared or turned over to military officials in illegal adoptions that changed the minors’ identities, keeping them hidden from the truth.

Alongside the work of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a National Genetic Data Bank was created, which operates in a public hospital where experts perform the necessary DNA studies.

Also, in 1992 the National Commission for Identity Rights opened its doors, and has helped 174 young people search for their biological origins in the seven years since then.

“Many assume they are a child of the disappeared,” explained Claudia Carlotto, the commission’s director. She said that in the last two years since the former dictators were returned to prison, the number of adopted young people who want to know their true identities has skyrocketed.