RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Another Victim of the Dictatorship Reunited with Family

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 9 2001 (IPS) - Argentina’s Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association, which has been searching since 1976 for the missing children of political prisoners who were “disappeared” during the 1976-83 dictatorship, identified number 70: the grandson of the group’s vice-president.

“I feel privileged, but I believe all grandmothers have a right to know their grandchildren, and to help them come into contact with their true identity,” Rosa Roisinblit, the grandmother of Rodolfo Pérez – who believed he was the biological son of two civilian employees of the air force – told IPS.

Pérez, who was kidnapped at birth, was found last year, but the Grandmothers did not decide to go public with the case until now. Meanwhile, the couple who illegally adopted him and falsified his documents, Francisco Gómez and Maria Teodora Jofré, are facing prosecution.

The Grandmothers have a list of nearly 500 minors who were killed, abducted with their parents or born into captivity during the years of repression, when according to official figures, around 11,000 real or suspected opponents of the de facto military regime were “disappeared”.

Seventy of the missing minors have been found since 1976. But last year, the number shot up from one or two a year on average to six.

“The kids are older now, they are more aware, and there is more awareness in society and a greater willingness to report suspicions. Meanwhile, the data continues to pile up,” said Roisinblit, who coordinated a publicity campaign last year.

Through ads placed in the broadcasting and print media, the Grandmothers invited any young people with doubts about their identity to visit their offices and take a blood test. The campaign was made possible by the fact that the young people being sought are now adults.

In the case of Roisinblit’s grandson, the association received two anonymous tips last April that turned out to be accurate. Ironically, the person who received the information was Rodolfo’s biological sister, Mariana Pérez, who works with both of her grandmothers in the human rights group.

Mariana, 23, was 15 months old the day in 1978 when her mother Liliana Roisinblit was abducted from her home and her father José Manuel Pérez was taken from his workplace. Both of her parents were held captive in air force installations, while the little girl was handed over to her paternal grandparents.

Liliana, meanwhile, was eight months pregnant. “The last thing I heard about her was that she gave birth on Nov 15, 1978 in the Naval Hospital – I knew that from the testimony of two survivors – that she asked for her son to be placed on her chest, and that she named him Rodolfo,” said Roisinblit.

When the baby was four days old, his mother was forced to leave the hospital, and no more was heard about either of them.

“I’ve been looking for him since he was in his mother’s womb,” said the activist. “Now that I’ve found him, a new stage is beginning, because if his appropriators belonged to Aeronautics, they must know what happened to my daughter. I suppose she is no longer alive, but I want them to tell me what they did with her.”

The reaction of Mariana, who received the anonymous tips, amounted to a real “transgression,” said Roisinblit, because when the young woman realised it was information about her family, instead of telling the association, she went to the place where her brother worked, told him who she was, and gave him the information that had been anonymously handed in.

Rodolfo Pérez, who suspected that he was adopted, reacted positively. That afternoon, after reading the literature on the association and the anonymous information that Mariana gave him, he went to the Grandmothers office to submit himself to the genetic tests that would determine whether he was the son of Liliana and José.

When the young man showed up, his maternal grandmother, Argentina Pérez – another member of the association – wept when she saw that Rodolfo looked “just like” her missing son.

The blood tests were sent to a genetic databank in the U.S. city of Seattle, and Roisinblit, while in Boston on business involving the association, received the report from the geneticist identifying Rodolfo as her grandson.

“I flew back immediately. We set up a reunion with my other granddaughter, and when he came in and saw me, he came up and gave me a kiss and a hug. It was all very simple,” she said.

Nevertheless, Roisinblit knows from experience that it will not be easy. “He took it really well, he did the tests and agreed to see us, but he does not want to give up those who raised him, or do anything against them. He feels committed to them, in debt…and I understand him.”

The couple who raised Adolfo are currently being prosecuted in federal court, in a case that is being handled with great discretion. “We do not want to know anything about them or make anything public because we do not want Rodolfo to see us as responsible if they end up in prison,” she explained.

Mariana Pérez, meanwhile, who has helped her grandmothers look for her brother since she was small, said “I showed up at his workplace and just blurted out that I was the daughter of disappeared people, that I was looking for my brother, and that in Grandmothers we had received a tip that mentioned him.”

After the young man underwent the tests, a personal relationship began to develop between Mariana and Rodolfo.

“We really wanted to be brother and sister,” said Mariana. “At times I was afraid it wasn’t him, and I believed I would not be able to start searching again. I didn’t want to lose him anymore. I think that’s when I realised for the first time just what it meant to have a brother who was missing for 22 years.”