by AFP
Grandmother
The
founder of Argentina’s leading human rights group has found her
grandson, who was taken from her daughter while she was a prisoner of
the military dictatorship in the 1970s. A DNA test solved the mystery,
one of many from the “dirty war” era.
An emotional Estela Barnes de Carlotto,
founder of the “Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, announced that her
long hunt had ended.
“Thanks to God, thanks to life, because I
didn’t want to die without embracing him and soon I will be able to,”
the 83-year-old grandmother said at a news conference covered live on
national TV. She has not yet met him.
The now 36-year-old man came forward to have a
DNA test taken and have the sample compared in a national database
because he had doubts about his own identity, said Guido Carlotto, a son
of de Carlotto and the human rights secretary for the Buenos Aires
Province.
The family didn’t release the man’s name, but
Argentine media identified him as Ignacio Hurban, a pianist and
composer who is director of a music school in the city of Olavarria,
southwest of Buenos Aires.
“The empty picture frames will have his
picture,” Estela Barnes de Carlotto told France 24. “I’ve seen his
(photo), it’s beautiful, he’s an artist, he’s a good guy and he searched
for me, he searched for me.
“He achieved what the grandmothers have said,
they (the victims) will find us like we have found them. He came to the
grandmothers, he was received, he went to CONADI (the identity
commission) and was received and listened to and today they told me he’s
my grandson with a 99.999999% (probability).”
Son of an executed activist
De Carlotto said the test revealed the man is
the son of Laura Carlotto, a university student activist who was
executed in August 1978 two months after she gave birth while being held
under the dictatorship’s brutal campaign against guerrillas and other opponents of the regime.
The announcement was major news in Argentina,
drowning out coverage of the recent default forced on the country by a
legal dispute with US investors.
De Carlotto is considered a symbol of the
struggle for justice for victims of the 1976-83 dictatorship that,
according to official statistics, “disappeared” at least 13,000 people.
Activists say the death toll was more than twice as high.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner
called de Carlotto when she learned the news. “Cristina called me crying
… I told her, ‘Yes, Cristina it’s true.’ She said, ‘What great joy,’
and we cried together,” the long-term activist said.
“The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo”
believe around 500 children were seized from people killed by the
dictatorship and given to couples who supported the government. The
group has so far helped to identify 114 of the illegally adopted
children in a campaign that has stirred painful memories.
The Grandmothers pushed for the creation of
the DNA database that enables people illegally adopted to determine
their real identity.
Two former dictators were eventually convicted, along with others, of systematically kidnapping children. Jorge Rafael Videla died in prison in May 2013 while serving a 50-year sentence. Reynaldo Bignone remains in prison.
A ‘form of reparation’
De Carlotto said the parents who received her
daughter’s child “may have done so innocently,” not knowing the
newborn’s origins. “We don’t have the whole story yet, but we are going
to get it,” she said.
Laura Carlotto was a Peronist militant
detained while pregnant in November 1977 along with the baby’s father,
Oscar Montoya, a member of the Montoneros guerrilla group. He also was
killed in captivity.
The baby was taken shortly after being born
in a military hospital and his mother was executed soon afterwards, de
Carlotto said.
Her daughter was killed with a shot to the
head and to the belly to try to hide the fact that she had been pregnant
and may have given birth, said de Carlotto, who was given the young
woman’s remains.
De Carlotto said the identification of her
grandson is a form of reparation for the brutality of the dictatorship,
but it isn’t an end to the struggle for justice or a resolution of the
issue of missing children.
“The search for the rest must continue,” she said.
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