AFP, BUENOS AIRES
One of hundreds of Argentinian children taken from their parents and given up for adoption during the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship had been found after a long search, activists said on Friday.
For decades, members of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo rights group have been trying to find their daughters — and the now-adult babies they bore in captivity.
On Friday, the group announced the discovery of “grandchild No. 138,” the son of political activists Marta Enriqueta Pourtale and Juan Carlos Villamayor, who went missing in 1976.
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo president Estela de Carlotto smiles during a ceremony announcing the discovery of missing child No. 138, who disappeared during Argentina’s 1976 to 1983 dictatorship, at a former detention center in Buenos Aires on Friday.
Photo: Reuters
“This is the 138th case resolved in these 47 years of relentless search for truth and identity,” organization president Estela de Carlotto told a news conference held in a former torture center.
“On Dec. 10, 1976, the couple was abducted from their home in Buenos Aires in an operation carried out by plainclothes personnel. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant,” Carlotto added.
Pourtale and Villamayor were members of the Montoneros left-wing guerrilla group.
They were later seen in ESMA, a notorious center where more than 5,000 political prisoners were taken, with many tortured and murdered, humanitarian organizations have said.
Few survived.
“This is where the birth of the 138th grandchild may have taken place,” Carlotto said in ESMA, a former navy mechanical school that is now a museum and place of remembrance.
“So far, more than 30 births have been recorded in this clandestine center,” she added.
The Argentinian National Commission for the Right to Identity had been working since 1999 to find the whereabouts of Pourtale and Villamayor’s son, whose identity was confirmed by a DNA test.
The man, who was not named, has a brother called Diego Antonio, Pourtale’s son with a previous partner, Carlotto said.
“I’m overwhelmed with emotion,” Antonio said in an audio message sent from Spain, where he lives.
“Thank you very much, Grandmothers. You are a national pride, a pride for all Argentines,” he said.
The “grandmothers” take their name from the Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires where women held protests to demand information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.
