Last Monday, Adriana, a 40-year-old woman who didn’t want her surname released, found out her true heritage and was able to contact her mother’s mother on Tuesday. Adriana was one of the thousands of babies who got taken away from left-wing activists and adopted illegally during the “Dirty War” in Argentina.
The Dirty War was a state war that took place during the Argentine dictatorship. Military and security forces known as the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance openly targeted, hunted, killed, and disappeared over 30,000 people and their babies.
Adriana did not know she was one of these children until her supposed parents passed away and someone told her she was not their biological child. She found out on a Saturday and set out the very next Monday to meet the ‘Grandmothers’.
The ‘Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo’ campaign group is a human rights organization with the goal of finding the children stolen in this time period. They aim to return as many of them to their surviving biological families.
Led by Estela Barnes de Carlotto, who lost her own daughter during the war, the movement is spurred by the sheer power of a mother’s love, according to Carlotto. After nearly four decades of searching, she was reunited with her own grandson last year.
After four months of looking, there was no match for Adriana’s DNA in the database kept by the Grandmothers. Adriana admitted she began to lose hope, saying, “I began to think I had been abandoned, given away, sold, that they hadn’t wanted me.”
But on Monday, she finally got the call she had been longing for. The National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI) told her they had some information they would like to give her in person.
She was the daughter of Violeta Ortolani and Edgardo Garnier. Her parents were active members of a left-wing student group who met when studying engineering in the city of La Plata.
Ms. Ortolani got detained by the military in December 1976 when she was 8 months pregnant and gave birth to Adriana during captivity in January 1977. A month later Mr. Garnier, who had been searching for his mysteriously disappeared partner and child, also got captured.
Violeta, who was 21-years-old at the time of detention, nor Edgardo, who was 23, were ever seen again. Garnier’s mother continued the search for her missing grandchild for years and played a pivotal part in the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Group.
Although she was unable to attend the news conference that took place on Tuesday, she and Adriana spoke via phone call. Adriana was enchanted by the woman on the other end of the line, saying, “She is beautiful inside and out and [has] such a personality. Love is stronger than hate, always.”
This article was inspired by BBC NEWS // Argentina stolen baby reunited with relatives 40 years on