Argentina, two other stolen grandchildren found: they are the 132nd and 131st: they had been kidnapped, tortured and made to disappear

ROME – 2022 ends with good news in Argentina: the grandmothers who are looking for their grandchildren stolen by the military regime have managed to find two more in the last week (after a three-year stop in which it seemed impossible to recover any more). I am grandson number 132 and grandson number 131, which is to say the 132nd and 131st that the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo have managed to identify since they started their business in 1977, with the aim of tracing all children who disappeared during the last military dictatorship, born of their killed daughters.

Who are the last two grandchildren found. The latest found is called Juan José Morales: today he is 47 years old, and he was kidnapped together with his mother, Mercedes del Valle Morales, his grandparents (Toribia Romero de Morales and José Ramón Morales) and three uncles (José Silvano Morales, Juan Ceferino Morales and Julio César Morales) on May 20, 1976. These are names we write with a certain emotion since they have now re-emerged from decades of oblivion: they were kidnapped, tortured, deprived of their child, and made to disappear. They are names without graves. Erasing people’s lives was at the time – we have recalled it several times from these pages, closely following the ESMA trials – one of the constants of the regime (1976-1983). When the kidnapping of Juan José took place, the dictatorship had been in force for almost two months, after the coup of March 21 of the same year and the disappearances were already countless. The Abuelas have preferred to keep confidential for now the identity of the 131st, found last week, and returned to the biological family: she asked for some time “to get used to the reality discovered”. All we know about him is that he is 44 years old and that he is the son of Lucía Nadín and Aldo Quevedo, originally from the province of Mendoza: they were born in San Carlos on December 13, 1947 (Lucia) and November 26, 1941 (Aldo) and were both kidnapped and killed by the military regime.

Two lives stolen. The kidnapping of Juan José Morales took place in Monteros, Tucumán, in northern Argentina, when the boy was just 9 months old. His mother disappeared at the hands of the military regime and was never heard from again: she disappeared. As for the 131st grandchild, we know from Estela de Carlotto, president of the ‘Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo’, that he was entrusted, immediately after giving birth, to a couple complicit in the Argentine dictatorship. His real family called him by the nickname ‘Negro’, or ‘Negrito’.

Where did they grow up, unaware of the truth. Juan José was raised on the farm where his mother, Mercedes del Valle Morales, worked. The day the woman disappeared, kidnapped, the child remained there with the owners of the farm. Only upon their death in 2004 did the adoptive brothers give him his original identity document, revealing that he was not the couple’s biological son and that his real mother had been kidnapped by the military regime. Of the 131st grandchild we know that at the time of the kidnapping, his mother was in the second or third month of pregnancy and that the grandmother was not aware of it (and therefore did not know she had a grandchild to look for). His parents were active in the Prt-Erp clandestine movement and had moved to Buenos Aires. Schoolmates called Lucia ‘Chiquita’ and Aldo ‘Dipy’. They were kidnapped on October 9, 1977 and taken to the ‘Club Atlético’ and ‘El Banco’ detention and torture centres.

Research. Juan José therefore turned to the Tucumán node of the Network for the right to the identity of grandmothers and the National Commission for the right to identity to recover his story. And so, since the identity of the biological father is not yet known, the Abuelas have launched an appeal to find information on the missing woman. After four years of research, thanks to the DNA bank of the abuelas and thanks to the exhumation of the body of the “adoptive” father (and therefore to the certainty of biological incompatibility between him and Juan Josè) it has come to ascertain that he is the son of Mercedes del Valle Morales. In the case of grandson 131 it was possible to understand, from the testimonies of the survivors, that Lucía was taken away from ‘El Banco’ between March and April 1978 to give birth, perhaps precisely at the ex-Esma which today has become a meeting place for the associations who fight for human rights. We will know more about him when he feels like telling her story publicly. For now it is necessary to respect her silence. Of course, for both of them this will be a truly unforgettable New Year’s Eve.

Still many stolen grandchildren to find. There are almost 300 children, now men and women, who were taken from their parents during the dictatorship. “They are people who live among us with false identities – explained Estela – and we are determined to fight in 2023 to find them all”.