Buenos Aires – The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo organization found the appropriate 133 grandson during the dictatorship, a nephew of Mario Santucho, founding leader of the PRT-ERP guerrilla organization, whose mother, Cristina Navajas, was kidnapped in 1976 and remains missing.
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The finding was announced this Friday, July 28, by the humanitarian group at a press conference attended by Miguel Santucho, one of Navajas’ three sons, and their father, Julio César Santucho.
“This search cannot be sustained without everyone’s accompaniment. I always had several arms supporting me. That was very important. My thoughts today are for my brothers and sisters who continue to search. I wish that what happens to me happens to all of them “said Miguel Santucho.
“I have new nephews. The family has expanded to at least three people: a brother and two nephews,” he celebrated in front of a room full of journalists and also human rights defenders at the museum site of memory that works in the former School de Mecánica de la Armada, one of the clandestine detention centers that operated during the dictatorship.
The recovered grandson was reunited this Friday with his family, shortly before the press conference in which he did not participate. The brothers had previously met over a video call.
This is how the Grandmothers counter changes in the House for the Identity, after the announcement of the #grandson133. Emotion because his brother Miguel and his father Julio Santucho also change the number, who were able to hug him. And this in the ExEsma, to the cry of Cristina and Nélida Navajas, present! pic.twitter.com/v1FNJs0LAB
— Maru Ludueña (@maruska) July 28, 2023
“He expressed the desire to meet us. He was happy and surprised. The magnitude of what he found will take time to elaborate,” said Miguel Santucho.
“I can’t stop telling you that he’s beautiful, he’s a beautiful boy. We meet him today and he knows what awaits him. I have the feeling of having found a luminous being. The hug we gave each other is forever,” he added.
“Thought for Grandma”
The person found is a man who spontaneously approached the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. He had been appropriated by a couple made up of a military man and a nurse who already had a daughter 20 years older, the Grandmothers indicated.
It was the daughter of that couple who informed him about five years ago that they were not really his parents. The Grandmothers did not communicate details about where the recovered grandson currently lives, nor if the appropriators are still alive or not.
The discovery of grandson 133 occurs after the death in 2012 of his grandmother Nélida Gómez de Navajas, who was the organization’s secretary.
“When I found out, my first thought was of my grandmother. She was an incredible fighter. She held me up and started me on the search. Then I thought of my mom and how strong she was to sustain that pregnancy and even after I take the child to support the other women,” recalled Miguel Santucho.
“Victory of democracy”
Cristina Navajas, a member of the PRT-ERP, was kidnapped when she was two months pregnant, on July 13, 1976, along with her sister-in-law Manuela Santucho and Alicia Raquel D’Ambra. According to testimonies from survivors, she was taken to various clandestine detention centers.
In the apartment from where they were taken, three small children were left alone: the two children of Cristina Navajas and another of Manuela Santucho. There the grandmother Nélida rescued them. The two brothers were later taken from Argentina to Italy, where their father was.
At the time of his mother’s kidnapping, Miguel Santucho was nine months old and his brother Camilo three years old.
“It is a victory for democracy and a defeat for the dictatorship, because they wanted to take our children from us and we are recovering them,” said Father Julio César Santucho.
The PRT-ERP was a guerrilla organization oriented trotskyist who acted in the 1960s and 1970s, the same time as the Peronists of Montoneros.
Mario Santucho died in 1976, in a confrontation when a military group surrounded the home where he was staying along with other PRT-ERP leaders. It is unknown where his remains are. Of his relatives, 10 remain missing.
The Argentine dictatorship (1976-83) caused some 30,000 disappearances, according to human rights organizations. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo are still looking for some 300 grandchildren born during the captivity of their mothers.
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