Life is going uphill again for Argentine grandmothers who wonder, day in and day out, where are your grandchildren. They have been overcoming obstacles for 47 years, tearing down walls and recovering stories. First were the dictator’s lies Jorge Rafael Videla; today are the attacks of the Far-right government of Javier MileiVox’s main ally on the other side of the Atlantic.
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo look askance towards the 50th anniversary of its foundationwhich will arrive in 2027. Something else will also happen that year: the Milei mandate and Argentina will look to the polls again in the hope of building majorities to remove the extreme right from the Government.
This Tuesday, coinciding with the 47th anniversary of its creation, the women who continue to lead Abuelas today will tell Argentina and the world that they are not alone in the face of attacks from the extreme right, that seeks to put obstacles in the search for more than 300 men and women, children of missing people, who were stolen at birth by the Videla dictatorship and handed over to families of military or accomplice civilians.
They all grew up under a false identity, without knowing who his real parents were or what was the relationship of its appropriators with the Argentine dictatorship, responsible for more than 30,000 disappearances and of robbery of nearly 500 children.
Grandmothers’ fight has allowed 137 grandchildren to be located appropriated by the dictatorship, who have recovered their true identity. The search for the missing 300 is not only focused on Argentina, but there are also open avenues in some countries in Europeamong which Spain, with a significant number of Argentine migrants, occupies a prominent place.
The search campaign for the stolen grandchildren who could live on this side of the Ocean was promoted by the European Argentine Network for the Right to Identitycreated 20 years ago in Madrid in close collaboration with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.
“In 2004, the network became the first point outside Argentina to search for grandchildren,” he points out. Public Martha Bello, one of the people responsible for this organization in Spain.
Along these lines, he highlighted that although this group “remains active and continues to receive and concentrate searches” for possible cases in Spain, “with the Milei government there is no kind of support nor interest. Now it is, more than ever, in our hands.” “With other Argentine governments the network had help. Now it is zero, null,” he stressed.
“In previous governments we knew the embassy and consulate staff, and the diplomatic staff knew perfectly well what we did, and if they had any questions they would contact us. Now, without any explanation, a huge void has been left“Bello adds.
Archived investigation
The search in Spain It even reached the National Court. In 1996, the judge Baltasar Garzón He took advantage of the case opened in Madrid against the Argentine military to promote an investigation into the possible existence of cases of children of missing Argentineans in this country.
According to different documents accessed Publicmembers of the National Police and the Civil Guard then designed a joint investigation plan that included the “request to the Spanish Information and Intelligence Services of all data in their possession regarding the arrival to this country of people of Argentine nationality linked to the Armed and Security Forces of that country, or of those who have reference to their far-right ideology“.
The working group made up of police and civil guards carried out different investigations in several cities in Spain and worked on some specific cases of possible stolen children. The file with the results of these investigations It was declared secret and later archived along with the rest of the case opened by Garzón against those responsible for the Argentine dictatorship.
Milei’s Government He is against all this. Your vice president, Victoria Villarruelhas a long history of defending soldiers convicted by the dictatorship. His speech, of a marked denialist natureis today installed in the Argentine Government.
Last August, the far-right Executive published in the Official Gazette the decree by which it eliminates the “Special Investigation Unit for the disappearance of children as a consequence of the actions of State terrorism” (UEI), dependent on the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI).
“In the face of hatred, denialism, the plain and simple demand for the dictatorship, the defunding and the destruction of all instances of guarantee of rights In the public sphere, we reaffirm our rejection and our call for unity and solidarity among citizens, social, political, cultural and human rights organizations,” he said. Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in an article published in its August monthly newsletter.
blood samples
The denialism of the Milei Government also reaches the Argentine embassy in Spain. In 2021, the then Executive of Cristina Kirchner had launched an international campaign under the motto #ArgentinaTeBusca together with CONADI and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
As confirmed Public through diplomatic sources, at the Argentine Consulate in Madrid blood samples were taken to people who had raised doubts about his origins.
The material collected – following a broader protocol that included support and advice to those affected – was later sent to Argentina for incorporation into the National Genetic Data Banka key step to try to determine if these are cases of baby appropriations during the dictatorship.
Information campaigns on the search for children of missing people through the network of Argentine consulates in Spain are now affected by the denialist course that the Milei Government has taken, completely distant from the claims of human rights organizations.
As this newspaper has been able to confirm, today They are totally paralyzed publication campaigns aimed at encouraging people with doubts about their identity to approach diplomatic delegations.
“A hug for Grandmas”
Faced with this situation, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Argentine European Network for the Right to Identity call for strengthening the search for those babies, today men and women between 41 and 48 years old approximately.
Coinciding with the National Day for the Right to Identity –established in 2004 by the Government of Néstor Kirchner– which is commemorated this Tuesday, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo has launched an initiative with the aim of “making visible, once again, the search for the 300 grandsons and granddaughters that needs to be found and the defense of the human right to identity”.
“In times when attempts are made trivialize state terrorismminimize the crimes of the dictatorship, distort the history of social movements and human rights organizations and stigmatize shared projects, we continue to bet on loving and collective construction“, point out the promoters of this campaign, which has as its motto “A Hug for Grandmothers.”
The campaign that will circulate on social networks urges to publish “a photo, a phrase, a reflection, a song or whatever you want to give to the Grandmothers on their anniversary” along with the tags #UnAbrazoParaAbuelas #AbuelasEsIdentidad #abuelas47años.
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