Argentine stolen at birth, now 32, learns identity

Source: Associated Press

Argentine stolen at birth, now 32, learns identity
Michael Warren, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 23, 7:34 pm ET

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – The search is finally over for Abel Madariaga, whose pregnant wife was kidnapped by Argentine security forces 33 years ago. After decades of doubt and loneliness, of searching faces in the street in hopes they might be related, Madariaga has found his son."I never stopped thinking I would find him," the 59-year-old father said, squeezing his son's arm during a packed news conference Tuesday.

"For the first time, I know who I was. Who I am," the young man said, still marveling at his new identity: Francisco Madariaga Quintela, a name he only learned last week.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights group believes about 400 children were stolen at birth from women who were kidnapped and killed as part of the 1976-1983 dictatorship's "dirty war" against political dissidents, which killed as many as 30,000 people.

Madariaga and his wife, Silvia Quintela, were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group targeted for elimination by government death squads. He last saw his wife — a 28-year-old surgeon who treated the poor in a Buenos Aires suburb — being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train on Jan. 17, 1977.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100224/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_argentina_dirty_war_children

:wow:

countless others tortured, but a small price to pay for the first grand experiment of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman and his economic shock treatment theories. Of course some of those ungrateful recipients had to be tortured and murdered into understanding the glories of free market capitalism.

Written, of course, in :sarcasm: ; angry, bitter, :sarcasm:

...this is Friedman's fault. Sheesh....

Is it Marx's fault that 10s of millions died under Soviet rule?

I get so tired of seeing people place blame on tertiary participants. How about blaming the assholes that rounded up people and murdered them in front of their families?

There has been free market capitalism in this, and other, countries for decades. Why does this not happen everywhere it is implemented? Because it is not the root cause. It is a strawman to excuse the actions of sociopathic leaders.

It WAS absolutely a root cause there, and Chile and other places. And yes, the assholes that did the dirty work are to blame equally. If Marx had personally gone to Stalin and encouraged the communist version of the shock doctrine, then yes, he would have been guilty and had blood on his hands as do Friedman and the "Chicago Boys". I have never been one to subscribe to the theory that only the leaders are to blame. As someone who will never know how many family members were slaughtered by the Nazis, I have always bristled when I hear "Hitler did this" or whatever. It took countless average citizens who were willing to do their part in this incomprehensible atrocity, and in that way, I completely agree with your reply. But having studied a little of the history of the implementation of economic free-market "shock therapy", those who, like Friedman, participated in its imposition, also have the blood of innocents on their hands. Plenty of guilt, unfortunately, to spread around. Just for another example, how about the Central American right wing death squads? Trained at the School Of the Americas at Fort Benning. Yes, those murderous thugs in Guatemala, El Salvador etc are guilty. So are those who trained them here and so are the politicians that supported and funded that training...

as long as the "leaders" are left blameless and unpunished then it will continue to happen...

I would love to have listened in on how they convinced these right wing death squads were convinced that they were doing the right thing for their country.

Do Bush and Cheney not have blood on their hands? Do the dogmatic "free-market" economists that advised and helped persuade them to actively support Pinochet et al not have that same blood on them?

Crackpot Milton actually said that it was good thing that Salvador Allende was assassinated because otherwise Allende would have ushered in a repressive regime that would have killed thousands.

In reality, of course, it was Pinochet, not Allende, who ushered in a repressive regime that killed thousands; while Allende actually rejected Soviet advisors' advice to become an authoritarian ruler in order to save himself. Allende took the "democratic" part of "democratic socialism" so seriously that he was probably unique in the history of world politics for willingly letting himself get killed rather than to physically protect himself by becoming a despot.

You mean, (to use a different example) like School of the Americas? Do you think they have no guilt over Central American atrocities?

remembered Verdi has been there already - Il Trovetore!

Yes, I know it's not nearly the same thing this guy went through, not by a long shot, but the sentiment he expressed at the end of the article resonates with me. I'm the... product? result?... of what's called a "closed adoption". No party to it- including the adopted child!- knows who the others are, and I'm not legally allowed to know anything about my birth parents; I'm not even entitled to a photograph.

Events that occurred in my adoptive family when I was 19 made me very, very bitter toward my adoptive parents. Things I've learned since, a few things my adoptive mother told me several years ago, made clear to me that the "wrong" people adopted me (she went out of her way to keep silent about my sister's biological mother- both of us were adopted- trying to contact her, for example). From what I've been told, I very clearly would have been much, much better understood by my biological parents, who, according to the thin and flimsy "family history" sheet my adoptive parents got, share many of the same traits I do, most specifically musical ability, which my adoptive parents, in the end, appreciated not at all.

I know that doesn't compare to the horror story of this guy's life. That's not the point. "To have your identity is the most beautiful thing there is." There are other reasons- in 1975, the year I was born, genetic screening for disease was nowhere near what it is today. My adoptive mother tells me that if there were any cause for concern, it would have been reported in the family history summary they received, but I'm not terribly comforted by that. Still, by law, I'm not allowed to know anything, period.

I don't even care about a reunion of any sort. I'm fine with it if my biological parents still don't even want to meet me. That said, I really would like to be able to look at a photo and say to myself, "this is why my hair is brown and curly, this is why I have musical talent, this is why this, that, and the other thing."

I realize I'm entitled to search on my own behalf. However, the state is also entitled to throw as many roadblocks as possible into my path during that search, and I just don't feel right about that at all. Every child born deserves to know his or her origins, even if only through a photograph. We're more enlightened on the subject today- for example, had I been born decades prior to when I was, I might not even have been able to inherit from my father.- but still, there's a part of my knowledge of self that is and will probably always be missing. I do feel somehow cheated and a little incomplete by that fact.

Be assured there are some people who are horrified by the parents they were dealt by fate, find the links between them and their biological parents to be painful, and the source of years and years of suffering, loneliness, and fear, and are terrified that anything they've learned about them during their childhood years just might be hereditary.

Maybe your answer will come for you, yet. Don't give up. You may be surprised, in the end.

Thanks for your post.