The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo are getting old. Every day the hopes of finding their grandchildren, who were stolen and given up for adoption under Argentina’s dictatorship, are fading.
As many as 500 children were taken from their imprisoned mothers, most of whom then disappeared under the country’s brutal 1976-1983 military rule.
Most of the children were gifted to people close to the dictatorship, keen to have them raised as regime loyalists.
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Only about 130 have so far been found, and the search for the others — now adults in their 40s and 50s — continues.
The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo is an organization founded in 1977 by women trying to find their arrested daughters — and the babies they bore in captivity.
These “abuelas” take their name from the Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires where brave women held protests to demand information on the whereabouts of their loved ones. They did so in vain.
As the original grandmothers get older, the organization has since been populated by a younger generation of researchers and councillors.
The rights body holds regular public meetings in the hopes of reaching people who may have questions about who they are — questions that can be difficult to confront — and convincing them to come forward.
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Those who successfully go through a verification process can have their stolen identities “restituted.”
But it is an increasingly difficult endeavor. As time goes on, those who think they may be the children of disappeared women are ever less likely to come forward.
“They come to us in various stages of doubt, some have carried the burden in silence for 20 years, sometimes more, without talking to anyone — not even their spouse,” Laura Rodriguez, coordinator of the Grandmothers’ identity project told AFP.
Doubts can be triggered by a lack of physical resemblance to their parents, the absence of photos of their mothers while pregnant, or holes in the family history.
Some make several appointments for a consultation, but never show up.
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Since June 2019, there have been no new restitutions, due in large part to the coronavirus pandemic putting the brakes on the Grandmothers’ activities — research and interviews with potential victims.
Six of the original grandmothers died during the pandemic.
‘Leap into the unknown’
At Moron, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Buenos Aires, six outreach meetings are planned by the Grandmothers and Argentina’s human rights ombudsman for the coming weeks.
But taking that first step is not easy.
“It is a leap into the unknown,” said Guillermo Amarilla Molfino, once known as “Grandson No 98” who said it took him years to seek help and then go through the restitution process.
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He was reunited with his brothers, and has acted as an adviser to the Grandmothers outreach team.
“There are many fears, there is guilt, this guilt that makes us stay quiet: ‘Why do I doubt my parents, why do I betray those who gave me food, a roof over my head?’” he remembers of his own experience.
“Silence can become an ally with which one lives,” added Molfino. And finally accepting you are not who you thought you were can “feel like handing over your life” to someone else.
It is a difficult task for the researchers too, said Luciano Lahiteau, one of the Grandmothers team.
One needs to carefully balance an empathetic shoulder, he explained, with the “duty, not necessarily pleasant, of… picking out the reliable information from what a person tells us.”
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Lottery, or loss
Lahiteau and other researchers take the volunteers’ stories and documentation, when available, and check these against civil and hospital registers, and evidence gathered from military trials.
If evidence for a match turns up, DNA can be cross-checked with a data bank holding genetic information on many, though not all, of the families searching for a missing grandchild.
When a match is found, “it is like winning the lottery!” said Rodgriguez.
But more often than not, hopes are dashed.
“We receive a lot of people who are not children of disappeared” women, said Rodriguez.
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Yet, even for those who go through the process in vain, “it does a lot for identity,” said Lahiteau.
“It makes it possible to recognize: ‘OK, I am someone who has doubts about my identity; I have the right to try and find out where I come from,” he explained.
“Really, every person comes out of the process better than they entered,” added Rodriguez.
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(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 19, 2011, the president of the human rights organization Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini (C), and other members of the association, are pictured during a gathering after the Argentine Congress recognized the group on its 35th anniversary, in Buenos Aires. - The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo are getting old. Every day, the hopes of finding their grandchildren stolen and given up for adoption under Argentina's dictatorship are fading. (Photo by Maxi FAILLA / AFP)
The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source
The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.
A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.
This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.
On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.
The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”
Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.
Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.
“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.
The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.
The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.
The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.
Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.
Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.
The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.
The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.
This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.
Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza
Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.
Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”
The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.
“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.
Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”
But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”
On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.
