Highlights
- A national campaign is under way to find the estimated 300 children of Argentine dissidents murdered during the 'Dirty War'.
- The campaign targets children born between 1975-1983, and have doubts about their families.
- Guillermo Roisinblit says he is still coming to terms with the recent discovery of his real parents.
More than four decades after the fall of Argentina's dictatorship, the government's forensic genetics program continues to search for the cohort known as the “lost children of Argentina”.
More than 130 have already been located both in the country and abroad, but the fate of a further 300 children remains a mystery.
The International Campaign for the Right to Identity 2021 is on the hunt for the descendants of people abducted and killed by the country's military dictatorship during what is known as the 'Dirty War'.
If you were born between 1975 and 1983 and have doubts about your identity, you could be one of the sons or daughters we are looking for.'Argentina is looking for you' campaign
Claudia Poblete and Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit were two of the missing children. They were given new families and identities and raised to believe that they were the biological children of their adoptive parents.
They, like many others, have now been able to rebuild their lives as adults, after finding out the truth about their pasts, “...thanks to the genetic database that was set up to identify the origins of dozens of potential stolen children," said Ms Poblete and Mr Roisinblit in an interview with SBS Spanish.
Australia, home to thousands of Argentinian migrants who fled the country during the dictatorship, may hold the key to finding the remaining children.
The first large influx of Argentinians into Australia arrived in the 1970s, after the country returned to military rule under General Jorge Videla.
Under the repressive new regime, thousands of armed activists who fought against the junta, as well as many who peacefully opposed the regime, such as members of left-wing political parties, artists, writers, and intellectuals, were abducted, tortured and in some cases murdered.
This, together with a galloping economic crisis and high levels of unemployment, forced record levels of Argentinians to emigrate to other countries in search of better lives.
More than 80 per cent of Argentinians arriving in Australia during the 1970s were assisted immigrants.
Currently, there are at least 7,500 people who identify themselves as descendants of Argentinians, according to the 2021 Australian Census data.
With the many discoveries of “lost children” in countries like the United States, Spain, and The Netherlands, Professor Fernanda Peñaloza from the School of Latin American Studies at the University of Sydney believes that the possibility of finding “missing children” in Australia, cannot be ruled out.
The Argentinian embassy continues to promote the International Campaign for the Right to Identity 2021, also known as “Argentina is looking for you”, urging Argentinians in Australia who have doubts about their identities to come forward and seek answers.
The call made by the international campaign is directed to those born in Argentina between 1975 and 1983.
Professor Peñaloza says the campaign is a vital initiative.
“The current campaign which intends to find the children of the victims of the dictatorship who may be abroad, may target one or two people, but in reality, [it targets many more] as it also may impact family networks, friends, previous and subsequent generations,” she said.
“This type of horror has not only generated inter-generational trauma, but also fear of visiting these memories of horror and also of passing on the stories to the next generation."
Claudia Poblete's solved case file published on the website of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. Credit: Organización Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.
I began to have doubts (about my true identity) the same day a girl came to see me saying that there was a good chance that I was her brother.Guillermo Roisinblit
"That girl - Mariana - found me through two anonymous phone calls that were made to the office of the organisation, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo," Mr Roisinblit said.
Claudia Poblete with her biological parents. Credit: Supplied
Mr Roisinblit said he had not had the best experience with his adoptive family, which he now refers to as his “appropriators” a common term used in Argentina.
He says he grew up in a dysfunctional and broken family and had a restless childhood from a very young age.
“I was raised as the only child of parents who later ended up divorcing in the middle of my childhood. [My father] was an extremely violent person. What I remember the most was escaping from one state to another, from one province to another, to try to avoid him,” he recalls.
“I remember that he had very few friends."
At the age of 21, Mariana came to see him at work. She gave him a book that the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo had published, which reported on the cases of more than 500 children who had disappeared during the Argentinian dictatorship. It turned out she was his sister.
“I opened the book and started looking for information about her and I found a black and white photo of a man who looked exactly like me - my biological father," Mr Roisinblit said.
"It was as if I had travelled back in time."
Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit's biological parents, Jose and Patricia. Credit: Supplied
It was then that he began to learn about the horrors that his parents had lived through, reconstructing their story, based on the stories of his grandmother and the people who knew them.
He discovered that his parents were kidnapped on October 6, 1978, when his mother was eight months pregnant. His sister was around 15 months old, and miraculously not taken as well, thanks to the fact that her parents left her behind at a relative’s house.
Guillermo Perez Roisinblit sits in the room where detained pregnant women like his mother were held by the military dictatorship's secret police. Credit: Supplied
Most of the victims were taken to clandestine detention centres set up by the military forces. Mr Roisinblit's mother, Patricia, was kidnapped and taken to a notorious torture centre set up at the Navy School of Mechanics, known in Spanish as “La ESMA”.
For Mr Roisinblit, the most difficult part was learning that his mother was kept prisoner while heavily pregnant, by the very same man he grew up calling “papá” (dad), who at the time worked as an air force intelligence officer.
“He later confessed to me that he collaborated in keeping my mum and dad captive, and that when there were no guards on weekends, he would give them a little extra food - as if what he did was something extraordinary," Mr Roisinblit said.
Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit's solved case as it appeared on the website of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
Like Ms Poblete, he took a DNA test that confirmed his identity. Since then, everything in his life changed, from his name to his religion, since he discovered that his mother had been Jewish, while he had been raised as a Catholic.
He learned that his father was a “montonero”, a member of a student guerrilla organisation that waged an armed struggle against the military, and that he was studying law, a career that Mr Roisinblit had also chosen for himself. He said that the similarities with his father, according to the stories of those who knew him, bore an uncanny resemblance.
'Every time I laugh, my dad laughs with me'
"(Even) The sound of my laughter is apparently identical to my dad’s, so usually I say that every time I laugh, my dad laughs with me," he said.
Like Ms Poblete, he says it took him time to come to terms to the fact that the people who he had believed to be his parents were in fact his appropriators.
“I didn't see myself as their victim. In fact, it was the other way around. I thought that as the judicial investigation progressed, they became my victims," he said.
He admits that at first, he tried to avoid harming his adoptive parents.
But, over time, he says he understood that he could not preserve a relationship which was "...based on such a huge lie".
"Having all those memories now, knowing that those people were not [my parents], that they deprived me of my real parents, is a hugely painful disappointment," he said.
I think (the campaign) is worthwhile, for ourselves, and for the families who are looking for loved ones, asking; Where are they? What happened to them? Are they alive?Claudia Poblete, returned granddaughter.
Today, 20 years after discovering the truth, Mr Roisinblit, like Ms Poblete, has built his own family.
In the relationship I have with my children, I try to heal and cure the absence of my relationship with my real parents.Guillermo Roisinblit
"I try to imagine my dad constantly. It is an extremely important process in my life," Mr Roisinblit said.
For Ms Poblete, discovering the truth about her parents, "...was something much broader," because it included the work and effort of grandmothers, brothers, sisters and entire families who never gave up trying to find their missing relatives.
Currently, there are entire families that are still searching for the missing pieces that would help them complete and rebuild their family memories and histories.
If you have doubts about your identity and you were born between 1975 and 1983, you can contact:
- (Canberra)
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
