By Patrick McClure Irma Rojas de Altamiranda never gave up ...

“We are going to keep fighting, as long as we are alive.”

By Patrick McClure Irma Rojas de Altamiranda never gave up searching
for her grandchild—not after thirty years.

At two o’clock in the morning, on May 13th, 1977, she included police stations, prisons, government
ministries, hospitals, asylums, and courthouses in
in a quiet suburb south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, her search. “But I always got the same answer: ‘We
Horacio and Rosa Altamiranda were at home with do not know them. We never saw them.’” Rosa’s
their two small children when a group of heavily due date passed, Irma’s grandchild was born, yet
armed men invaded their home. The intruders ran- she still could not find any record of their detention,
sacked rooms, upturned furniture, and dragged the any warrant for their arrest, any prison registers with
couple out of their house with no regard for Rosa’s their names. How could her son’s family disappear?
delicate position; she was seven month pregnant.
They left the children with a neighbor, threw their Destitute, she sought the help of the Church.
parents into a car, and sped away. The abduction had “‘So?’” was the consolation her priest offered. “‘What
the appearance of a police operation, yet when Hora- are you looking for from me?’” In disbelief, feeling
cio’s mother, Irma Rojas de Altamiranda, went to the as if the world were falling apart around her, she left
authorities to find them, they told her that the couple the last place where she hoped to find answers. This
was not detained. was supposed to be the house of God, she thought.
“They were not of God,” she said in a low voice,
“I went everywhere,” Irma said in an interview shaking her head slowly. No, eight months of search-
in Buenos Aires, in 2004. “I went to all of the military ing yielded one result: “No one gave me anything.”
bases in the province with photographs of my son and
daughter-in-law, searching for them or information She soon learned that the disappearances of
about them.” When the military gave her no answer, people were standard procedure in the National Pro-
and with Rosa’s date to give birth fast approaching, cess of Reorganization. This was the national secu-
rity doctrine the military junta established when they
Irma first told me her story in July of 2004 at the office of the took control of the country in a coup on March 24th,
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in downtown Buenos Aires. 1976. The junta called it a “fight against subver-
She had been searching for her grandchild for 27 years and did sion.” Human rights organizations would later call
not know if she was searching for a grandson or granddaughter. it genocide. Squads of heavily armed men roamed
the cities and towns of Argentina in military and
unmarked vehicles. They kidnapped thousands of
citizens from their homes, offices, universities, and
off the street. The government held these “suspected
subversives” in a vast network of clandestine deten-
tion centers where they were systematically tortured
and killed. Among the kidnapped were children and
pregnant women, like Irma’s daughter-in-law, who
gave birth in the prisons. Save a few cases, the gov-
ernment did not return these babies to their families.

To search for them, in October of 1977, twelve
women formed a group that would become the
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Irma joined this
organization in April of 1982, when her grandchild
would be nearly five years old. The Grandmothers
searched for their grandchildren in orphanages, hos-
pital maternity wards, adoption agencies, and juvenile

1

courts. However, most of their information about yet they were searching for 500 children—captives

their grandchildren came from former detainees. to this systematic plan to erase their identities.

The Grandmothers learned that the govern- These children grew up unaware that they were the
ment established secret maternity wards at military

bases equipped with hospitals. There, on floors or victims of the dictatorship’s repression. Their “par-

tables, their daughters remained shackled, hand- ents,” who appropriated them from the military, would

cuffed, blindfolded, or gagged—or any combination never tell them the truth. The unsuspecting families

therein—when they delivered their babies. Military that adopted these children from orphanages, in “good

doctors sometimes performed premature cesareans faith,” had no way of knowing their children were

on the women. In these concentration camps, new “disappeared.” For nearly fifteen years the Grand-

life existed side-by-side with torture and death. mothers, through tips they received from the general

A child’s birth was its mother’s death sentence: public and their investigations, continued to find their

the women were no longer needed alive. When the grandchildren. They proved their relation through a

officers took away their babies, before their mothers blood test. Sometimes, however, when they located the

would be murdered, they promised that the newborns children, the former military officers fled to Paraguay

would be delivered to their families. Some women, with them. They would not give them up.

however, guessed the In 1997, the

truth. Several of the Grandmothers changed

Grandmothers were their strategy by reach-

contacted by for- ing out to the young

mer detainees with a people who might be

desperate final mes- their grandchildren.

sage from their daugh- “Many times, the

ters: Find my baby. recovered grandchil-

Irma learned dren have expressed

Rosa’s fate through a lifetime feeling of

former detainees that discomfort or of not

had seen her daughter- belonging,” Irma

in-law. In June of explained. Some of

1977, in her eighth the grandchildren had

month of pregnancy, Where are the hundreds of babies born in captivity? felt, “that they are not
Rosa was transferred from here, this home,

from the El Vesubio prison to a secret maternity ward this family,” in which they had been raised. Seeking

where doctors forced her into a premature cesarean. to use this doubt, the Grandmothers launched public-

Moments after Rosa gave birth, the nurses took away ity campaigns targeting young adults, proposing that

the baby. She did not even see if she had a son or they might be their unsuspecting grandchildren. As a

a daughter. She was immediately transferred back result of these campaigns, many young people ap-

to El Vesubio where she told her fellow detainees proached the Grandmothers. Some were proven by

what happened. Then she was never seen again. a genetic test to be their grandchildren. Irma worked

The Grandmothers exposed to Argentine society, on the Sports for Identity campaign and went to the

and the world, this systematic plan that the govern- soccer games to reach out to the young people there.

ment had established. The military gave the children “There could be one person in a full soccer stadium

to their own personnel, or their relatives or associates. asking himself, ‘Who am I?’” She added, “I hope

The infants were often given to the people complicit my grandchild will eventually come to the Grand-

in their parents’ torture and murder. Or, the security mothers as well, because of this internal doubt.”

forces abandoned the children in orphanages—or Since starting the campaigns, the Grandmothers

the street—with no information about their origin. have produced television commercials, radio adver-

By the end of the dictatorship, December, 1983, the tisements, and billboards in downtown Buenos Aires

Grandmothers had found 25 of their grandchildren, with the slogans “Do you know who you are?” or

2

“Among everyone, we are searching for you.” In ad- in her arms the grandchild for whom she had been
searching for thirty years. She also met María’s ten
dition to Sports for Identity, there is Rock for Identity, year-old daughter, a great-grandchild she did not know
she had. María, in turn, met her brother and sister,
Cinema for Identity, Tango for Identity, and Theater three other grandparents, and nine aunts and uncles.
Thanks to the Grandmothers’ work, another fam-
for Identity—a free cycle of plays, some written by ily torn apart by the dictatorship had been reunited.

the grandchildren, that draws full houses in Buenos On a warm, spring evening, in October of 2007, a
gallery in downtown Buenos Aires hosted the open-
Aires. At the time of the interview, the Grandmother’s
ing of a photograph retrospective commemorating the
lively office was full of the furious work to expand the
Grandmothers’ thirty years of work. While politicians,
campaigns—the phone hardly stopped ringing, there
ambassadors, the general public, the Grandmothers,
was a constant flow of volunteers in and out of the
and the grand-
office. There was also laughter. In spite of the photo-
children they had
graphs of their disappeared children and grandchildren
found moved
on the walls, the office was a welcoming and joyful
about the gallery,
place. It was just another day of their twenty-seven
gazing thought-
year fight to find their missing grandchildren. In spite
fully at the pho-
of her advanced age, Irma showed no sign of stop-
tographs, Irma
ping the search for her grandchild any time soon.
described how her
“We are going to keep fighting,” she
life had changed
said. “As long as we are alive.”
since finding
They have continued fighting. Three years later, in
María three
2007, the Grandmothers’ organization turned thirty
years old and counted eighty-eight grandchildren they months earlier.
had found. The most recent grandchild, María Belén,
represents the people that the Grandmothers reach One thing has not
out to and the success their publicity campaigns have.
María’s parents never hid from her that she was adopt- changed in Irma’s
ed. Having been born in 1977, she knew it was possible
that she was one of the disappeared grandchildren. She life: she continues
had seen the Grandmothers’ advertisements and later
called their toll-free number. On June 29th, 2007, a to work in the of-
DNA test proved that María is the eighty-eighth grand-
child the Grandmothers found. fice of the Grand-

She is Irma’s granddaughter. mothers, fighting

Three days later, Irma met María and held to find the remain-

ing 400 grandchil- Irma described to me meeting her grand-
daughter, Buenos Aires, October, 2007.
dren of her other

“sisters.” The fear,

death, and lasting scars the military dictatorship has

left upon Argentine society could not hold back these

amazing women. For thirty years Irma did not give up

searching for her granddaughter. Today she has her.

“It is beautiful,” Irma kept repeating, as she spoke

about her time with María, who would travel from

Cordoba, in the interior of the country, to Buenos Aires

to visit. Irma’s eyes were wide with joy, her voice full

of excitement, her smile permanent. “It is so beautiful.”

The day Irma met her granddaughter, July, 2007. María Belén is The Grandmothers’ official website is:
in the middle, her biological sister, Natalia, is on the left. http://www.abuelas.org.ar

3