Volkswacht Bodensee - Argentine group finds 131st dictatorship-era 'stolen' child

The man is the 131st child "stolen" during the dictatorship era to be identified under a decades-long fight by the group known as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo -- and the first in nearly three years.

His assumed identity has not been divulged.

"We are happy to announce a new restitution of identity," the Grandmothers said in a statement Thursday after the man's DNA tests came back.

"As if the end of the year wanted to fulfill all our wishes," they said in reference to Argentina's recent World Cup victory, "we celebrate the discovery of a new grandchild, number 131."

Almost 300 other men and women "living among us with falsified identities" after being taken from their parents under the 1976-1983 dictatorship remain to be found, the Grandmothers added.

Now 44 years old, the man was the son of Marxist activists Lucia Nadin and Aldo Quevedo, from Mendoza, detained in Buenos Aires in October 1977.

Nadin, 19, was nearly three months pregnant at the time.

Grandmothers president Estela de Carlotto, 92, told reporters Nadin likely gave birth to her son at the notorious Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), which served as the country's largest detention and torture facility.

"We are told that he is a sweet, calm person," de Carlotto said. "He (did not react) with refusal or sadness" to discovering his true identity.

But she said he would need time to fully digest the stunning news before being presented to the public.

"He just took it as a reality, a new reality for him," said de Carlotto.

- 30,000 people lost -

The Grandmothers group was founded in 1977 by women trying to find their arrested daughters -- and the babies they bore in captivity.

They take their name from the Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires, where women defied authorities to hold protests demanding information on the whereabouts of their loved ones. They did so in vain.

As many as 500 children were taken from their imprisoned mothers, most of whom then disappeared under the country's brutal military rule.

Most of the children were given to childless people close to the dictatorship, keen to have them raised as regime loyalists.

Many of those aided by the Grandmothers reached out after experiencing doubt over their identity -- because of a lack of physical resemblance to their parents, the absence of photos of their mothers while pregnant, or holes in the family history.

This was the first new identification since June 2019. The coronavirus pandemic had put the brakes on the Grandmothers' research and interviews with potential victims.

Six of the original grandmothers died during the pandemic.

Rights groups say some 30,000 people died or disappeared under Argentina's military dictatorship.

P.Anderson--BTB