Бабушки Площади Мая: Поиск украденных внуков Аргентины

Argentine human rights organization

The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo (lang es) is a human rights organization with the goal of finding the children stolen and illegally adopted during the 1976–1983 Argentine military dictatorship. The president is Estela Barnes de Carlotto. The organization was founded in 1977 to locate children kidnapped during the repression, some of them born to mothers in prison who were later "disappeared", and to return the children to their surviving biological families. Around 30,000 people between the ages of 16 and 35 are believed to have disappeared; around 30% were women, and of those women, around 3% were pregnant. The work of the Grandmothers, assisted by United States geneticist Mary Claire King, has led to the location of about 25 percent of the estimated 500 children kidnapped or born in detention centers. During the military era they were illegally adopted, with their original identities hidden. In 13 other cases, adoptive and biological families agreed to jointly raise the children after they had been identified. The remaining cases are bogged down in court custody battles between families. As of December 2022, their efforts have resulted in finding 131 grandchildren. The kidnapped babies were part of a systematic government plan during the "Dirty War" to pass the children for adoption by military families and allies of the regime and thereby avoid raising another generation of subversives. As an offshoot of the Silvia Quintela case, former dictator Jorge Videla was detained under house arrest in 2010 on multiple charges of kidnapping children. In July 2012 he was convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison for the systematic stealing of babies. On 14 September 2011 the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo received the Félix Houphouët Boigny Peace Prize in Paris for their work in defense of Human Rights.

The war began in 1976 under the government of Lieutenant General Jorge Rafaél Videla. It was a period of state sponsored violent purges directed towards everyone deemed to be a leftist supporter. Part of Videla's campaign aimed to deter the possibility of a new generation growing up subversive. Although men and women were abducted, children were of higher value and importance in shaping the future of Argentina. There was a waiting list of military families who wanted to adopt the trafficked children. These families specified ideal physical characteristics such as sex, hair and eye color. The children who were not chosen by new families were placed in orphanages and adopted later in their lives. Many of the children who were abducted decline the option to meet their biological family because they believe that they are not their true relatives due to the fact that the children were deprived of being raised by their biological parents. Meeting with relatives such as the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo may open up dark memories that the children cannot handle. Whatever the circumstance of the child, the organization still believes in providing the abducted the opportunity to learn more about themselves and their family history no matter how tragic it is, which is why the grandmothers have continued their movement, periodically protesting to gain more followers. They make sure to continue to protest at the plaza to remind the people of Argentina that their work is not finished.