A former prison guard was convicted on Thursday of participating in stealing a newborn baby in 1976 in Tucumán. This was the first time the province has held a trial over child appropriation during the dictatorship. 

The Oral Federal Criminal Court of Tucumán sentenced the only defendant in the case, Santo González, to a 7-year sentence for the illegal appropriation of Mario Navarro. All other accused parties have either passed away or were unable to stand trial for health reasons. 

Navarro’s case is noteworthy also because he is one of the few children born to a dictatorship victim inside a clandestine detention center who was able to meet his mother, who is still alive. The two met in 2015. 

González was working at the Villa Urquiza jail in the provincial capital — at that time, a clandestine detention center — when Navarro was born there between May and June, 1976. The baby was taken away from his mother and given to another family.

In 2014, the former prison guard received a 12-year jail conviction for crimes against humanity committed at the same prison. He was formally accused of participating in Navarro’s appropriation in 2021 and has been awaiting trial under house arrest.

Human rights organization Grandmothers of  Plaza de Mayo, represented by attorneys Carolina Villella and Patricia Chalup, had requested 13 years for the accused. In her closing statement, Chalup highlighted that stealing babies was a generalized practice during Argentina’s last dictatorship. 

“[Mario’s mother] was systematically tortured and raped. She gave birth in inhumane conditions, on the floor; she could only hear the baby crying. She could not see him; she always thought it had been a boy,” she said. 

Prosecutor Pablo Camuña placed the accused at the scene of the crime and stated that he had full knowledge of the crimes that were being committed there. Deputy prosecutor Valentina García Salemi added that this crime started “at the moment of the abduction and finished when the victim’s biological identity was restored.”

During the verdict, the court voiced a request made by the prosecution and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, asking that all those who have “doubts regarding their identity and were born between 1975 and 1983” make an inquiry with the courts or a human rights organization. 

The grounds of the sentence will be read next Thursday, December 12.

A lifelong search

Mario’s mother, Sara, spent decades living in fear of reporting what she had gone through. She was kidnapped in July 1975 and released in November 1976, eight months after the beginning of the dictatorship. Given that there were no records of her arrest, she was considered to be disappeared during that time. Based on the date of her disappearance and the birth of her son, it is unclear how or where she became pregnant. 

However, in 2005, 30 years after her arrest, she decided to do so. She reached out to the National Human Rights Secretariat, which ordered the National Identity Commission (CONADI, by its Spanish initials) to start an investigation to find her child. In 2007, the National Genetic Database collected her blood to find a match.

It wasn’t until 2015 that her search would come to fruition. Ever since he was a child, Mario knew he was not being raised by his biological parents but never got any answers from his family. In February 2015, he reached out to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo office in Rosario, Santa Fe, and then to the CONADI. Months later, the National Genetic Database collected his blood and on November 19, he received the answer he had been looking for all his life: he was the son of Sara Navarro, a dictatorship survivor.

Mario became the 119th child to be identified by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. The organization announced it days after the results came through, and he met his mother right after that. In an interview with media outlet Página 12 that year, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo president Estela de Carlotto said Sara and Mario shared a hug so long she thought “they would never let go,” and also recalled what the mother told the son.

“They will never take you away from me again.”