Facundo Iglesia 
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the group that identifies children born to parents illegally detained and forcibly disappeared during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, announced in a press conference on Tuesday that they have found their 139th grandchild. Grandchild 139, whose name was not publicly disclosed, has two half-siblings who actively looked for her for years and now look forward to meeting her.
Grandchild 139 is the daughter of activists Noemí Beatriz Macedo and Daniel Alfredo Inama. They were both kidnapped in November 1977, Grandmothers’ head Estela de Carlotto said during the conference, which took place at their headquarters in the ESMA former detention center. Macedo was six or seven months pregnant at the time of her kidnapping, and they were both last seen in the Club Atlético detention center in Buenos Aires City.
They both remain to be found.
Many pregnant victims of state terrorism were forced to give birth in clandestine torture centers and then murdered. The junta systematically kidnapped hundreds of newborn babies and handed them over to friends of the military with a new, fake identity: a scheme known in Argentina as apropiación or “appropriation,” the effects of which the Grandmothers have fought for decades to dismantle.
Carlotto paused to smile after mentioning Inama was an Estudiantes football team fan. “Well, this touched my heart,” she said, causing people in the room to laugh.
Carlotto did not disclose the grandchild’s name but said it all started after the Grandmothers received an “anonymous tip.” The National Identity Commission (CONADI, by its Spanish initials) launched an investigation in conjunction with the Unified Registry of State Terrorism Victims. They then contacted the grandchild, who voluntarily took a DNA test at the National Bank of Genetic Data.
All three state institutions that collaborated in finding Grandchild 139 were affected by cuts carried out by Javier Milei’s administration.
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‘A sea of questions’
Before he was kidnapped in 1977, Inama had a son, Ramón, and a daughter, Paula, with different partners. Both had searched for Grandchild 139 for years — Ramón attended Tuesday’s conference in celebration of his newly-found half-sister, who he has yet to meet.
“It was something that I had been waiting for a long time, but when it came, it took me by surprise,” he told the Herald. “I have known this for mere hours, since yesterday evening — I found out roughly at the same time as my new sister. Well, she has always been my sister.”
Twelve years ago, before they found her, Ramón wrote a letter to Grandchild 139. “When I was little, I asked myself very often about you — I was afraid that I had run into you or even exchanged some words without knowing who you were,” he read aloud, his voice breaking. “Do you have long hair? Dark skin, like I do? Do you have children?”
Manuel Gonçalves Granada, fellow found grandchild and head of the CONADI, confirmed Ramón’s suspicions during the conference. He told the audience that she has “skin like Ramón’s” and “long hair.” He added that she was “very surprised” but that she started a “healing process.” “Her children have a new aunt and uncle,” Gonçalves Granada said.
Although the three half-siblings haven’t met yet, the Grandmothers showed them pictures of each other with prior permission. CONADI and the Grandmothers are working closely with Grandchild 139, and she will meet her family when she is ready.
“This has to contribute to building her up as a person — she has to learn who her parents are and that they wanted her. And that she was not with them for a specific reason, which was state terrorism that kidnapped her and took her name away,” Ramón told the Herald.
“We lost something, and we are getting it back. I would love for her to be able to go through this with us. We are going to accompany her, and we are going to be patient with her,” he said, adding that this is “surely very shocking” for her.
“It is a sea of questions, of doubts, about how we will go through this,” Inama said. “It is always different, whenever a granddaughter or grandson appears, there is no script or recipe. It’s taking on history and seeing how we can live with it,” he said, echoing the conference’s slogan — “Welcome to the truth.”
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Memory under siege
A month ago, the group announced that it had found Grandchild 138, the son of Marta Enriqueta Pourtalé and Juan Carlos Villamayor. His identity has been kept confidential while he comes to terms with the news, but the Grandmothers disclosed that he is a lawyer.
The discovery of these stolen grandchildren comes amid hostilities from the ruling party regarding Argentina’s memory policies, an issue that was addressed during the conference. Last week, La Libertad Avanza Buenos Aires City lawmaker Ramiro Marra covered graffiti announcing the recovery of Grandchild 138. Gonçalves Granada referred to the incident without naming Marra, saying that he “disrespected history.”
“If he wants to erase the [graffiti saying] 138, he can erase the ‘8’ so we put the ‘9,’” Gonçalves Granada said before announcing that, as is tradition, they would change the number on a wall at the Grandmother’s headquarters.
Plaza de Mayo Mother Taty Almeida sharply questioned Milei and Vice President Victoria Villaruel’s dictatorship apologia.
“Are they also going to deny that we found another grandchild?” she asked. “We are going to keep looking and finding grandchildren.”
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