Updated 9:30 p.m. December 27, 2024

Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, approached a wall at her organization’s headquarters. Surrounded by cheering human rights activists and families of the disappeared, she changed a number hanging from a hook. Where the digits 137 were hanging, it now read 138. Friday marked the day the Grandmothers announced that they had identified the 138th grandchild appropriated by Argentina’s last dictatorship.

The discovery was celebrated by human rights organizations in Argentina, who have searched tirelessly for the babies born in detention centers and appropriated by the dictatorship’s allies — but it came a day after Argentina’s Human Rights Secretariat announced that 400 staff had been laid off, underscoring the challenging moment the human rights movement is facing.

Grandchild 138’s identity is being kept confidential while he comes to terms with the news about his identity. However, the Grandmothers disclosed that he is a lawyer. He is the son of Marta Enriqueta Pourtalé and Juan Carlos Villamayor. 

The Grandchild’s brother, Diego, lives in Spain — and is also a lawyer. In an emotional voice note played over the speakers at a press conference at the Grandmothers’ House of Identity (Casa por la Identidad) headquarters on Friday afternoon, Diego thanked the group for their work.

Speaking of the moment that Grandchild 138 was told the news about his identity, Manuel Gonçalves Granada of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo told the Herald: “It’s a very magical moment, it’s a moment when you know that what you’re telling that person will change his life.” Gonçalves Granada himself is a grandchild who recovered his identity in 1997. 

“We know that some of the most painful wounds of the dictatorship will start to heal, not just for him, but for Argentine society as a whole,” he continued. “It’s the moment that his family stops having to search for him every day. Now is the moment for them to reconnect, get to know each other, and become part of the same family.”

On December 10, 1976, Pourtalé and Villamayor were kidnapped at their home in Buenos Aires by men in civilian clothes. At the time, Pourtalé was eight and a half months pregnant. The couple were thinking of calling their baby Soledad or Manuel.

Pourtalé and Villamayor were seen in the clandestine detention center at the Higher Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA, by its Spanish initials) in Buenos Aires, and the Grandmothers believe Grandchild 138 may have been born there. Given the timing of his parents’ kidnapping and the advanced stage of Pourtalé’s pregnancy, he may have been one of the first appropriated children to have been born in the ESMA. 

The ESMA was one of the largest and most notorious of the 1976-1983 dictatorship’s detention centers, and over 30 babies are known to have been born there. It has since been turned into a site of memory where many Argentine rights organizations, including the Grandmothers, conduct their work.

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Pourtalé and Villamayor’s families started to search for them as soon as they learned of the kidnapping, and managed to report their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights when it visited the country in 1979. Grandchild 138 was contacted by Argentina’s judiciary and asked to give a DNA sample on the basis of an investigation that was being carried out by Argentina’s National Commission for the Right to Identity, with genetic samples contributed by the National Genetic Database.

Damos la bienvenida al #nieto138 el hijo de Marta Enriqueta Pourtalé y Juan Carlos Villamayor, nacido en diciembre de 1976. "La verdad siempre sale a la luz". pic.twitter.com/JMKhzO7O32

— Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (@abuelasdifusion) December 27, 2024

The news comes a little over a year after the group’s previous discovery. In September 2023, the Grandmothers announced that they had identified four pregnant women murdered by the dictatorship. The discovery, which was made with the Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology (EAAF, by its Spanish acronym), brought the number of identified grandchildren to 137. 

Prior to that, grandchild 133 was identified in July of last year. His name is Daniel Santucho Navajas, and he is the son of Julio Santucho, who is still alive, and Cristina Navajas, who was kidnapped on July 13, 1976, and remains disappeared.

The first grandchild taken from their parents to be identified by the human rights organization was Tatiana Mabel Ruarte Britos. Born in 1973, her father was forcibly disappeared in 1976 and her mother the following year. She was identified in 1980.