Photographs and Text by MartĂn Acosta
Translated by Ted O’Callahan
They number but ninety-three. Ninety-three out of four hundred. Ninety-three children recovered: 400 children disappeared. A mere handful — but a handful that proves that blood cannot be erased. They, the ninety-three saved from the nightmarish plan of a military dictatorship intent upon annihilating their identity, are living proof that not all can be hidden. Not all can be made to disappear.
The military regime took power in Argentina on March 24, 1976. Most of the children they kidnapped were taken along with their parents or were born in one of the secret detention centers. The ninety-three who have been found to date were saved through the unceasing battle fought by their families and with the unwavering support of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Some of these children were simply abandoned. Some were given to families who adopted them without knowing their true identities. Others were kept by the very people who kidnapped their parents. But in all cases the intention was to erase their true identities, to break the family line so that the children would never be like their parents.
I began to photograph those children, today men and women, in August, 2001. I wanted to show them next to a family member who worked for years to find them. For me, putting these two people in a single image represents the failure of the policy — of the terror — that the military dictatorship tried to impose. These photos attempt to show that lies could not defeat family bonds because the families, and the children themselves, persevered.
By including a reproduction of a photograph of disappeared parents the two images become a unit, joining the present with the past. The essence of photography is to put what has been together with what is. The text tells us who they are, what happened to them, and how they became who they are today. The three elements — the text, the photo of the present, and the photo of the past — form a triptych that closes part of our history.
Elena Gallinari
“I must get through this on my own,” Elena thought. She was ten years old. She was standing before a judge who explained that her parents were not her parents. The people she thought were her parents had kidnapped her real parents and taken her from the secret detention center where she had been born.
Maria Abinet, kidnapped September 16, 1976
That day in April 1987 ended forever the normal life of a girl going to school in the City Bell neighborhood and spending weekends at the youth center that had been built by Domingo Luis Madrid, Buenos Aires’ deputy-commissioner of police.
Elena took in the change with amazing naturalness and immediately accepted her real family. She wanted to live with her grandmother Leonor but her family decided she should live in Bella Vista with her uncle Guillermo and her cousins. Her grandmother had lived alone in La Rioja since being detained for three days with her daughter, Elena’s mother, Maria.
Elena quickly settled into her new life in Bella Vista, where she finished her schooling.
Of her father she knew little. He had been kidnapped, released, kidnapped again, then executed. He is buried in the Moreno cemetery. Of her mother, Maria, she knew absolutely nothing. Maria has been missing since September 16, 1976. She gave birth to Elena in some unknown part of Buenos Aires two months after being arrested.
Bella Vista, Buenos Aires, July 25, 2001: Elena Gallinari and her uncle William Abinet.
Gabriel Cevasco
“They stole me; I was born again October 25, 2000,” says Gabriel, who for years was called Ramiro. Maria, his mother, was disappeared on January 11, 1977.
To be disappeared in Argentina is to be no more, to no longer exist.
I have known his aunt Adriana since my first visit to the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, when I went to ask for help with this project. I was just looking for possible cases to photograph when she entered and said, “What are they doing with my baby?”
Gabriel knows nothing of what happened. Adriana knows little. We know little.
Maria was a member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party-People’s Revolutionary Army, the PRT-ERP, and a psychologist. She worked in a factory; they kidnapped her as she waited for her bus after work. Enrique, Gabriel’s father, who now lives in Brazil, told the family that Maria had been kidnapped.
Gabriel grew up in Pergamino with a family that was not his own, anxious from not knowing who he actually was.
He became religious and later went to the Abuelas. DNA analysis revealed his identity and where he came from. Today he is constructing who he will be.
Lobos, Buenos Aires, October 20, 2001: Gabriel Cevasco and his aunt Adriana Leiva.
Humberto Colautti
Elda Francisetti, kidnapped May 23, 1977. Humberto Colautti, kidnapped May 23, 1977.
Humberto does not remember anything. What he knows comes from things his grandmother or his father have told him. He doesn’t remember the kidnapping or anything that came before. He might recall images of being in a van, seated beside his mother, surrounded by police. But he doesn’t know if that really happened or is something he imagined.
Humberto can get confused; he has difficulty recalling specific details.
On May 23, 1977, in MorĂłn, two-year-old Humberto, his eight-month-old sister NoemĂ, his mother Elda, and her partner (NoemĂ’s father) were kidnapped. The children were given to a relative of NoemĂ’s, a tailor for the military.
From that day on, for Humberto and his sister that was their new family. He was no longer called Humberto and instead became Alexander Ferri.
His father, Renato, found out that he had a son while he was himself a political prisoner. When he was released in 1983 he begin searching for Humberto.
As in almost all the cases, Humberto was shocked one day to learn that the man standing in front of him was his father. His sister Noemà also recovered her identity and lives with her uncle — her father’s brother.
San Lorenzo, Salta, November 2, 2001: Humberto Colautti with his father Renato Colautti and his dog Yuyo.
Jorgelina Planas
Damián is tough but it is clear he loves his sister. Jorgelina/Carolina is expressive, affectionate. She loves her brother.
Cristina Plana, kidnapped May 15, 1977.
When Jorgelina/Carolina was 15 years old, Damián traveled to Buenos Aires to look for his sister.
Cristina was the mother of both children. When they kidnapped her in May of 1977 she was living in Loma de Zamora with her daughter and the woman who took care of Jorgelina/Carolina. One day, Cristina disappeared and Jorgelina/Carolina never heard anything more of her.
Jorgelina/Carolina was given to an orphanage, then adopted by a family. She was living with that family when Damián came looking for her, to tell her that he was her brother. She shut the door in his face.
It took many years and many difficult moments for their relationship to reach the point where they are as they are seen in the photos.
Several years later, after she had entered the novitiate, Jorgelina/Carolina sent her brother a letter. From there, she slowly let herself be reintroduced to her past. She learned that her mother was from Paraná; that they had different fathers; that hers was a guerrilla with the ERP and that he was killed in Catamarca in 1974.
Jorgelina/Carolina wants to know more about her past. She has already visited the orphanage where she was left and is looking for the woman who took care of her. She is brave and wants to define who she is now, and who she was before. She left the novitiate and is now married and has two children.
Paraná, in the province of Entre RĂos, July 20, 2002, Jorgelina Planas (Carolina Sala), and her brother Damián Sarrabayrrouse.
Juan Cabandié
Damián CabandiĂ©, kidnapped November 23, 1977. Alicia AlfonsĂn, kidnapped November 23, 1977.
In March 1978 Juan CabandiĂ© was born in the secret detention center at the ESMA. His parents, Damián CabandiĂ© and Alicia AlfonsĂn, were militants with the Montoneros and were kidnapped from their house on SolĂs Street. They were prisoners at El Banco and El AtlĂ©tico. Alicia was five and a half months pregnant. She was moved to the ESMA to give birth. Damián and Alicia remain disappeared. It is not known what happened to them.
“I was born here. Fifteen days together were enough for my mother to wrap me in a blanket and name me, so that I could say to my friends, before really knowing who my family was, before knowing my history, that I wanted to be called Juan.” He spoke those words at a massive protest in front of the ESMA on March 24, 2004, when he finally learned that his mother had given him the name Juan. Until just a few months before, he had been called Mariano, as he had been baptized by Luis Falco, the Federal Police intelligence agent who had taken him.
With a falsified identity it is impossible to build much; something is always missing. There is endless searching without knowing what to look for.
Buenos Aires, February 5, 2005: Juan Cabandié and his grandmother Yole Oppezzo.
Laura Jotar
“We were in a plaza. My mother went walking towards some men. They put a hood on her and shoved her in a car. She did it so that they did not kidnap us, too. My sister told me. I was six months old. She was three, but she remembers.
Alberto Jotar, kidnapped October of 1977.
They were given to different families. But in the end destiny placed them back in the same home. Kidnapped together, sent to different orphanages, adopted separately, returned, then finally brought together by a family.
“The women in my family are called Laura. My adoptive parents baptized me Malena. But Tatiana said: My sister is called Laura. Because of that I am Laura Malena. I like it. I am going to call my daughter Laura.”
In 1980 the Abuelas learned of the case and began visiting the adoptive family. They provided important support for the girls’ emotional well-being. But for Laura Malena, it’s clear, it has been very hard.
The day that we took the photos at her aunt’s house in Berisso, Malena was extremely distressed; her hands shook. That part of her life haunts her.
Laura-Malena feels a connection to her father, a physical-education teacher and boxer. She treasures a photo of him as a schoolboy. Behind his head is a drawing of the 25th of May Revolution showing women with white handkerchiefs.
La Plata, Buenos Aires, August 9, 2001: Laura Jotar (Mara Laura Sfiligoy) and her aunt, Susana Jotar, 48.
Click here to continue.
Pages: 1 2
Tags: Buenos Aires city, human rights, portrait