The Stolen Children of Latin America
A personal story
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During the 1970’s relatives of mine wanted a baby. The wife had health issues, and her doctor told her that if she got pregnant, there was a 50/50 chance that both she and the baby would die. She and her husband decided to adopt.
Roe vs. Wade had recently passed, and due to abortions, getting a baby meant a long waiting list. The wife had relatives in the government of a Latin American country, so she and her husband decided to go to that country and stay with relatives while they went through the process of getting a baby.
After three months and a lot of bureaucracy, they came home with a baby boy. When I enquired about the parents of this baby, I was told that they had ten children and couldn’t afford anymore, so they gave their baby up for adoption.
I want you to hold that thought while I fast-forward to 2023.
Several months ago, I watched a black-and-white movie called Song Without A Name. The story takes place in Peru, and it’s about a young pregnant woman who goes to a clinic to give birth. The mother awakens in the clinic and is told that her baby died. She doesn’t believe it, and the plot concerns her quest to find her baby. She learns that this is happening to other mothers.
The movie is entirely in Spanish without subtitles, but since I am studying Spanish, I could understand the gist of the story. I recently learned that this was a fictionalized story based on what happened during the 1970s and 1980s in Chile.
Recently, I saw a news video about a man who was contacted by an agency telling him that they had contacted his biological mother. I can’t recall which Latin American Country he came from. He met his biological mother, who said she was told that her baby had died.
Thousands of Chilean children were stolen from their mothers during the military rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet and sent abroad for adoption.
What sent up a red flag for me was that his adoptive parents in the United States were told that the baby's parents had ten children and they couldn’t afford anymore, which was the same story that my relative was told.
