Buenos Aires. As a luminous event, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo announced today the recovery of grandson 133, the son of Cristina Navajas, kidnapped when she was two months pregnant and disappeared, and Julio Santucho, who was in Italy at the time, persecuted as his entire family, which has 20 victims of the past military dictatorship (1976-1983), arrested, murdered and ten of them also disappeared, while another child who would have been born in captivity is being searched for.
Cristina –kidnapped and disappeared on July 13, 1976 by the army– and Julio belonged to the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT). Nélida Navajas died in 2012 looking for her daughter, Cristina, and her grandson, and she belonged to Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo from the first days.
This noon it was moving to see the joy of the Grandmothers and the family of the recovered young man, who began searching and investigating five years ago because he found a series of information about his identity and mistrusted “his family”: a soldier and a nurse who registered him as their own son on March 24, 1977.
When Cristina was kidnapped she was 26 years old, she was a teacher and a sociology student at the Argentine Catholic University. She was at her sister-in-law Manuela’s house and she was taken to the Federal Police headquarters, she went through the Clandestine Center, of Automotores Orletti Extermination -where they took several victims of Operation Condor- and then to other similar ones, including the Banfield”, in the province of Buenos Aires.
She was seen in some of these sinister places by survivors, who testified in these cases, including Adriana Calvo. Julio Santucho had two other children with Cristina.
He found out from a letter that his wife had prepared that she was pregnant, and he tried to return when he found out about the kidnapping but they prevented him, since the dictatorship organized a real hunt, because the leader of the PRT and the People’s Revolutionary Army was Mario Roberto Santucho, murdered and his body disappeared in July 1976.
It is a long history of State terrorism in the past dictatorship of the “Security Doctrine” of the United States in the times of the “cold war” that it installed in this and other countries of the Southern Cone, such as Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay. .
This morning with the Grandmothers were Julio, the father and the two brothers of the young man found. The identity of grandson 133 was not disclosed until all the necessary steps were taken to restore his identity.
The last two cases of recovered grandchildren occurred in December 2022. Today they are with their families.
“It’s one of the brightest moments of our lives, I waited for it so much that it’s hard for me to believe it,” said Miguel “Tano” Santucho, his brother, who works with the grandmothers. The news was already communicated to the grandson found on the 26th and his first reaction was to communicate with his relatives, directly with Miguel.
“My first thought was and will be for my mother and grandmother, who continue to live in me,” Miguel said today during the press conference led by Estela de Carlotto and the Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla. He added: “I have no doubt that we will be together for the rest of our lives. We looked for each other, we wanted to find each other and the hug we gave each other is forever “and he announced that his brother has two children.”
As De Carlotto, who was recently in Mexico with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also said: “This is a truly luminous moment” since it occurs in the middle of an electoral campaign, where the leaders of the right-wing alliance of Together for Change They have attacked human rights organizations.”
Former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) said more than once that these organizations, such as the Grandmothers and Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, were a “job”, a dirty business.
One of the “models” suggested by the presidential candidates of Together for Change is repression with all the characteristics of the past military dictatorship applied by the governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, with persecution, kidnappings, torture, paramilitaries and the use of vehicles. from a construction company associated with the government.
Despite all this, he is now a pre-candidate for vice president in the formula headed by Horacio Rodríjuez Larreta, one of the two pre-candidates for the primaries on August 13.
Now Morales has been denounced for the violation of the human rights of the people of Jujuy who continue to resist. Tomorrow the Malón for Peace march will arrive in this capital, which has already been accompanied yesterday and today in different parts of the country and this capital. And given what is happening, this reunion with truth and justice is, as Estela de Carlotto said, a sun, an illumination.
