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The Argentine human rights organization, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have identified “granddaughter number 126.”
The group will give more details on the granddaughter later in the day, in the meantime, the activists asked for “prudence, respect and confidentiality” from the press and public. Number 126 is the daughter of Uruguayan social activist Violeta Ortolani de Garnier and her Argentine partner Edgardo Garnier.
The grandmothers said in a press release they and the granddaughter’s family are “happy to know the truth” about their once disappeared.
The parents of number 126 were both student activists against the Argentine military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla in power between 1976 and 1981. Violeta was seven months pregnant when she was kidnapped and disappeared by the government in December 1976. Edgardo disappeared in February 1977 from La Plata, outside of Buenos Aires. The identified granddaughter is also niece to a current Uruguayan ministry of education official.
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo organization was created in 1977 with the mission to “locate and reconnect” the disappeared by the Argentine dictatorships of the late 1970s with their “legitimate families.”
Between 1976 and 1983 over 30,000 people suspected of being against the military governments were disappeared by the dictatorship, and most remain unfound.
An additional 500 babies were born to activist mothers held captive by the military. Their children were then stolen by military families, sold or abandoned into government institutions.
Earlier this year another granddaughter was identified as the daughter of Lucia Rosalinda Victoria Tartaglia, kidnapped in 1977 when she was 24 years old.
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