Marguerite feitlowitz argentina dirty war survivor

“The women giving birth, whom I respect as mothers, were militants…in the machine of terror. Many used their unborn children as human shields.”

With these words, Jorge Rafael Videla —convicted on July 5, 2012 for masterminding the “systematic and general practice of child-stealing” during Argentina’s “Dirty War (1976-83)–defended himself, in a federal courtroom packed with the parents, grandparents, and children of desaparecidos.

The 34 children at issue in this case were born in one of four of the 600 secret concentration camps that were a hallmark of the last dictatorship, and given or sold to “proper Argentine families.” Only a handful of the children in this trial have been re-united with biological relatives; the rest (if they are alive) probably have no idea who their parents are, that biological relatives are bereft, that a whole part of civilian society has mobilized on their behalf.

“They are seeds of the tree of evil, and must be s