During the Ukraine-Russia conflict, news of the kidnapping, deportation, and illegal adoptions by Russian families of Ukraine children in order to be re-educated according to Russian values shed light on recurrent violations of human rights perpetrated by dictatorships towards opponents of the regime. Similar crimes have been often perpetrated in several conflict zones, such as Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, El-Salvador, and Argentina, in Central and South America, as well as in Sri Lanka and in the Kashmir region in Asia (Chohan & Khan, 2022; Osuri, 2018; Weaver, 2016).

The testimony of the Argentinean desaparecidos’ children, who were kidnapped, found, and reunified with their biological families, might offer new clues to the social service to decode these crimes and manage the process of reunification. The general practices for reunifying children across borders represent a new task area for social work, and the International Social Services (ISS) have responded to this need to restore justice by developing new social-work practices and policies, and implementing new track-record and case-management methodologies (Monico et al., 2019; Rotabi, 2014).

The Argentinean military dictatorship of 1976–1983 led to the documented disappearance of 8960 people (CONADEP, 1984), with human rights organizations estimating closer to 30,000 (Arditti, 1999). Anyone who was suspected of being against the regime was kidnapped and killed. Almost 82% of the disappeared were between the ages of 16 and 35. Most of them belonged to the armed movement of Montoneros and the People’s Revolutionary Army. Moreover, also students, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, and people who taught to or helped marginalized groups were persecuted, and sometimes even their families (CONADEP, 1984; Crenzel, 2013; Robben, 2005). They were taken to clandestine detention centers, tortured, and most of them murdered. Their bodies were made to disappear in various ways, including the so-called flights of death into the ocean (CONADEP, 1984; Verbitsky, 1995). These operations were carried out following a Systematic Plan for eradicating the rebellion (Feierstein, 2007). Thirty percent of the disappeared were women and 3% were pregnant. They were kept in chains during their entire hospital stay until the delivery, blindfolded and tied to the bed by arms and legs, and were subjected to torture and rape (CONADEP, 1984; Perechocky, 2014). They gave birth to their babies knowing that they had to die soon after. Their children were kidnapped and ceded to families of the security forces, or to families who were essentially colluding with the military power. Following Penchaszadeh’s (2015) and Smith’s (2016) terminology, we will refer to them as the parents who raised them (WR-parents).

It is estimated that around 500 babies (from now on referred to as identified grandchildren, or IG) were born in captivity and considered “spoils of war” (Nosiglia, 1985). The separation of these children from their prosecuted biological families would interrupt the intergenerational transmission of subversive ideas, educating them, instead, in accordance to the dictatorship’s ideology (Penchaszadeh, 2015).

Indeed, the right to personal identity is a basic human right, as recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, where Articles 7 and 8 highlight the child’s right to have a legal identity with a name and a nationality, as well as the state’s duty to protect this right. The tragedy of the IG represents an example of serious violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically, to be cared by, and not be separated from their parents against their will (Articles 7–9), to receive care that pays due regard to their cultural background (Article 20), and to not be adopted in a way that violates the laws of their home country (Article 21).The mothers and grandparents of disappeared people’s children tenaciously searched for IG and become known around the world with the name Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, from now on, Abuelas).

With the advent of democracy in 1983, President Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín and the following president Carlos Menem intended to make an olvido politico (political forgetfulness) (Jelin, 2001). The first president issued two impunity laws and the following president, Carlos Menem, signed ten decrees between 1989 and 1990 which granted pardons to around 1200 civilians and soldiers accused of crimes committed during the military dictatorship. However, the impunity laws still allowed for the prosecution of crimes related to the violation, concealment, or abduction of minors; substitution of their civil status; and extortive appropriation of property. Thus, the human rights organizations were still able to initiate criminal proceedings against the kidnappers of the victims’ children. Only in 2003 were the impunity laws annulled by the Supreme Court of Justice.

DNA-Testing and the Right to Identity Versus Right to Privacy

In 1992, the Interior Ministry created the National Commission for the Right to Identity (Comisión Nacional Derecho Identidad, CONADI) to identify the disappeared children. When a child was suspected of being a possible IG, the uncertainty about their identity was resolved through DNA-testing. The CONADI allowed the Abuelas to seek information confidentially and to check their DNA against the National Genetic Data Bank (Crenzel, 2019). This organization stores blood samples of disappeared people’s relatives and represents the most important platform for tracing IG (de Brito, 2001). Through forensic and genetic investigations, 130 IG were identified. Among the CONADI’s team, the social workers worked together to handle complaints and process information and legal presentation. They have the task of supporting the judicial system, trying to protect the people involved in these events as much as possible.

However, some IG refused to undergo DNA-testing because being identified as an IG would lead WR-parents, who in some cases were beloved, to face charges. In such circumstances, they declared their right to privacy, expressing the desire to remain with the people who raised them, and this position was sometimes sustained in the name of the interest of the minor. Lo Giúdice (2005) analyzes the cases of three IG that exemplify how, despite the end of the dictatorship, the Courts continued to partly defend WR-parents. These judges justified a situation of illegality, violation of the law, and falsification of birth records, purporting to act in the best interest of the child by protecting the relationship with the WR-parents. King (2011) considers the necessity of compromise to balance the right to identity and the right to privacy: anonymity for IG and amnesty (or alternatives to jail) for WR-parents could be granted if the latter agreed to cooperate with the justice system, even if the WR-parents were aware of the child’s origins.

On the other side, the Abuelas who were seeking their grandchildren had the right to verify the IG identity. Besides, in the first years following the end of the military dictatorship, IG were still children and unable to make such decisions. Consequently, the Abuelas claimed the non-negotiable “right to identity” and the necessity to break the bonds with the WR-parents. Several authors considered the right to truth and to personal identity as a priority against both individual rights to privacy and physical integrity (Brockhus, 2014).

These conflicting positions compelled a change in the law: whereas in 2003, one supposed IG’s refusal to be tested in the name of the right to privacy had been accepted, and in 2008, the Court reversed its decision and established that a supposed IG could not decline DNA-testing; the State’s ethical duty of establishing the truth was prioritized. In 2009, Article 218 of the National Criminal Procedure Code was changed to authorize judges to compel DNA-testing even if the IG refused it. Depending on the necessity, reason, and proportionality of the case, courts could forcibly obtain DNA samples from personal items. Consequently, DNA-testing could occur either voluntarily (if a person had doubts about their identity) or as requisitioned by the Court during the prosecution of the kidnappers.

Penchaszadeh (2015) claims that Argentine laws prioritized genetic identification to remedy the past violations of human rights. After forced DNA-testing, some IG developed resentment towards their WR-parents and claimed compensation for moral damages. Some IG felt guilty for being the cause of their WR-parents’ imprisonment. Penchaszadeh (2015) distinguishes between three aspects of the right to an identity: “(a) the rights of families of the disappeared to learn the truth about their fate and the identity of their appropriated offspring; (b) the right of society to heal the social wounds of the horrors of state terrorism by learning the truth and building a historical memory; and (c) the obligation of the state, established by national and international human rights legislation, to investigate crimes against humanity, find and punish its perpetrators, and provide reparations to the victims.” Jasanoff (2004) considers DNA-testing as a “re(con)stitution,” as it intersects the disciplines of biotechnology, transitional justice, and democracy.Furthermore, DNA-testing offers to IG the restitution of a denied identity, the option of non-violent resistance against past crimes, and the restoration of justice violated. Smith (2016) called “re(con)stitution” the pathway that the Abuelas carry out with their grandchildren, from an initial denial to an eventual reunification. Among the several sources of trauma in IGs’ experiences, we intend to analyze that particular traumatic moment in which their real identity was definitively evidenced though DNA-testing. This moment marked the shift in their social identity, with the consequent shift of all their interpersonal bonds. In that moment, they become certain of the devastating events that occurred to their biological parents, of the involvement, and sometimes complicity, of the parents who raised them (sometimes beloved), of their biological parents’ torturers, and of their identity falsification. Consequently, we can define the DNA-testing as a turning point in their life experiences and social identities, consistently with the Berntsen and Rubin (2007) definition of traumatic life-events. This process can have significant psychological and social consequences on the IG and their WR-parents alike. In particular, we assess whether the process of undergoing forced DNA-testing, based on the legal principle of the right to identity and together with the legal ramifications attached to the process, can result in the IG developing complex trauma or other significant psychopathological sequelae. The traumatic consequences of disappearances and/or illegal adoption, and consequent reunifications, involved relevant issues regarding identity construction illuminated by well-known sociological theories such as Cooley and Mead formulations on the role of social interactions in the identity processes (see also Malakouti & Talebi, 2018). IG self was grounded on the relationship built over time with their WR-parents and social environment, and it reflected their thoughts about them. According to the concept of looking-glass self (Cooley, 1922), during their childhood, they developed their self-image building it on their social relationships. Following Mead (1934), their “I” was the response to the attitudes of others, whereas their “Me” represented their social self, or rather their pattern of attitudes of others that they acquired and made their own. Furthermore, the process of identification with their WR-parent had been crucial for their identity formation.

Consequently, the revelation of the truth, marking a dramatic change in their social relationships, caused a traumatic disruption of their previous social and personal identity, often completely reversed, and a dramatic change in the perception they had of themselves and others had of them. Following Berger and Luckmann (1966), significant others play a crucial role in the ongoing confirmation of the identity—not only the implicit confirmation that relationships will routinely offer, but “the explicit and emotionally charged confirmation that his significant others bestow on him” (p. 170) to the IG: their WR-parents before, and their biological relatives and human right organizations after. They developed an image of themselves using the image and the judgment their social world had of them, with a consequent feeling of pride, if they were enhanced, or shame, if they were disregarded. Following Goffman (1967), their “face” or the recognition granted by others has had a dramatic shift, because they are compelled to manage the appropriate social codes in two different contexts in order to interact with others. The change in social interactions relates to how they consider themselves, how they are recognized by others, and how they see themselves being considered by others.

The social workers have offered their committed contribution; however, our observations can contribute to ideate and develop a specific and professional social work intervention, which takes into account and tunes into identitarian conflict characterizing these or similar realities elsewhere. For example, Pro-Busqueda in El Salvador works in cooperation with the ISS, and at the Ulloa Center in Argentina a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and social workers provides comprehensive assistance through the design, implementation, and strengthening of the National Network of Accompaniment and Assistance. This network includes the CONADI, the public health system, and the civil society organizations, such as the Centro de Atención por el Derecho a la Identidad of the Abuelas. Specifically, the Ulloa Center published the “Intervention Protocol for the Treatment of Victim-witnesses in the Framework of Judicial Proceedings” which is based on Article 75 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on the judicial responsibility to protect safety, physical and psychological well-being, dignity, and life of victims. It recognizes that the act of administering justice can produce the re-victimization and re-traumatization of the victims (Secretaria De Derechos Humanos Del Ministerio De Justicia Y Derechos Humanos, 2011). Following the studies we have briefly reviewed above, this study aims to contribute to the investigation into legislative issues arising from the IGs’ unique perspective of dealing with the justice system, with important considerations around the reciprocal links between human rights, war crimes, and reasserting democratic order after a period of extreme political turmoil.

Method

Participants

Fifteen “identified grandchildren” were voluntary enrolled via the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, and contacted using a “snowball approach” (Goodman, 1961). The final convenience sample included ten IG who were interviewed during two different trips to Argentina. They live in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Mendoza, or Rosario and were identified through DNA-testing between 1984 and 2017; four are female (average age = 41.9; range 39–45). The identification age range was from seven to 40 (average = 27.2). As shown in Table 1, one IG recovered his identity as a child, three as adolescents, and the other six as adults.

Table 1 Identified grandchildren (IG) narratives categories
Full size table

Instruments and Procedure

A semi-structured interview about IGs’ experiences was administered conversationally with one respondent at a time. The questions are based on the topics identified by de Baggis and Pallini (2021): the quality of memories; the trauma processing and narrative; the secrets, lies, and doubts; and the psychopathological sequelae. Particularly, we focused the investigation on the IGs’ reactions and strategies for coping with DNA-testing and results. Asking open-ended questions allowed participants to fully express the complexity of the events they were, in many cases, still processing. We analyzed the rich descriptions of IGs’ experiences using an inductive process (deriving themes from the data) and a deductive process (comparing the categories to a Braun & Clarke, 2006 six-step framework). In step 1, we focused on the transcripts of IG interviews, becoming familiar with the entire corpus of the data. In step 2, we organized data in a general, but systematic way, inserting the transcripts into an Excel file. We then noted consistent patterns and built the initial categories, which were subsequently organized into broader categories in step 3 as we examined, compared, contrasted, or otherwise recombined and reduced the data, and discarded irrelevant sentences. In step 4, we reviewed categories, verifying possible overlaps among them and considering their relevance. Step 5 included the final individuation and labelling of categories, taking into account results from step 4. Finally, in step 6, data was independently double-coded by the two authors. Disagreements were resolved by joint re-examination of the data and consensus coding.

Results

The following categories were inferred by the analysis of the transcripts:

  • Previous relationship and knowledge about their origins and beginning of the legal pathway;

  • DNA-testing: compliance, emotional reactions to the testing, and legal consequences;

  • Identity recovery: changing of names and finding physical similarity to biological relatives;

  • WR-parents: consequences for the WR-parents and change of relationship;

  • New relationships with the biological family;

  • Changes in relationships with friends and acquaintances.

Previous Relationship and Knowledge About their Origins and Beginning of the Legal Pathway

As Table 1 shows, David, Ruth, Daniel, and Tobias knew from a young age they were adopted, but they were not aware of being children of the disappeared, while the other interviewees believed themselves to be their WR-parents’ biological children.

IG who Knew Themselves to be Adopted

David suspected he may be a grandchild throughout his adolescence, yet he hesitated to speak due to his WR-mother’s solicitations to stay silent. Ruth always knew she had been adopted and was very grateful to her affectionate family, but she started to realize in college that her adoption could be tied to the dictatorship. Daniel believed he had been abandoned by his biological parents and adopted by his loving WR-mother who, according to him, was not aware of his origins. His father was violent, but died when he was very young. David went spontaneously to the Abuelas, after a long pathway of doubts, whereas Ruth and Daniel were found respectively by CONADI and the Abuelas. Tobias always felt like he didn’t belong to his abusive WR-family. When he was six years old, he said to his WR-mother, “You are not my mother,” and she became very uncomfortable. As an adult, having several doubts, he went to CONADI only after the death of his military, alcoholic WR-father.

IG who Believed Themselves to be the Biological Children of their WR-Parents

Ester, Judith, Salomón, and Susana believed themselves to be the biological children of their WR-parents, even when faced with evidence to the contrary; consequently, they were requisitioned by the courts. When Ester was a small child, a neighbor told her during an argument that she had been adopted, but she thought, “She was crazy!” Judith loved her WR-parents and believed herself to be their biological daughter, despite her physical dissimilarity and the violence of her WR-parents. Salomón calls himself a “serial denier”; indeed, during an argument when he was a child, his cousin told him that he had been adopted, but he forgot about the exchange for many years. He adores his WR-mother, while he calls his WR-father an appropriator. All three IG were informed of their suspected identities by the courts against their will. Susana, even though her neighbor had told her repeatedly that she had never seen her mother being pregnant, only began to doubt being her biological child after her WR-parents’ deaths, when she went spontaneously to the Abuelas. Samuel grew up badly neglected throughout his childhood. He was discovered very young by his biological family at the end of the dictatorship, through an anonymous complaint and the Abuelas’ subsequent investigations. Joseph drew notice from his high-school teacher due to his striking resemblance to one of a disappeared, and CONADI identified him.

The WR-fathers of Ester, Judith, Solomon, Tobias, and Samuel were also accused of other crimes. Particularly, Judith’s WR-father was part of the military group that murdered her biological mother. A woman filed a police report on Judith’s WR-father following an incident in which he murdered her son for breaking into Judith’s house: “I got up one morning and he [WR-father] comes and throws the newspaper on the table towards me, and tells me that he wants to tell me personally, before other people can, ‘He who goes badly, ends up badly!’ […] and there I see that Juancito was killed.”

In David’s, Ruth’s, and Daniel’s WR-families, the individuals responsible for their kidnapping and subsequent placement with their WR-parents very often took on the role of a godfather to pay homage to their “gift” of a baby. The godfathers were accomplices of the massacres, and their roles in the kidnappings were crucial when the WR-parents had no direct contact with the military environment. Godfathers are prosecuted directly, and penalties are severe. According to David: “The trial […] fortunately was short […], because the only verifiable crime for … my godfather, the military, was my existence.” Daniel explained that the judge responsible for his illegal adoption was his godfather’s cousin: “I did not see my godfather and my godmother anymore […] because undoubtedly, they knew where I came from!” Whenever the WR-parents had direct contact with the military environment (Salomón, Ester, Judith, Joseph, Tobias), they may have been directly involved in the kidnapping, and the “godfather figure” was not present.

DNA-Testing

Compliance

We can distinguish between the IG that refused to undergo DNA-testing and IG who pursued it. This difference is related to their experience of a loving or mistreating relationship with their IA family and to their willingness to know the truth. Consequently, Salomón, Judith, and Ester refused to submit to the DNA-testing in order not to expose the WR-parents to the authorities. Ester fled abroad to escape the trial, as she says, “like a criminal.” She agreed to undergo DNA-testing only many months later. Judith looked for legal ways to postpone it as long as possible. Salomón’s test was carried out by force; of this experience, he said:

They call me by my name, I turn around, two come to me […] two police officers, and they tell me: ‘We have to take you to the courthouse because you didn’t go in March 20XX, you didn’t show up. Then the judge ordered to find you through the police’. […] And in court I systematically refuse to hand over […] a swab and, at one point the judge said: ‘Well, Salomón, that’s enough, either it’s the easy or the hard way’, and I said to him: ‘It will be the hard way!’. So, he called the police staff and they needed clothes to get my DNA out. And they take off my T-shirt, underpants and stockings. So, they literally left me in the court as I came into the world! [laughs].

In the other seven cases, DNA-testing was done voluntarily. In all cases, however, it represented a great stress, and waiting for the results implied uncertainty and a void of identity. David told us:

That same day I was received at the Abuelas […] I basically told them […] that my godfather was military, I was in the age range, they listened to me carefully and said: ‘The only way to get rid of doubts is through a DNA test.’ I tell them: ‘I have no problem.’ I signed the consent documents and after three days I was already being analyzed at the National Genetic Data Bank, and then it took a month.

Daniel waited a year for results. Tobias and Susana’s DNA results were initially negative because not all genetic samples had been included in the Genetic Bank. In these cases, IG felt a void, bewilderment, and great pain: a negative match meant they may have been abandoned by their biological parents. After the false-negative results, Tobias told us: “Those two years were years without form, […] I was not looking for anything.”

Reactions to the Testing

Of the three IG who opposed DNA-testing, Judith thought that the result was not true, but that it was only a political maneuver against her military WR-father. It took many years to elaborate the truth, a process that began after the death of the WR-father. Ester underscored: “The suffering of seeing my parents going to jail, of experiencing a lot of situations that I never, never imagined would happen in my life.” Salomón paradoxically felt relieved, because the forced testing absolved him from the guilt of provoking the possible conviction of his WR-mother:

When they informed me [of DNA test results] I said: ‘Okay, that’s it.’ I had like a burden on me that was the defense of my mom for the judicial issue and I did not want to take it off myself. They took it from me, they tore it from me. […] I did everything that I could do and everything that depended on me. That was the first thing I said to myself mentally when I left the Court […] ‘It’s not on me if my mom will go to jail’.

In the interviews with Susana, Daniel, Joseph, and Ester, the expression I felt like I was inside a film is reported; the change of identity is dramatic, such that it causes disorientation and depersonalization. David, Salomón, Daniel, and Ester also report positive feelings of having been sought after, desired.

Daniel: Very strange, because until this moment I thought that nobody loved me. Then I found out that my grandmother had been looking for me for twenty years, which it was a surprise! […] It was a very difficult day, very strange to put it into words, because on the one hand, I found out that it was wonderful, that my biological family did love me. […] Actually, I had grown up thinking they didn’t love me. I was trying to pretend that it didn’t matter to me, and it really did matter to me. I felt so much better, so much more relieved when I learned that they had not abandoned me, that they were looking for me even so many years later. When they told me ‘Your biological family is looking for you’, I immediately thought of a mother and a father and really, I think they read my mind. They said: ‘Your mom and dad are missing’.

Ruth and Tobias felt safer and stronger because their feelings of being IG had a foundation, beyond parental denial. For Ruth, it has been: “an overturning in self-confidence”; all her thoughts were validated, all the answers she had been looking for were found and had a meaning. The pathway of doubt and reflection prepared them for the new reality. David was excited and happy, “A mixture of sensations.”

Legal Consequences

Judicial processes were initially longer and more complex compared to today. For Salomón and Judith, the process was very drawn out because they refused to undergo DNA-testing in order to protect their WR-parents. Moreover, after four years, the judge in Salomón’s trial recused himself due to a conflict of interest; in fact, he was connected to the IG’s WR-father who was in the military. Ester initially opposed DNA-testing and fled abroad; thus, the trial of her WR-parents is still ongoing. Regarding Daniel, a trial against his kidnapper is still ongoing. David and Ruth’s trials lasted one and two years, respectively.

The WR-parents are accused of kidnapping, changing a minor’s civil status, and falsification of a birth certificates. Joseph and Samuel’s WR-mothers were sentenced to three years’ house arrest, Tobias’ to five and a half years. Judith’s WR-mother was sentenced to house arrest because she had suffered a stroke, while her WR-father was sent to jail. David’s WR-parents are still serving their sentence, which he considered “very short.” For Ester, the trial began two years ago and is still ongoing; her WR-father has been imprisoned for crimes against humanity.

Identity Recovery

The result of DNA-testing marks a new identity for all IG. Salomón, Ester, Judith, and Joseph required many years to obtain DNA results and recover their identities. Joseph talks about “two years of limbo […] it started a fight against myself for my identity. I was very confused. It took me two years to want to get my name back.” Judith states that the discovery of the truth was initially a source of profound contradiction and that a change in her social identity occurred from the DNA result. For many years, she even felt guilty for being a “daughter of subversion.” She says:

I hated the Abuelas. I hated everyone, but since I learned the truth, with all the contradictions, I always knew that from that day on, I was going to build my life. ‘I’m not going to be like my mom and dad’. I mean, what my appropriators did ... it was my life, with my own contradictions, with my own values, with my own way of [ being] a mother of my children’. I always say that what they gave me at the age of twenty-five is the DNA. The identity— I recovered it much later!

The process of understanding how to deal with this discovery and how to make the previous life coexist with the current one is complex. Ester felt between two stories, she told us:

When my identity jumps out, now it’s like I’m on the other side, it’s complicated for me. Because it’s like I’m in the middle of two situations, two stories: one that I did not live, in which I took part, in which I am a victim, and another that I happened to live in: The suffering of seeing my parents in prison, of experiencing a lot of situations that I never, never in my life imagined would happen. [...] Another difference with other grandchildren: I knew my story a long time ago. I knew it. Yes, my adoptive parents told me; but I did not want to know my identity.

For all IG, support from other grandchildren and from the Abuelas is very meaningful. After nine years of denial of his new identity, Salomón felt better after growing closer with the Abuelas and other IG with similar stories. For Samuel, his involvement with the Abuelas has been “like a window, a lung! An injection of something new, something different, an apprenticeship. To meet companions who had gone through the same thing as me.” Susana talks about practical difficulties related to identity recovery: “I have less time because I am going through legal procedures for my identity, presenting papers, all new! From the identity card to the credit card. It costs a lot because there are a lot of papers.” For Tobias, Daniel, David, and Ruth, the process of restoring their identity has been easier and faster than for the others, as they had already experienced years of doubts and reflection. Their new identities were immediately considered an enrichment. For David, the change of identity meant finding the energy to leave his WR-parents’ house, “because it was no longer healthy to be in that environment.”

Change of Legal Name

By law, after DNA-testing, all IG are required to change their last name, whereas the first name remains a personal decision. As it is shown in Table 1, David, Daniel, Judith, Joseph, Samuel, and Tobias decided to also change their first names and the motivation is closely related to the quality of the relationship with their WR-parents and the memory of their biological parents. It is a way “to put things back in their place.”

David: When she [CONADI director] saw that I was fine, […] she asked me: ‘And now, what do you want me to call you?’ And I was very happy because I had read my name and I told her: ‘Yes, if my father and my mother called me David, then I want to be called David.’ So, that’s the first thing I was able to recover, that I was able to take care of: my name.

Daniel: The judge asked me if I wanted to call myself Alberto Daniel, or Daniel Alberto. So, I told her that well ... give me some time, that I was going to answer. And I left the courthouse, I sat in a ... there was a flowerbed near a tree, I sat there thinking for a moment and I came back and said: “Look, I also want to have my last name from my mom”. I want to have the last name of both, I want to call myself only Daniel because the name my parents chose was Daniel. […] I had the possibility to put things back in their place, so ... My true identity was that; I should have always been called that.

Salomón, Ruth, Ester, and Susana did not change their names. Salomón and Ruth did not have enough information. Susana claims to have kept the name because it was given with love. Ester did not even change her surname, which the judge allowed, to the consternation of the Abuelas. She says:

The Abuelas told me that I have to change it: it’s like reclaiming history. I say changing a surname is not reclaiming history, it seems to me that you can claim it another way. I don’t want to change my surname because you are not a surname, you are a person, so I cannot feel comfortable with another name. I acknowledge my story, but ... I am Marquez!

Physical Similarity to Biological Relatives

For Salomón, David, Ruth, and Judith, the similarities between biological relatives and their children or between IG and biological parents (as disclosed by photos) are a source of strong emotion.

I went with my husband to that first meeting. They showed me photos of boys. In one of the photos, not of my father, but of his brother, when he was little, I saw my son in him, the middle one! […] when I saw my aunt personally, I wanted to die, it was the same, that is, she resembled me a lot (From Ruth’s interview).

Consequences on WR-Parents

Reactions of the WR-Parents

Before the beginning of the trial, Tobias, Joseph, and Daniel’s WR-fathers and both Susana’s WR-parents were dead. Samuel grew up only with his WR-mother, and Salomón’s WR-father escaped. All the other WR-parents were tried in court, with significant consequences. Judith’s WR-mother had a stroke. Salomón’s WR-mother began to suffer from depression. Ruth’s WR-father and Daniel and Salomón’s WR-mothers fell ill with cancer. From a psychological perspective, several reactions occurred: the capacity to face the truth, the underestimation of the gravity of the kidnapping, the despair, and the denial.

Capacity to speak, Ester: My dad told me everything. He told me if I wanted to know my story, what it implied. [...] He was going to support me, [...] I do not speak [about it] with my mother [...] because it is traumatizing her and no, no! She is very sensitive about this issue.

Underestimation, Ruth: I remember when he [dad] told me to be calm: ‘I’ll call your grandmother, I’ll explain everything to her’, he had no idea that they were going to devour him! I mean, they didn’t want to see him.

Despair, David: I told her [WR-mother] that I wanted to go to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo to do a DNA-testing, […] and she didn’t tell me anything that day. The next day she sat down crying, telling me not to go to the Abuelas for DNA-testing, because they […] could go to jail […] I still saw her very, very sad, with fear, crying. I tell her: ‘Well, not now, it’s fine!’, I said that I was not going to go.

Denial, Ester: My mother […] always had me, that is, she talks to you to the present, it’s like she had internalized it, she got so involved in that role, that it is like she gave me birth. Then she tells me: ‘You are mine’. […] My mother, she totally denied! Yes, she does not. She, you talk to her and she tries to look for resemblances between my son and her ne — and my nephew, all the time she denies it unconsciously.

Change of the Relationship

Susana, Daniel, Ester, and Salomón said that their parents either did not know what their origins were or did not have the ability to grasp the gravity of the situation. Consequently, the IG did not bear grudges or anger towards them. As Susana claimed: “My parents did not know about the dictatorship, I mean, they knew about the dictatorship, but they did not know that I had been abducted. It makes an important difference.”

During the trial, Salomón, Ruth, Daniel, Ester, and Judith saw the difficulty of their WR-parents and took care of them. They were concerned about WR-parents going to jail, but all five tried to provide for their needs and took care of them when they became ill.

Judith: In 97 we fought a lot with the judge... I didn’t care because I just didn’t want my father to go to jail! Nevertheless, when she became ‘the Abuelas militant’ the relationship with her WR-parents changed.

Ester reported a collapse of an idol. Even if Daniel, Joseph, Ester, and Judith reported a change in the relationship, all of them continued to have a deeply affectionate relationship with their WR-mothers after the trial.

Ester: […] the trend was reversed. The pillar of the family, which before was my father, became myself. Everything changed! There was a 180-degree turnaround. I had to take care of everything myself. Now through the eyes of my parents; it was like that idol that was my dad, fell down! Not because of disappointment, but because, he was no longer the pillar, the pillar was me!

Daniel: When she [WR-mother] got very sick, she got cancer, I took care of the whole situation, her hospitalization, her surgery, and thus, I had her in my house until she passed away. So, I don’t suppose it was one, a very similar situation that happens to any son with his mother. […] The relationship changed, of course, because I got older, I became a father, I left ... the house. So, I think that is something that changed the relationship, for sure, but I always had a relationship with her, until the end.

Conversely, for David, Ruth, and Tobias, the visits to WR-parents became sporadic based on an inner obligation or guilt not to abandon them completely. For David and Tobias, the crime of their WR-parents was clear. The feeling reported by Tobias was: “less and less desire to visit them.”

David: [I visit my WR-parents] once every two months. I do not see them, not with my daughter, no! I go alone—I go, above all, one day when there is a soccer game or something, so that there is a climate… of nothing. I go to see that. I see them for a while, I watch the game, and that’s it.

For Samuel, the discovery happened as a child and then he had no more contact with the WR-mother. Ruth, Tobias, and David are deeply angry; Ruth, because although her WR-parents were loving, they lied to her; Tobias, because there was always an absence of relationship; David, because after feeling rejection throughout his childhood, he realized that his WR-mother began to fear him and became servile:

The fact of knowing that it was not an adoption, but rather an abduction in a historical context, during the military dictatorship … this has changed the concept that I had of them a lot […] Having realized many years later […] that they were collaborators of the genocides in Argentina! […] Imagine, from that moment, the relationship began to change a lot—treating me in a very... I wouldn’t say ‘with disdain’ … but more less, practically—well, she started to wash and iron my clothes! She made me the food that I wanted, that she knew I liked. It all started because she didn’t want—she knew that I had already discovered what they had done. [The WR-father] always was different to her, calm. He seemed like nothing had happened, […] he continued to behave in the same way.

The turning point of the DNA-testing influenced the quality of the relationships with the WR-parents, and even influenced the way the IG referred to them. Table 1 describes the relevance of the words used by IG to describe their WR-parents, which reflects their feelings towards their WR-parents. Tobias, David, and Joseph completely refuse to call them “dad/mom”; the others start calling them “appropriators” and then, absorbed in childhood memories, begin to address to them with the term “viejos,” an Argentinean expression for parents which implies affection. Daniel refers to them as the “parents who raised me,” recognizing a bond with his WR-mother even if not biological. Salomón says:

I am considering that he is not my father, but my appropriator [...] more or less, IG consider it offensive that they were called ‘parents’, [because] they are actually appropriators—legally they are appropriators! In contrast, Ester finds it absurd to consider her WR-parents as kidnappers: ‘[The Abuelas] want me to talk about my adoptive parents as my appropriators. I’m 42 years old, and talking about appropriators —as your parents— it seems crazy to me!’

Meanwhile, Tobias immediately stopped calling his WR-mother ‘Mom’: ‘When I had my identity recovered, from the first day I stopped calling her ‘mom’; it cost me nothing. I approached the Abuelas because I suspected that she was not my mother’.

New Relationships with the Biological Family

The stories of IGs’ first encounters with their biological families are always moving and full of details. Daniel and Susana had vivid memories. There are daily moments that they could not live in the past that they had missed and tried to recover, like eating meals together, or celebrating children’s birthdays.

Daniel: A few days later, I went to [my Abuela’s] house to meet her. So, I ... rang the bell. I remembered all the images of that moment; then my grandmother said: ‘I’m coming!’. She didn’t ask anything. She knew I was coming. I stood there waiting outside the building. You could see the elevator door. I said: ‘When the elevator door opens, I’m going to see my grandmother for the first time. I don’t want to forget it!’. So, I was like this, looking, and the elevator door opened and a typical grandmother came out. [laughs] She was chubby, with very white hair. She had freckles, and she came to the door, walking, with a big smile, and I wanted to record it. Then, I remember the image of her hand with little freckles, thus, putting the keys, until a certain moment [when] there were no barriers between us. And she hugged me, touched my face, and she asked me how I was doing and I said: ‘Fine!’. And she said, ‘Well come in, the food is ready’. [laughs] And the food was ready—every time I went to my grandmother’s home, there was always food. I think she cooked to make up for all the moments in life that she hadn’t been able to cook for me! So, I already knew that every time that I was going to see her, I was going to eat a lot! [laughs] Yeah, that was the first [time] I met my grandmother.

David and Tobias report the profound impact on them of meeting with a large family that contrasts with their past loneliness. Tobias says: “I met a lot of people—they looked like a soccer team! […] I was without siblings my whole life, then suddenly I had three brothers!” Ester has the opposite feeling; compared to her very large WR-family, her biological family is small.

As shown in Daniel’s example, the temporal dimension is different: while for the biological family members, the wait lasted a very long time, David, Daniel, Judith, and Samuel feel that everything happened very quickly. Daniel says: “These moments are not lived in the same way. […] ‘[My grandmother] always waited for me. She always waited for that moment. For us, for the restored grandchildren, things happened suddenly. So, it is a difficult situation sometimes to handle.”

Particularly, Daniel notes that your own family are strangers. The need of being respected in temporal processing is reported. Salomón is relieved to feel that the Abuelas do not want to force him in any way, while Ester and Judith report they need time and not to be forced.

Salomón: She [his aunt] was waiting for me at the airport. I realized it was her because she was the only one crying at the airport at that time. [...] I wanted to tell her why for eight, ten years I had been refusing to do this, and then we went to her house. My grandmother […] is a person who inspired peace. She began to show me a photo of my mother, from when she was young, from when I was a baby, and I saw them: I saw my biological mom and I saw my daughters, but very marked! […] my grandmother told me: ‘Look, we always say, we never wanted to cause you any harm, never, we do not have any other purpose, we looked for you, we waited for you, and as we were waiting for that, I was ready’. I felt amazed […] I felt loved for the way she spoke to me, for the way she told me about Kristine [his biological mother], even though I felt kind of strange. Because I began to loosen up, that was when she began to show me the photos. For me it was a reality!

David processed his situation for years and when he met his biological relatives, he felt ready, whereas Ester needed time to perceive some feelings towards them.

David: The president [of CONADI] told me: ‘Your uncles want to see you. What shall we do?’ and I say to her: ‘Yes, no problem!’; […] It was all very fast. I was in shock. [...] So luckily my uncles also wanted the same and they approached me the same day. […] They were very excited and my uncle — we looked at each other from this distance — saw me very much similar to my father and he began to cry. I also hugged them, but I didn’t hug two strangers. I couldn’t do the same as them, because they were really two strangers. They had been looking for me forever. […] I could be closer to my biological family, four months later. We had a great meeting, I met everyone. That containment, that approach with someone who had gone through the same thing as me […] At that time there was no one. I did not have my current partner, […] then that restraint, that affection, that understanding, it was fundamental. The whole family was there!

Ester: It’s been many years and many things have happened; you cannot force someone to have feelings for someone. So, I let them flow. You can feel or you cannot feel, that is, it seems to me that feelings are the fundamental thing. My grandfather was looking for me all his life. He died looking for me.

Ruth, Judith, and Joseph mentioned the consequent need to reconcile the two families and to mediate.

Ruth: I made mistakes as serious as not taking care of the situation and celebrating my son’s birthday and inviting both parties, and not knowing what to do in between! […] I got used to it, until my grandmother told me: ‘I feel bad there!’ I told her: ‘Well, grandmother, I did not force you to go. I wanted to open the doors, you couldn’t live with some people, it’s difficult!

Judith: I continued taking care of them [WR-parent], but little by little I began to have more ties with my real family and what I found in order to be able to live with that other life, it was to share with my dad everything that I lived with my uncles.

Change in the Relationship with Friends and Acquaintances

The change in identity is also reflected in partner relationships: Susana has not had any partners since she discovered the truth; Salomón’s wife has some valid difficulties in understanding his contradictory feelings, while Ruth and Judith report having the support of their husbands.

Salomón, Ester, Ruth, and David point out the difficulty of self-disclosing to friends these so intimate matters. Daniel compares his life with the quieter life of his friends. Judith felt she hated everyone and Ruth suddenly lost half of her friends: “I had military contacts, which suddenly disappeared […] I felt a disappointment, because I did not change my way of being. […] Those who were friends, many military friends continued the same and many gave me this surprise!”.

Ester: I don’t feel like explaining my story to everyone. I need to tell it, but I have not disclosed my story. So, I don’t want to spread it around. Imagine: you go to the bank and give explanations to everyone. It is victimizing all the time and I do not want to be a victim all the time, to feel different.

Conclusions

The legislative orientation towards the right to identity is supported by these observations, as an important historical decision generalizable to other contexts, still considering the due respect to the IG, as recommended by the law. The complexity of the IGs’ feelings, the consequences over their identity, and the ambivalence towards their biological and WR-parents, as inferred by the interviews, should be taken into account and respected by social workers in the management of these and similar reunification processes.

The opposition of three IG to the DNA-testing highlights the problem of the balance between a person’s right to integrity and privacy and the right to justice, as described by Penchaszadeh (2015). Consistently with Brockhus (2014), all of them maintain that the restoration of their identity has been an enrichment and the opportunity to redefine relationships with their WR-parents. Even Salomón claims that the forced DNA-testing gave him relief because it absolved him from the guilt of causing an eventual condemnation to his WR-mother, consistent with what Smith (2016) reported; Judith and Ester, although skeptical, considered the DNA-testing as the beginning of their identity recovery. Besides, all three had had clues of not being biological children of the WR-parents, even if they were not consciously aware of it. The resistance to DNA-testing was a resistance to admit a reality that was already known and deeply struggled with: the certainty of being an IG was a relief simply by marking the end of this fight.

Regarding the legislative issue is relevant also: (a) the role played by human rights associations in the trials; (b) the risk of commixtures between judicial and military powers even under democracy, as asserted by Lo Giúdice (2005) and exemplified by the stories of Salomón and Daniel; and (c) the tendency to grant clemency for WR-parents, shown by the sentences of house arrest, as hypothesized by King (2011). IG show care and protection towards their WR-parents, even if three of them did not refer to any affection, but instead to a sense of guilt or an inner obligation not to abandon their WR-parents. All express the necessity to maintain the relationship with their WR-parents, as a need for continuity with their previous social identity.

Regarding IG social identity, DNA-testing represents a moment of great stress, which aroused in the IG feelings of derealization, as testified by the expression: “I felt like I was inside a film” (see also de Baggis et al., 2022). For the IG who choose DNA-testing, this moment is the end of a process of knowledge between doubts and questions. The discovery of their origins through DNA-testing marks in a tangible way a before and an after in social identity. It marks the beginning of the legal proceedings, the reversal of relationships with their WR-parents, as well as the encounter with the biological family and the modification of previous social interactions. Instead, for Solomón, Judith, and Ester, there is not a “before and an after,” so much as the beginning of a slow process of assimilation. Indeed, the DNA-testing results challenge the IGs’ need to preserve their identity continuity, or in the Brubacker and Cooper (2000) meaning, some self-sameness over time, some consistency, and something that remains still the same, while other things around them change.

Particularly, it is challenged that aspect of their identity, which Erickson (1968) defines “communal culture” as a fundamental feeling of sameness among members of a group or category which manifest itself in solidarity, in shared dispositions and action. This aspect of collective identity implies a strong group homogeneity and a clear boundary between inside and outside (Brubacker & Cooper, 2000). Indeed, IG find themselves passing through two opposite groups, which are grounded on mutually exclusive categories, and do not allow a conciliation. All the IG referred to the difficulty connecting their previous and current lives, with all the contradictions which elicited a change in their condition from children of military (or military acquaintances), to children of “subversion.” Nevertheless, they make an active effort to make these contexts coexist. Thus, the encounter with the biological family is complex. Some IG, in the past, felt very alone, and later met large families; others had the opposite experience. The temporal dimension is relevant: there are daily moments that they could not have lived in the past which they attempt to recover. All IG need time to build a bond with their biological relatives. The repercussions in the social sphere are reflected in partner-relationships and friends. Difficulties to communicate, to be understood, and to be accepted or rejected occur. In every case, IG realize they live a very unique experience that causes them to feel themselves different and alone.

Furthermore, while their previous “self-understanding” was not necessarily explicit, the events compel them to formulate an explicit discursive articulation about their identity, which becomes something to be discovered, and something about which one can be mistaken (Brubacker & Cooper, 2000). Following Calhoun (1991), IG are challenged not only in their “ordinary identity” but also in their imperative identity, the honor-driven sense of self that can enable them to undertake solidarity and justice-driven actions.

Finally, processes of identification for situating themselves in the new social context accompany the shift of their social identity, which may be grasped in the change of the name and in the search for similarities with their biological relatives. The change of the name is the expression of the wish to recover bonds with biological parents or, conversely, to maintain the existing bonds with their WR-parents. The similarity found in the pictures represents a way to reconnect themselves to their biological parents. Pictures could be considered symbolic nonverbal material which have the potential to convey emotions and to get in touch with a dimension which is not representable (Bucci, 2002).

DNA-testing marks a change of the social identity not only for IG but also for their WR-parents: from loving and compassionate images, to ones of kidnappers, and/or accomplices of the executioners of the desaparecidos. Some of the WR-parents fell ill after the prosecution or had emotional difficulties, showing underestimation, disbelief, or denial of the kidnapping. As Muldoon et al. (2019) affirm, the loss of a positive identity likely correlates to psychopathological outcomes.

The limitation of this research regards the small number of participants enrolled. In future studies, other IG could be enrolled, and a comparison between IGs’ experiences with the experiences of the children of desaparecidos who had continued to live with their biological relatives could be considered.