Buenos Aires Herald on December 3, 2024
Mario Navarro was born in 1976 and raised under a fake identity. His mother is still alive and they met in 2015
Tucumán province’s first trial over a child appropriated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship kicks off on Tuesday, December 3. The case has Mario Navarro at its center — a man born in captivity in 1976 while his mother was illegally detained. He was stolen from her and raised under a new identity in another province.
Navarro’s case is noteworthy because he is one of the few children born to a dictatorship victim inside a clandestine detention center who was able to meet his mother, who is still alive. The two met in 2015.
The only defendant in the case is Santo González, who was a prison guard at the Villa Urquiza jail in San Miguel de Tucumán, the province capital. In 2014, González received a 12-year jail conviction for crimes against humanity committed at the same prison. He was formally accused of participating in Navarro’s appropriation in 2021 and has been awaiting trial under house arrest.
Navarro was born between May and June 1976 at the Villa Urquiza prison. He was abruptly taken away from his mother by a nurse. Having just given birth, Sara was not even able to tell if it was a boy or a girl. She would later say she always imagined him to be a boy.
Sara was kidnapped in July 1975 when she was returning home from work late at night. At the time, she lived in San Miguel de Tucumán with her two daughters. She was released in November 1976, eight months after the beginning of the dictatorship. After being abandoned on the side of a road, she walked herself to a hospital, where she spent several days recovering.
Given that there were no records of her arrest, she was considered to be disappeared during that time. Based on the date of her disappearance and the birth of her son, it is unclear how or where she became pregnant.
According to the investigation, Navarro was given to a Spanish salesman called José Espinoza López, who, via two intermediaries, sold him to a couple. The pair registered him as their biological son and raised him under the name “Mario Bravo.” His fake birth certificate states he was born in May 1977 in Santa Fe, the province where he was raised.
According to a press release made by the General Prosecutors Office, the prison guard González is the only person involved in the Navarro appropriation who will be tried. All other parties have either passed away or are unable to stand trial for health reasons.
A lifelong search
Sara spent decades living in fear to report what she had gone through. However, in 2005, 30 years after her arrest, she decided to do so. She reached out to the National Human Rights Secretariat, which ordered the National Identity Commission (CONADI, by its Spanish initials) to start an investigation to find her child. In 2007, the National Genetic Database collected her blood to find a match.
It wasn’t until 2015 that her search would come to fruition. Ever since he was a child, Mario knew he was not being raised by his biological parents but never got any answers from his family. In February 2015, he reached out to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo office in Rosario, Santa Fe, and then to the CONADI. Months later, the National Genetic Database collected his blood and on November 19, he received the answer he had been looking for all his life: he was the son of Sara Navarro, a dictatorship survivor.
Mario became the 119th child to be identified by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. The organization announced it days after the results came through, and he met his mother right after that. In an interview with media outlet Página 12 that year, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo president Estela de Carlotto said Sara and Mario shared a hug so long she thought “they would never let go,” and also recalled what the mother told the son.
“They will never take you away from me again.”
Source: Buenos Aires Hearld