Argentine Activist Estela Carlotto Finds Stolen Grandson 36 Years Later
Estela Carlotto, the 83-year-old leader of an Argentine human rights group committed to finding babies stolen by the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship, has found her very own grandson after 36 years.
Carlotto, who heads the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, was told that her daughter's kidnapped son was found after DNA tests confirmed his identity. The now 36-year-old Ignacio Hurban lives in Olavarria, 217 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, reports Yahoo News.
His mother, leftist activist Laura Carlotto, was kidnapped while she was three months pregnant by the right-wing authoritarian regime in 1977, during the dictatorship's "Dirty War." Her son was then stolen from her while she was in a prison camp when he was just five hours old. She was killed two months later.
Since then, Carlotto has been actively searching for her grandson, while her group has located 100 of the 500 babies who were seized during the Dirty War.
On Wednesday, the country celebrated with the national human rights icon over the return of her missing grandson.
"Thanks to everyone, thanks to God, thanks to life, because I didn't want to die without embracing him and soon I will be able to," she said at the headquarters of her human rights group, according to The Telegraph.
The elderly grandmother said she could not wait to finally meet her missing grandson.
"I want to touch him, look at him. Laura is smiling from the heavens," she said while surrounded by her three surviving children, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Carlotto added that her grandson was "an artist, a musician like many of his cousins."
"Some said that he looks like me. He's shaken up. Now he knows," she said at a press conference.
She said that President "Cristina (Kirchner) phoned me. And we cried together."
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