A heart-breaking story with courage and a heart-warming ending.
Report by Luciana Bertoia from Pagina 12 published through arrangement with Publico.es
Translation by D.Breatnach
The last time Julio Santucho saw his wife, Cristina Navajas, was on June 14, 1976. Appointed as head of international policy for the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores), he had to leave Argentina for six months.
They had been married for almost five years then and had two children: Camilo, three years old, and Miguel, who had not yet turned one. The three accompanied him to the Retiro terminal, where he took a bus to Sao Paulo and then arrived in Rome.
In the terminal, Cristina had Miguel in her arms and Camilo by the hand. When saying goodbye to him, she insisted on a promise:
– I only ask you one thing. If something happens to me, you have to take the boys with you. They shouldn’t stay with your mom, with my mom, or with other comrades. They have to stay with you.
– But, Cris, we’ve been living in hiding for a long time, and nothing has ever happened to us.
“Now it’s different,” she cut him off.
One day before a month had passed since Julio’s departure, Cristina was kidnapped by the Dictatorship. She was in the apartment at 735 Warnes Avenue, where her sister-in-law Manuela Santucho lived.
Another comrade from the PRT-ERP, Alicia D’Ambra, also lived with them. All three were kidnapped that day. The oppressors left Cristina’s two sons, Camilo and Miguel, and Manuela’s son, Diego, in the apartment.
Cristina managed to ask a neighbour to call her mother, Nélida Navajas. When the phone rang, Nélida had to ask where the boys were. For security reasons, she did not know their address.
When she arrived, she heard the screams of the two youngest, Miguel and Diego, from the street. Camilo was asleep.
Nélida found her daughter’s bag on the ground. Inside was a series of letters that she had written to Julio, waiting to receive an address to to which to send them. She had started writing the last one on Saturday, July 10, but had finished it the next day:
“Miguel is much better, he hardly coughs anymore, but he is more of a bandit and wilder every day. Cami is calmer and doesn’t give me work, the only thing is that he is getting clingy to me. He asked again which house we are going to, which house is this, etc.
Now the one who is not well is me, I do not know if I am pregnant,” she told her husband.
Julio found out about the kidnappings the next day, when he called to greet his brother-in-law on his birthday.
That day he spoke ten times with his mother-in-law. He would not hesitate to return to Buenos Aires to collect his children, but the PRT sent two comrades who, pretending to be a couple , took the children out and abroad to their father.
Forty-six years later, Julio managed to meet his third child, the baby that Cristina had while she was kidnapped in the Pozo de Banfield, after having gone through Coordinación Federal and Orletti Automotive (places of detention of the fascist regime – Trans.).
He is the 133rd grandchild found by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (group of women who began the campaign to trace those made missing by the fascist regime – Trans.)
In an interview with Página 12, Julio Santucho relates how he was reunited with his youngest son, now a 47-year-old adult.
How was the search?
The main heroine in this story is Cristina, who for eight or nine months was pregnant in the most inhumane conditions: mistreatment, torture, bad food. She put up with all of this with willpower and finally gave birth to our son.
My son began to question his (new family – Trans.) relationship based on references from those close to the family. A sister who lived with him for 20 years told him “these are not your parents.”
From the way he was treated by the appropriator who raised him, he came to realise that he was not his father.
In 2019, he began to search, although stopped during the pandemic and then resumed. He had a birth certificate from another province. Finally this year he managed to have his DNA tested.
We searched but we had no approximation or probability of discovering my son. It was an exceptional case: he was born in the Pozo de Banfield, but police doctor Jorge Bergés did not sign the certificate. He surprised us.
What is it like to meet a son who is 46 years old?
It is good. The bad thing is that they took 46 years from us. It is a victory for the human rights organizations that have fought for this and it is a defeat for the dictatorship. They wanted to steal my son but I, later than ever, got him back.
My mother-in-law, Nélida Navajas, joined the Abuelas (Grandmothers’ group – Trans.) to look for her grandson. Abuelas is an irreplaceable institution, it is an enormous benefit to society because it is precisely the place where people who have doubts can recover their identity.
In July 1976, you lost much of your family and now, another July but 47 years later, you have your son back.
You strike a chord. On July 13, Cristina, Manuela and Alicia were kidnapped. She was a comrade that I also knew because she worked in the party schools.
On the 19th, six days later, they killed my brother “Roby” (Mario Roberto Santucho, leader of the PRT-ERP), and later my brother Carlos.
It was a tragic week for the family. We are not better-off than others. All the 30,000 disappeared were brave, generous and devoted themselves to a fight for the well-being of society and humanity.
What could he know about Cristina during her captivity?
There are testimonies like that of Adriana Calvo. The Santuchos were visited by all the mothers that were in the Pozo de Banfield. Adriana asked to spend a day with them.
She had her baby in her arms and so as not to worry her Cristina did not tell her that she had had a child and that it had been taken from her.
Adriana, afterwards, spoke at the trial of Cristina’s tremendous generosity in not telling her anything so she wouldn’t worry about her because they could take the baby away from her. Do you realise how far thinking about the welfare of others went?
They were screwed. But they told her: “We are Santucho, we don’t have any possibility of leaving, but they are going to release you.”
And then there is that scene that Adriana recounts: when the officers arrived, all the women made a human wall – led by Manuela, Cristina and Alicia – and the men had to leave without being able to take their baby from her.
They were in a concentration camp. They knew they could shoot them all at that moment.
And now how is the reunion going?
Some ask me about the appropriator of my son, all I say is that I hope that Justice intervenes. For now, this is all like walking on clouds. We talk to my son every day, we see each other often. Now we have the commitment to make a video call to my granddaughters. Let’s go little by little.
Joy is infinite. Besides, we have time. I am 78 years old. My father died at 89. I have a brother in Santiago del Estero who is 101, another who is 96. If they don’t kill us Santucho, we live a long time. So I look forward to enjoying my son for a few more years.
End.
ADDITIONAL NOTES by D. Breatnach
The Argentinian dictatorship lasted from 1976 to 1983 and apart from banning dissenting newspapers and organisations, detained, tortured and killed thousands.
But not only that, very young children and babies were abducted and given to couples who supported the regime to raise as their own. This was also done by other dictatorships, including the Spanish Franco regime of four decades.
In a time when a week-old military coup in Niger is threatened with invasion by France and by some western-allied African states, it is well to remember how other military dictatorships have been viewed by western states.
The lack of democratic elections and opposition parties did not matter to the western states who in fact fully supported the Argentinian and many other coups and dictatorships.
The military dictatorship of Argentina only became a problem to the UK’s ruling class when Argentina’s military invaded the British colony of the Malvinas/ Falkland Islands in 1982, the same year that the USA stopped supporting the junta for the first time.
SOURCE MAIN STORY
https://www.publico.es/internacional/julio-santucho-dictadura-me-quiso-robar-mi-hijo-recupere.html?
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