The Chilean woman whose twin daughters were stolen from her in 1979, first met them in four and a half years.
The emotional reunion between 64-year-old Maria Veronica Soto and her daughters Maria Beatrice and Adelia Rose Cessa took place in the Chilean city of Concepcion, Biobio, Chile, after twins who grew up from Italy.
It was the first time Soto saw his daughter since he was eight months old. I knew that the twins were always adopted in Chile, but they had no memories of their mother.
In 1979, when Chile was under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the 19-year-old Soto gave birth to twin girls from Huapen, a coastal town in the province of Biobio. After a routine doctor visit when her daughter was 8 months old, she said she was told that her daughter needed to stay for evaluation. She said she was promised medical and nutritional help. But shortly after, she said she accused the government clinic of not taking her baby with her and not feeding her properly. When she went to the police, she was told to go to court. That’s where she learned that her baby was adopted with an Italian couple. Soto will later learn that her daughter’s birth certificate was changed to say that the parent did not show up to register the baby.
According to Chilean officials, during the Pinochet dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, thousands of babies were stolen from biological mothers and sold to adoption by couples in the US and Europe. In Chile, they are known as “Children of Silence.”
Some babies were stolen from vulnerable and poor women and were illegally sold to adoption agencies. Other newborns were given by grandparents who conspired with doctors, priests and nuns to hide their daughter’s socially embarrassing pregnancy. In many cases, the restriction laws have run out. In others, the people behind the baby theft have died. During an oppressive dictatorship, when thousands of opponents kill or disappear, they stand up for their rights and mean prison, or worse.
“They are listening to women now. At the time, they didn’t listen to women. They didn’t listen to their mothers.
In June, for the first time in the country’s history, a Chilean judge announced that he was indicting five individuals for allegedly stealing a baby for adoption. “In the 1980s there is even a network of judges who have identified babies from Catholic priests, lawyers, social workers, and even poor mothers, sold them to adoption and adopted 50,000 events,” said Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a judge at the Santiago Court of Appeals, who is in charge of the investigation.
The judge said he charged and issued arrest warrants against five people who said they should remain in pretrial detention for “crime association, child acquiring and intentional misconduct.” A study focusing on the city of San Fernando in central Chile has nothing to do with Soto’s case.
A long, slow journey began in 2020 when Soto contacted him with “Nos Buscamos” or “We’re looking for each other.” Founder and executive director and illegally recruited as a child, Constanza Del Río said he immediately recommended a DNA test that Soto did immediately.
She sends her DNA samples to a US DNA bank, which is managed by My Heritage. It is an online genealogy platform that works with NGOs like NOS Buscamos to help people find long lost relatives.
“And for five years she kept asking us, ‘What’s going on now?’,” Del Rio said. “And I told her, ‘We have to wait for the other side of the bridge.’ “That means either her daughter or grandchild must undergo the same DNA test.
And earlier this year, it happened. In March, the son of one of her daughters, Maria Soto’s grandson, conducted a DNA test and found her grandmother. He then went to Facebook. “Within 20 minutes, they had already spoken,” Del Rio said.
Del Rio says there could be as many as 25,000 lawsuits across the South American country, based on conversations with Chilean authorities. Over the past 11 years, she has a database of 600 biological parents and children looking for families in her organization alone.
Soto says he has never lost hope of reuniting with his daughter one day. She didn’t know it would take 45 years. “Mom has always been looking for you,” she told her daughters as she held her tearful hug.
On September 10th, the twins flew from Italy to Chile and landed in Concepcion. The normally quiet airport was a celebration. In addition to Soto and her extended family, journalists and local officials joined a large group of people waiting for the twins to arrive.
The twins ran to the arms of their biological mother for a long, heartfelt embrace, as Soto repeatedly said. Soto does not speak Italian and the twins have not yet learned Spanish, but the emotions at the moment did not require translation.
“We finally found our mother, so we are very, very, very, very happy with so many emotions. Maria Beatrice Meleu Cessa said she is talking for both sisters.
“God heard me,” Soto said after the joyous reunion. “For me, this was like having a daughter again, but in the adult version.”
Soto and her twins say both families have been tricked. The Chilean family and the adopted parents of Italian children were unaware that the girls were taken away from their biological mothers without their consent.
She spent nearly half a century with her twin daughters, but Soto says she thinks she is blessed. There are many mothers, she said, they have yet to find a lost child for a long time, and others who died waiting for a reunion like her never happened.
“I fought until I found a girl, so I told those mothers not to stop fighting. Now there’s more possibilities, so I’ll knock on the door,” Soto said.
