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After years of following tip offs, patiently watching school playgrounds and suspect families, the Grandmothers have tracked down 59 of the missing children, of whom 31 have now been restored to their blood relatives.
But closing this particularly painful chapter of modern history has been difficult because of the sheer numbers of those who were detained during the Dirty War and never seen again. An unknown number of people went missing, estimated between 10,000 and 30,000, who are known, collectively, as "The Disappeared".
But it wasn't just adults who disappeared. It has emerged that a number of the women who were abducted were pregnant when they were detained. Human rights groups say there is evidence to suggest that as many as 200 of these women were kept alive until they had given birth. The babies were taken away for adoption, usually by military families. The real mothers then disappeared, this time completely.
For years, the conscience of the nation has been kept alive by a tireless group of ordinary women, mothers and grandmothers of those who had disappeared. Every Thursday, for the past 21 years, they have met at the Plaza de Mayo, a busy central square in central Buenos Aires. There, in full view of the Presidential Palace, they walk slowly round in a circle, wearing white headscarves on which they've embroidered the names of their missing relatives, and the date they were last seen. Up until now, their quest for justice has had limited success. Although some of Argentina's military leaders were tried and jailed for human rights abuses immediately after the Dirty War, they were pardoned and released under a General Amnesty ordered by the previous President, Carlos Menem, in 1990. So the grandmothers have concentrated their efforts on trying to locate the children who were born in captivity and spirited away, children who must now be in their twenties and who are known as "The Living Disappeared".
Estella Carlotto is a founder member of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who now runs a formidable detective operation. After years of following tip offs, patiently watching school playgrounds and suspect families, the Grandmothers have tracked down 59 of the missing children, of whom 31 have now been restored to their blood relatives. There is still no trace, though of the child which Estella's own daughter, Laura is reported to have had in prison before she was killed.
Case 1
One of the earliest cases of children to be found and re-united with their blood family is Elena Galinares. She grew up in the family of a military policeman who told her that she had been adopted after she was abandoned. She didn't find out the truth until she was 10 when her real grandmother came to claim her. "It was strange, because in a way I recognised her," Elena says now. "Of course I had never seen her before, but there was something about her that even then, I knew was familiar."
Elena was finally returned to her real grandmother after a DNA test proved without doubt that she was indeed the long lost grandchild they had been searching for. Since she last saw them as a child across a courtroom, Elena has had no contact with her adoptive family. Today she refers to them only as "kidnappers".
Case 2
Things do not always turn out well as 72-year-old Marta Vasquez found out. Marta's daughter, Maria disappeared in 1976. After 8 years of searching and hoping, Marta finally learned that Maria had been killed. But she also learned that before Maria was murdered, she had given birth to a son who was subsequently adopted. After a long and frustrating search, Marta Vasquez is now sure she has found her missing grandson, a young man in his early 20s. But when she arrived, unannounced, at the office where he works, she was unprepared for his reaction.
"When he realised who I was," Marta says, "he went pale and took me aside. I begged him to have the blood test and said then he would be free to decide what he wanted to do. But he said the tests were unreliable and told me that in any case he wasn't remotely interested in knowing where he came from."
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