How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
Source: Guardian
How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
From 1976 to 1983, hundreds of babies were taken from the ‘disappeared’ and raised by military families. Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit was one – and the man who raised him worked at the base where his parents were murdered
Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
Friday 22 July 2016 06.00 EDT
When he was a child, Guillermo’s parents nicknamed him “the Jew”.
Theirs was not a peaceful home: air force intelligence officer Francisco Gómez beat his wife Teodora Jofre frequently. “I saw him threaten her with a knife, hit her with a rifle butt, throw her on the floor and shout he would put a bullet in her,” Guillermo eventually told a court in Buenos Aires, years later.
On school holidays, Gómez would take Guillermo to spend the day at the Buenos Aires Regional Intelligence (Riba) air force base. Fellow agents took the boy out for ice cream or let him play with their unloaded guns. Eventually, Jofre could stand her husband’s abuse no longer, and the couple separated; Guillermo lived with Jofre and only saw Gómez on weekends.
Guillermo’s world was turned upside down at age 21 when a young woman tracked him down at the fast-food outlet where he worked in the outlying Buenos Aires district of San Miguel.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/22/argentinian-stolen-baby-guillermo-perez-roisinblit
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They were backed by the CIA and a U.S. government that feared Communism from taking over Latin America. Ironically, where it did take over was right at the U.S.' door, in Cuba.
So sad to think of all these young people tortured, murdered and the babies distributed like puppies to be given away to childless couples within the military's circles.
I'm glad that at least Guillermo is reunited with his real family.
He caught a lot of flack at the time from neocons - especially Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Once Reagan came in, Kirchpatrick was instrumental in forging an alliance between Reagan and the Argentine dictatorship to train and equip the Contras (particularly General Galtieri, whom they referred to as "a magnificent general"
. This was how Iran-Cocaine-Contra actually started.
That all ended, of course, when Galtieri invaded the Falklands - although some believe he did it at the suggestion of the Reagan White House in order to save Maggot Thatcher from certain defeat in the next elections. We'll never know.
Coincidentally, Carter's iconic Human Rights Undersecretary, Patt Derian, passed away recently. She gave Videla and his goons a serious case of sweaty palms, let me tell you.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027865322
Let it never be said that no American president tried to make a real difference - and certainly of Americans as a whole, many of whom became active in the human rights movement during that very era.
And the issue is certainly as relevant now as it ever was, as you know so well. 
