Orphaned in Argentina's dirty war, man is torn between two families

[Judi Lynn]

Orphaned in Argentina's dirty war, man is torn between two families

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 11, 2010

BUENOS AIRES -- Alejandro Rei refused to accept the truth, even after the man he thought was his father pulled the car over one night and told him he had been adopted.
"You are the son of the disappeared," Victor Rei told him, his eyes tearing up.

Alejandro did not know it then, but Victor would have had intimate knowledge: He had been a military intelligence officer, a cog in a ferocious military machine that in the 1970s smashed two rebel groups in Argentina by kidnapping and torturing suspected guerrillas and dissidents. The victims were shot and buried in unmarked graves, or sedated and hurled alive from airplanes over the south Atlantic.

In the mournful lexicon of Latin American dictatorship, they were the "disappeared." And on that night in 2004, Alejandro was hearing that his real parents had been victims of the military junta during the "dirty war."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021003662.html