WORLD NEWS: “I don’t know where I was born, or what day”: 50 years since the last military coup in Argentina
New information reveals that the following story has emerged from the international scene.
“I don’t know where I was born. I don’t know what day I was born either. In other words, my certificate says April 18, which is clearly not the real date of my birth, because when my mother was kidnapped, she was between six and seven months pregnant. She was kidnapped in November, early November (1977), so I think I must have been born between January and February 1978. But I don’t know where. I don’t know anything,” says María Paula Inama Macedo in a room at the Casa por la Identidad.
The House for Identity operates in a building that belonged to the Navy Mechanics School, a military facility located in the northern end of the City of Buenos Aires, which, during the dictatorship, was one of the largest clandestine detention centers. Today, it belongs to the NGO Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to searching for children who were appropriated by families that were not their own.
The spaces are enormous in the House for Identity, and there is a persistent echo. The photos are the main protagonists: photos of the missing, photos of grandmothers demanding the appearance of their children and to know the fate of their grandchildren, and photos of appropriated children reunited with their biological families. In one of the several rooms of the place dedicated to memory, there is a huge painting with small black-and-white photographs.
Paula Inama points to her mother, Noemí Beatriz Macedo, and her father, Daniel Alfredo Inama. The similarity between the two is remarkable. Her mother and father have been missing since November 1977. They were both members of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.
Her biological grandmothers died without knowing María Paula. “The ones who looked for me were my two brothers,” she says. Ramón, the eldest, gave the DNA to try to identify her, and Paula, the second. They are all children of the same father but different mothers. Paula was her father’s favorite name, she says. He named his sister’s namesake, but her adoptive parents named her. A coincidence, but an especially significant one.
The Arrival of the Truth: “I Wanted Him to Test Positive”
María Paula did not expect to find out anything. She was not looking for anything; the truth found her. “On October 24, 2024, I received an email from Conadi (National Commission for the Right to Identity). They told me that they had confidential information for me, if I could communicate with them. And that’s where it all started, because until that moment, I had never thought about anything, nor had I suspected anything about all this that happened later.”
Then she received a call in which they explained to her that there were people looking for her and that there was a chance she was not the biological daughter of her parents. The next step, to confirm the suspicion, was for her to give a DNA sample.
“I already wanted to know everything,” she says. “I went to Conadi, they showed me everything they had, what they had investigated; and from there, I went to the Nation’s genetic bank to give my DNA sample.”
“I wanted him to test positive,” she confesses. She tells it all with surprising naturalness. “Yes, but no, it’s not natural at all. It’s… it looks like a movie, let’s say. Basically, it’s terrible, actually. Because the whole life that I thought was my real life… I don’t know how to tell you… turned out that no, nothing was as I thought. And that’s… nothing, a terrible blow, right?”
Members of the human rights organization Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and activists carry a large banner with portraits of people who disappeared in the military dictatorship of 1976–1983, during a march towards the Plaza de Mayo to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the 1976 coup d’état. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 24, 2019.
To the adoptive family who believed her biological for decades, she came because a brother of her father, deputy commissioner of the police of the province of Buenos Aires, gave the information. In that family, she has two brothers, with whom she maintains a good relationship: “I get along really well, the three of us are very close. It’s been like that all our lives.”
María Paula never suspected that she could be adopted, “because I never felt a difference. There was never a difference… The truth is that I had a very nice life, that is, happy. They loved me a lot, they took care of me.”
A New Puzzle of Identity
In the House for Identity, there is also the Family Biographical Archive of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. There, they are preparing a folder with all the information they have been able to collect about María Paula’s family. Daniela Drucaroff, coordinator of the Archive, shows her a huge family tree on a computer screen, which Paula compares with a small one made by hand, of which she has a photo on her cell phone.
“Look, this is the maternal part, we were able to reconstruct quite a bit,” says Daniela.
“Ah, wow!” Paula reacts excitedly. “It’s gigantic.”
At the House for Identity, María Paula Inama Macedo looks at a comic strip that tells the story of her parents who disappeared during the dictatorship. They continue talking, sharing information.
“Oh, how cute! I didn’t imagine,” Paula says excitedly. It is a tree that she will be able to share with her two children, a 19-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, who also have to put together the puzzle of their identity again.
In 2025, when she found out who she really was, María Paula did not celebrate her birthday. But in 2026, she did celebrate it. She did it on January 20, “which was the day I found out that they called me to give me the news of the positive DNA. It’s like I also took it as a day of rebirth.”
What This Means:
This development could have far-reaching consequences for global politics in the months ahead.
The implications of this story extend beyond borders and could affect millions of people globally.
Stay tuned for more updates as this story continues to unfold.
Source: This article was originally published in another language by France 24 – Noticias y actualidad internacional en vivo and has been translated and adapted for our global English-speaking audience. Read the original article here.