Shai Tratt, a student at Tufts University, announced on Mar. 27 that he has organized a visit by a representative of the humanitarian group Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and one of the children they helped to reunite with their birth family. The event will include public talks at Tufts, including an English-language session scheduled for March 30 in Olin Center.
The topic is significant because it highlights ongoing efforts to address human rights abuses from Argentina’s last military dictatorship. The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have worked since the late 1970s to restore the identities of children taken from political dissidents and placed with families sympathetic to the regime.
Tratt said his decision to study abroad in Buenos Aires was influenced by his sister’s experience and his academic focus on international relations and Spanish. During his time in Argentina, he interned with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, contributing to archival work aimed at helping individuals rediscover their biological families. “Abuelas is a human rights organization that emerged during Argentina’s last military dictatorship, looking to restore the identities of the grandchildren who were disappeared,” Tratt said.
He described how political dissidents were detained in clandestine centers such as ESMA—now a museum—and some women gave birth while captive before being killed. Their children were then raised under false identities: “The government often held these women captive until they gave birth, then the child would be given a fake birth certificate and appropriated—that’s a term that they use instead of adopted—into oftentimes a military family or to someone sympathetic to the dictatorship. The mother would be murdered and the child would grow up without any idea of who their biological parents were,” Tratt said.
Tratt explained that so far about 130 out of an estimated 500 stolen grandchildren have been identified through archival records and genetic testing coordinated by Abuelas: “They have a massive database, so when a grandchild rediscovers their identity, they can see who their biological family was and reconnect with that identity, even if there’s no one left alive.” He also worked with legal efforts related to exhuming remains for genetic analysis.
Looking ahead, Tratt hopes bringing representatives from Abuelas—including Héctor Rombola—to campus will raise awareness about this chapter in Argentine history: “I suggested bringing the two of them to the Tufts campus, helping to amplify the impact of Abuelas and talk about the work that they’re doing and share the personal experience of a grandchild who had her identity restored through this work.”
