Advance, Franco’s stolen babies
On Diagonal next issue, we offer the first cartography of children kidnapping from mothers with no political affiliation. Dozens of thousands of newborn kids would have been given after in adoption until the 80’s, although everything had began with a political motivation. After the civil war, kids were stolen to political prisoners just born at jail to avoid spearing their ideas.
Héctor Rojo Letón y María José Esteso Poves Martes 13 de octubre de 2009. Número 110 Número 111
“They have played with persons fears”
On September the 25th, many associations defending Historical Memory brought to lawsuit in Madrid some of the alleged involved, doctors and members of the Church, and places, clinics and hospices, where there was a traffic of newborn kids during Franco’s time. Thanks to this demand, and other also brought to lawsuit at Aragón and Andalucia, and other testimonies Diagonal has acceded to, we can offer the first map or this practise which would have affected to thousands and thousands of families, according to Mari Cruz Martinez, previous president of Right to Know association, who during many years investigated these matters. One of those cases is the one of Isabel, who being under legal age got forced by her parents to go in 1974 to a flat in Bilbao from Canary Islands to give her son in later on, who has told to Diagonal those more of 30 years she has been looking for her son.
It has been a long time already for many adoptions, but these happenings have been silenced till today. Why has not this situation, known more or less at Bilbao or in other places, had bigger implications?
Not to have had a bigger implication, is mainly due to the fact that they have played with persons fears. Firstly to the legal consequences it would have had at times before the year 2000. Also for the ramifications these adoption have, among them persons intimately close to the State, Church, politics, medicine, law and other professions which because of their characteristics would get their good name in compromise. All those has made to be aware of this subject to stop any sort of investigation or claim any adoptive chid or biological mother could make. I even dare to say that by the State and the Church, if any investigation was carried on, it would be indisputably slowed down by the same persons regarding this matter. Even today they have got enough power to exert their influence, also many involved ones are today part of the most exquisite society and with so important positions that some of them are known through the media.
For example, individually many persons have gone to search at the Provincial Council. The first time I went in person to talk about this subject and ask for help to find my son was at 1978. Later on, almost during consecutive years, I have kept on going without getting to be heard. Last time I went in person to the Provincial Council offices it was 1994, they were looking at me like I as mad or committing a sin, never ever it got accepted any sort of claim. If so, it would have had an entrance stamp with it registration number and that would have meant the State was officially informed about the subject. I know many other persons have done the same as me, even this same year. The only thing we got are good words, “we will see”, “we will call you”, “we had never heard of anything similar before”. But, still not a single official claim had been admitted. During all this years I have kept in touch with persons on similar situations, I have not found any who has got a proof with entrance stamp and registration date of their claims.
Even Judge Baltasar Garzón has stated this has been even worse than the happenings at Argentina. How did you realize about your situation?
If not worse, both situations could be perfectly comparable. Identically many children were adopted inside and outside Argentina, here it happen the same. For example, there is a very famous architect worldly known around his 34 or 36 years old more or less who was given in adoption outside Spain through Mercedes Grass. As many other anonymous.
In the case of biological mothers, we knew as we lived the situation from the epicentre, adoptive sons and daughters have learned it most of them being between 26 and 30 years old. If they found it out before, it was because or they did not have concordances with the family who adopted them or because there were so many physical differences that they knew it without being told. Many sons and daughter who thought they were biological are surprised. There are lots of things, from birthdates changes, to persons inscribed in two different countries or born in Bilbao and later on registered in Madrid, specifically at O’Donnell Clinic. The saddest thing of all this is its main target: to erase any trace so mothers and sons could not be reunited. In the cases of biological mothers, there was a bit of everything, from the young girl who could not take care of her son and had to give him in adoption, to other ones who wanted their kids but were forced by the family to go to Mercedes’ flats to spend their pregnancy there, other ones had no resources or a family to help them and ended asking for help to priests and nuns. Help to have a roof, to eat and minimum medical care, besides work or to keep on studding, some of them knowing what they were there for and some of them not knowing it but getting to find it out meanwhile there, and did not want either to give their child in adoption. We should go back to the 70’s in my case, and even to the 80’s and part of the 90’s to get an idea of the social and cultural differences. Pressure was of all kinds, religious, familiar and social which all under age women had on those years and even some of them already being of age. Basically, those women under age were badly treated, humiliated, despised belonging to low and medium class. The same for those ones belonging to medium-high and high class, with the difference that the family use to take the power to hide the spot of having a pregnant daughter and a illegitimate grandson.
At 21 years old people was at age, with democracy it kept on the same, but varnished. To be at age at 18 did not mean either any difference, the moral and social rules still were the same ones. There were many ways to do a brainwash and bend their willpower, from restructuring and exhaustive talks to demonstrate the such a big pain you would cause to your family, to even beatings, threats, or even reclusion in reformatories, nuns schools and other places like your own home, from which you were not allowed to go out unless wearing a girdle which cut your breath, for nothing to be noticed.
In the case of adopted children, when finding out they used to go into a logical shock, they asked about everything without finding answers, because adoptive parents do not want to talk about it, most of them. It arrives a logical moment when adopted persons stop asking their parents not to hurt them, because they love them and they show their vulnerability with that subject. I perfectly understand the adopted persons love their adoptive parents as own, as they have grown them up, loved and consoled since they were little, but I do not agree with the emotional blackmail they practise from love not to talk about such an important matter for a son you love with all your soul.
Alter this, they use to begin investigation by their own, they obtain literal birth certificates or the birth file. They begin looking for information at any place, they talk to uncles or cousins who may know something about, some others with friends. Later on they contact with other adopted persons and ask at the institutions looking for help and therefore to find their roots. Opposite information arrives, the truth covered by their own family and in some cases lies. Luckily, some of them know the truth from the beginning, there are adoptive parents who know all the truth and have got names and contacts, there are adoptive parent who really do know anything else than the way they adopted. In all the process, since they find out the truth, and is not an institution or a lost word heard behind the door, they have got many emotional upside downs, insecurities, remorse because they feel they are betraying their adoptive parents, at the same time they think they were left because they were not wanted and a thousand more things, almost all horrifying. To judge what happened before knowing it is dangerous, but it is an unconscious defense which continuously strikes them, due to the doubts and barriers put to know. With the wish of finding, not to recover anything as it is already impossible, but to be able to see the face of the mother who gave you birth, to listen to her story, to know her reasons or the own or other peoples causes which made their personal stories direction get changed. I think there is nothing worse than thinking your mother did not love you, abandoned you, gave you in, or who knows what.
By the other hand, there is a question not always mentioned. There are under age biological mothers who signed the adoption of their kid, some others did not, but no one took the time to make a reflection about what value could have the signature of an under age girl when she has been pressured and forced to sign even under threatening (it is not my case as I did not sign anything and they knew if they tried to, I would have broken the paper in a thousand peaces). I know cases where the parents of any member of the family used to go with the under age girl to sign, wanting or not. It is also possible the parents signed representing the under age girl not present. Is that legal? It seems an abuse of under age persons in all meanings of the word. This little examples were the atmosphere breathed.
When trying to recompose our private life, which problems have you found, at personal or institutional levels? Do you think at some point it will be possible to find the proofs demonstrating everything you claim? To recompose private life? In some cases they might even get it, it generally is not possible, you only live thinking about reaching to be over age to look for the kid you got stolen. In that time lap you spend being under age until becoming in adult by law, your head turns round and round. You make infinity of plans of the way your are going to look for, what you are going to do. Only the hope of finding your son once over age is what keeps you going, because law says so you will get your son back. Terrible mistake.
You try to keep any proof, in my case I made constancy of my pregnancy (I will not say how). You try to keep some sort of contact with people of the environment you were and you keep it like a treasure. You also live tortured, sad, angry and alone, very alone. The sensation is that more than walking you crawl, you do not sleep, you need to put a mask on to be able to have relation with others. You become mistrust, badly conceived, you make your relationships with the rest according to the social contributions and contacts you have got in order to be able to go in certain circles which you think may introduce you into the mentioned plot (you can not imagine the point I was able to reach to) . You begin to look in your mind for things you could have done to be with your son, but as much as you think I should have done this or that, it was impossible. The machinery was designed especially to deprive you of any sort of resource, in my case it was this way because I did not want to give him away under any concept. I had him in my arms and got pulled off me. After they make you sleep and when you wake up he is not there already, they take advantage of your physical and emotional vulnerability to do what they want.
Leaving on a side the livings of the moment, once you reach to be over age you begin to search, but you do not know even where to begin. First of all it to go to the place you went out from a few years ago empty. You ring at the door to talk and claim your son, you find words like these: “You have never been here”, “I am advising you, everything is erased. You do not exist. There is nothing, you are mad”., “You are exposing yourself to a demand and you will not be able to prove anything”. You get thrown out with bad manners and the door shut at your face, you visit the priest who used to be the “spiritual counsellor” at the flat, he talks to you about life, to forget the past and advises you do desist on your own benefit. The real proof of Faith is to accept the intentions of God, you try not to burn off that contact to be able to insist in other ways. Everything is useless. You also look for any partner of the “flat” but she does not know anything. A tense conversation you can not get anything clear of. Anyway she also went through similar uneasy feelings but maybe in a different way. You look for other persons who stayed with you, you find some, others not. You make a detective get in charge of investigation, at the end nothing at all, because even finding small clues they end up vanishing.
But you keep on, you can not believe they do not believe you. You can not believe there is no one who can help you. You can not believe everything is so well organized for obscurity, but you keep on. In the middle of so many “no” it is possible to find a “yes”, it does not matter how many times you fail on the way. No matter how many doors get shut. It does not matter your friends and known are a farce in your insides, although you need to have relationships with others as a human being, your personal relations are a lie. You can not talk about it with anyone, you know you are not interested in many persons you know, you do not care for them. They do not either about you. You know it although they do not show it, but you need to be there just in case there any hint. You are scared about they looking bad at you and putting you apart. You are scared because an external proof, if it exists, disappears. You are scared of not finding your son. Maybe you can look like a normal person in front of others, you are not, you feel the difference between yourself and the rest, but you keep on.
Nothing at institutional levels. They do not know, neither want to know. Although in some occasions they have got nervous, doors are still shut.
I firmly believe we can find if people collaborate. I do believe it can be possible to find, if the favours trading did not exist. I do believe, if we stop being scared about what people would say and the persons who have files or any sort of important fact or who took part voluntary or involuntary would talk. But it is an utopia, the weight of the bad-understood “honour”, to keep on being straight persons to outside but not inside, the bad conscience, the moral and religious compromises acquired and the reputation besides the money and the social position impede that many people can close their own lives circles. This way, they live without even knowing the biological baggage are they going to pass on their children or if they are carriers, without knowing it, of any kind of illness which could be stopped having special revisions or simply to know who was the person to carry them in her womb.
But the mainly interested to do not find out anything, are the institucions, or better said, the persons forming a big part of our oficial and private institutions.
Depending on the advance of investigations began at Madrid more details could be known, I imagine you are willing to know new details or it is such a complex subject that this can be emotionally very hard.
Just a few details are going to be known, not the real ones. Firstly because doctors and sanitary workers involved are not interested on it, besides the lawyers, notaries, and government officers of that time. Not just emotionally hard, it will not be harder of what it has been till now, I think it will be more a relief. To live not knowing the reasons of the happenings and the way is even worse.
Why do you decide then to begin spreading your situation by internet? Have you had any problem since then? I decide to spread by internet because my investigations reached a point of no way out. I did not have access to know by other ways persons who had lived the same. Sometimes I found things, but not what I was interested in, people adopted born at Bilbao, other mothers who stayed at Mercedes’ flats. I had to travel a lot to keep on investigating and I reached to a point where I was economically suffocated, I carried on work, sons, investigation, studies.
To do everything alone ahs been difficult and complicated, but i did it. I sometimes worked in various places as I needed to get some capital, as it has been impossible for me to sleep properly I did not miss to take hours off the sleep to have enough time for everything. The continuous bustle, work and constant investigation made me not to have time enough to think about myself. If I would have been able I would have become mad, I chose to have the 24 hours busy. When I got to sleep it was due to acute physical and emotional tiredness and if I had a gap I quickly used to fill it. The most important thing was to keep mind busy, I stopped seeing myself. I could not aloud myself to live, as this meant to have to think and I could not think, I would have therefore gone mad.
Not many problems at internet, putting on a side the disgusting mails where they tell you “if you gave him away, what do you want now”, “don’t you feel shame to ruin your son’s life, who has got parents who really love him” or “give birth to another one and all will pass by”. I do not know. I have just written the soft ones, what I have also found are lots of adopted persons who want to know what happened and why were they adopted. The are normal persons who really love their adoptive parents and consider them their real parents, others got orphaned being little, others had bad experience about their adoption. I have found all sorts of situations, the common link of all them is to know where do they come from and who their biological mother is, to look at her and to know why was she not able to keep them with her, to know whether they have any brother or sister. They have missed so much to have a brother or a sister!
Although at the beginning it started as revenge to the “marxist mothers”, it became in a business after. Why has this not meant any handicap and it has kept on being a totally taboo subject?
It must be done a basic differentiation about adoptions. When they finished by political matters, the same dynamic was carried on in two different ways. One, to do an “act of charity” with mothers who really could not maintain their kids, with children left at the revolving pass-through of the Hospice, Precisely due to the shame of having a baby by sinful relationship and also to be single. Situations we all know like the rich young man staying with the maid, or maybe because you got pregnant by your boyfriend and got abandoned, no matter if being high or low class, a rape, etc. Also, it began to exists a big demand by the couples during the peace time, couples who could not have kids and were the target of comments for being sterile. At that time this was not a nice situation, also all women in their lives feel the need of being mother and if you can not you do as much as possible to have a baby. Many ladies before adopting used to simulate a pregnancy or they used to go on trip and come back with a baby, just a few couples admitted openly the adoptions to others.
The number of couples wanting to adopt probably raised a lot and the number of mothers wanting to give their children in adoption went down, as the population life level raised they were able to keep them and even confront the shameful situation (I know some of then who took this way), and for sure in this point is were the problem emerged.
The other aspect has been the forced and illegal adoptions which would begin around that time. At the beginning I do not rule out charity based adoptions were still carried on, but as running short of babies and having mothers determined to keep their babies, and facing the shame this fact could mean to the family, the best option was to force them and nothing better for this target than counting on the experience institutions and specially related workers already had.
Let us not forget that along History there have been unwished pregnancies due to sinful relationships in nobility and high bourgeoisie, due to which those babies went to a different family. Speaking historically, this used to happen less at lower classes.
Just like division between good and evil, division between one kind of adoption and the other one has got such a thing line in between that it can happen to go beyond it without even noticing it. It is possible that a very good pious and devoted woman in charge of the single mothers and ill people homes, or just as collaborator with institutions found herself tempted by offers and privileges. Of course being careful, facing the gallery it was very bad considered and even penalized by law, very good considered at the privacy of one’s home besides the salvation of the honour and dignity of the girl or family involved. Let us not forget society of those years had its own moral rules and wanted to be impeccable, also the alliance formed by the Church and State made a perfect couple, whatever was done by one of them was covered by the other and vice versa.
As you were under age and almost did not exist to all effects except your own family, it was perfect. The family rules, persons in charge of those works had the crowd, the institutions used to look aside, persons working for those institutions felt safe about their signatures. No one dared to question, no one asked, your mouth was shut in a thousand ways, and at the end the couple used to get their so much wished baby.
The plot got extended due to the impunity some people had, others took advantage of it and did the same.
Taboo, why? Easy, they all know each other, they all know what they do, everybody justify it. A justification must be found otherwise it would be too atrocious, everybody is quiet because if any of them speaks the castle would be falling as a house of cards, they have got too many things to hide even for themselves. In some moments of their lives they were accomplice of many others, they did their arrangements even inside of their own family “do not worry, if your daughter is pregnant, I will deal with it”, the favour is asked and done. Now you own them, at any moment they will ask you to pay it back “This sir and his lady have got a baby who needs to be taken or brought”, “your cousins want to adopt a baby, I can give him to them”. When I say within their own families, I mean the circle they used to move in and still move.
Have you ever known any stolen baby or the woman whose baby got stolen? If so, How was the encounter with them? Do you believe the demands like the ones recently presented can help to more people to dare admitting their doubts or may it have the opposite effect making the few proofs left to disappear? I know many adopted persons. I do not know which ones is a stolen kid or not, but they are persons who need to put their lives in order. Although apparently they are fine, they are coping with it the best they can. Sometimes they search with more or less strength, because the emotional pressure is very hard and sometimes it is needed to rest, but they do not usually leave the search. They are normal persons but they have their lacks and try not to show it, they keep it for their own privacy and I will not tell someone else’s privacy.
The ARMH can help a lot. To make known a Spanish social time is very important, a double-edged weapon. It gives rise for other people not to be scared and to go out to search and ask, because fear is still there and precaution is needed. If files get destroyed or missing it would be terrible, it is the risk taken. I do not hesitate in some many places it will happen, it will also happen if nothing gets done. Just like in wars, the mass strength is what makes movements, the mass is seeing and the mass is heard. If we take into account that people move for any other question, why not to give us your support and claim for the people you have got besides who suffer for the lack of their identity? Buy we are hypocrite and make common cause with other people’s causes which do not suppose any inconvenient, as soon as we look near us we will find someone very close who has got something to hide. As a coda for these events, it makes me sad to see how Courts are plenty of files about cases looking populist and mundane, due to many celebrities fame. Much official money is used when judicial machinery goes on following much more peculiar things. Nevertheless, it is not for really serious cases. Not for the clinics, doctors, lawyers, individuals and the Church to open their kept files, no. Not for the people who want to know to be able to sleep at night, no.
