In Uruguay, a Son of 'The Disappeared' Recalls His Pain
In Uruguay, a Son of 'The Disappeared' Recalls His Pain
Alejandro Corchs Was an Infant in 1977 When His Parents Were Taken During the 'Condor' Campaign
By Shane Romig
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Alejandro Corchs sits in a restaurant in Montevideo,
Uruguay Shane Romig/The Wall Street Journal [/font]
Updated Nov. 22, 2013 2:54 p.m. ET
MONTEVIDEO–On a hot summer night in 1977, a woman in the Buenos Aires suburb of La Lucila heard a knock on the door of her small apartment. A group of plain-clothed men stood in the doorway holding a small baby. The one-year-old Alejandro Corchs was the only child of the neighbors across the hall, leftist political activists who had fled Uruguay for Argentina in 1973 to escape a roundup of activists and militants.
The men handed the boy over with a bag of diapers and said his mother needed to go with them to fill in some paperwork, the woman, a witness, told a panel of judges in a windowless Buenos Aires courtroom in August. A few hours later, the boy's father was arrested on a street corner while he was returning home from work, neighbors later told her, according to her testimony.
The woman placed young Alejandro into the care of other neighbors who soon gave him to his maternal grandparents, who then took him back to Uruguay, she testified.
Neither of his parents was seen again.
More than three decades later, 21 former Argentine and Uruguayan military officials are being tried in Argentina for their alleged participation in crimes committed under Operation Condor, a coordinated campaign by South American military dictatorships in the 1970s and early 1980s to kill political opponents, leftist revolutionaries and activists.
More:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304791704579213954231412052
