Maradona Jr pleads for DNA donors in search for Argentina's stolen babies
The son of the footballing legend is carrying on his father’s quest to trace the children taken from parents murdered by the junta
Lorenzo Tondo
@lorenzo_tondo
Fri 11 Jun 2021 07.00 EDT
Diego Armando Maradona Jr, son of the late Argentine football legend, is urging Italians to submit DNA to help the Argentinian government trace hundreds of children who were stolen and their parents murdered by the military junta that controlled the country four decades ago.
Maradona Jr is doing radio interviews in Italy and using his 400,000-strong social media following to broaden the search, which has already seen DNA testing programmes rolled out in Madrid and Rome.
The Argentine government believes dozens of children of the desaparecidos, the estimated 30,000 people kidnapped and murdered by the army during the dictatorship of the late 1970s and early 1980s, could have been taken to Italy after the fall of the junta.
During the dictatorship, pregnant women being kept prisoner were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 babies were taken from their parents and given to childless military couples to raise as their own.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/11/maradona-jr-pleads-for-dna-donors-in-search-for-argentinas-stolen-babies
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it figures they'd eventually turn on their own country as well (though they won't succeed - of that I'm sure).
As far as Argentina's right-wingers, they too have become increasingly radicalized lately - thanks to extremists like Patricia Bullrich and media blowhard "Baby" Etchecopar (among others).
Both have now become the leading political and media figures on the Argentine right, in terms of sheer influence - and both are open proponents of a coup against the Fernández administration.
Although whereas Bullrich prefers using right-wing judges (i.e. Ken Starr-like kangaroo trials) and tactics like encouraging people to disregard social distancing in order to get to "100,000 dead as soon as possible," Etchecopar calls for an outright military coup.
"Latin America," Etchecopar told a gathering of right-wing Argentine exiles in Miami, "isn't ready for democracy."
(enthusiastic applause from audience)
"We're like the women in tango lyrics: we need a good slap, to feel like a woman."
It should be noted that in Spanish, the word for a punch or hard slap (golpe) also means coup. And everyone in the audience understood that.
Argentine right-wing radio jock "Baby" Etchecopar:
Latin America "not ready for democracy...like a woman, needs a good slap (coup)...and is full of drug pushers, murderers, and prostitutes."
So with characters like this speaking for more and more in Argentina's right, it won't be too surprising to see outright calls to violence if Macri's 'Together for Change' coalition fares badly in mid-term elections later this year.
