María Verónica Soto met with her daughters, Maria Beatrice and Adelia Rose Meru Chessa, Chile, 45 years after the twins were stolen when babies and placed for adoption in a foreign family
A Chilean woman whose twin daughters were stolen to her in 1979 met them for the first time in four and a half decades.
The emotional reunion between María Verónica Soto, 64, and her daughters Maria Beatrice and Adelia Rose Mereu Chesa took place in the Chilean city of Concepción, in the Biobío coastal province, after the twins, now 46, returned from Italy, where they grew up.
It was the first time Soto saw his daughters since they were eight months old. The twins always knew they had been adopted in Chile, but they had no memory of their mother.
In 1979, when Chile was under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Soto, then 19, gave birth to the twins in the coastal city of Hualpian in the province of Biobío. After a routine medical appointment when daughters were eight months old, Soto told him that the girls needed to be assessed. He said he was promised medical and nutritional aid. But shortly thereafter, he recalls, the government clinic removed his babies, accusing it not to feed them properly. When he went to police, they told him to go to court. That’s when she found that her babies had been placed for adoption by an Italian couple. Soto would later come to know that daughters’ birth certificates had been changed to say that no parent had been presented to register the babies.
“Children of Silence”
According to Chilean authorities, during the Pinochet dictatorship, from 1973 to 1990, thousands of babies were stolen from their biological mothers and sold for adoption, especially to couples from the United States and Europe. In Chile, they are known as “the children of silence.”
Some babies were stolen from vulnerable and poor women and illegally sold to adoption agencies, as it seems to have been the case of Soto’s daughters. Other newborns were delivered by the grandparents, who conspired with doctors, priests and nuns to hide the socially embarrassing pregnancy of a daughter. In many cases, the prescription deadline has expired. In others, those behind the babies’ theft have died. During the repressive dictatorship, when thousands of dissidents were murdered or disappeared, defending their own rights could mean prison or something worse.
“Now they hear women. At the time, they didn’t hear women. They didn’t hear their mothers. We women couldn’t talk about the years as we can now,” says Soto.
In June, for the first time in the country’s history, a Chilean judge announced that he was going to sue five people for allegedly stolen babies for adoption. Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, judge of the Santiago Appeals Court responsible for the investigation, “determined that in the 1980s” there was a network of health authorities, Catholic priests, lawyers, social workers and even a judge who identified babies from mainly poor mothers and sold them to adopt foreign couples for up to $ 50,000, according to one from the Chilean court.
The judge accused and issued arrest warrants to the five people, who should remain in pre -trial detention for “criminal association, kidnapping of minors and voluntary misconduct,” says the statement. The investigation, focused on the city of San Fernando, in Chile Central, is not related to the case of Soto.
“We finally found our mother”
The painfully slow – and long – way to the reunion began in 2020, when Soto contacted “We Search” – or “We Are Looking For Each Other,” a Chilean NGO dedicated to gathering children adopted illegally around the world with their biological parents. Constanza del Río, founder and executive director of the NGO, and herself adopted illegally as a child, said she immediately recommended an DNA test, something Soto did immediately.
Soto sent his DNA sample to an DNA bank in the United States managed by My Heritage, an online genealogy platform that works with NGOs as we are looking for people to help people find long lost.
“And for five years, she continued to ask us, ‘What will happen now?’” Del Río says. “And I told him, ‘we have to wait for the other side of the bridge,’” which meant either the daughters or grandchildren would have to do the same DNA test.
Earlier this year, this happened. In March, the son of one of his daughters, María Soto’s grandson, took the DNA test and found his grandmother. The boy then entered Facebook. “In 20 minutes, they were already talking,” reveals del río.
Del Río states that, based on their conversations with the Chilean authorities, there may be up to 25,000 cases throughout the South American country. Over the past 11 years, your organization has a database with 600 parents and biological children looking for their families.
Soto says he has never lost hope of meeting with his daughters. I just didn’t know it would take 45 years. “Mom has always been looking for you,” he said to his daughters during the emotional hug.
On September 10, the twins flew from Italy to Chile, reaching Concepción. The airport, usually silent, became festive. In addition to Soto and his wide family, journalists and local authorities joined a large group of people waiting for the arrival of the twins.
The twins ran into the biological mother’s arms for a long and sense of hug while Soto repeated, “Mom has always been looking for you.” Soto does not speak Italian, and the twins have not yet learned Spanish, but the emotion of the moment did not need translation.
“So many emotions and very, very happy because we finally find our mother … We want to be with her, with the family, all the brothers, all uncles, all cousins, everyone!” He stated Maria Beatrice Meru Chesa, speaking for the two sisters.
“God heard me,” said Soto after the cheerful reunion. “For me, this was how to give birth to my daughters again, but in an adult version.”
Soto and the twins say that both families were deceived – their family in Chile and adoptive parents in Italy, who did not know that girls had been taken from their biological mother without their consent.
Despite having passed almost half a century away from twin daughters, Soto says he feels blessed. There are many mothers, he said, who have not yet found their children lost and others who died waiting for a reunion like hers that never happened.
“I fought until I found my girls. That’s why I tell these mothers to keep fighting. Beat the doors because now there are more possibilities [com] The technology, ”said Soto.
