On May 19, 1977, Oscar Lautaro HUERAVILO SAAVEDRA, 23 years old, an employee with no known political affiliation, a young Chilean living in Buenos Aires, was detained along with his spouse, Mirta Mónica ALONSO, who was six months pregnant.

That child was born in captivity and was later recovered by his grandmother. The couple disappeared, victims of human rights violations, within the framework of the aforementioned situation, with no evidence indicating the participation of Chilean agents in the events.

Source: Rettig Report

were 24 and 23 years old respectively; they worked at Bodegas Peñaflor and were university students. Both were militants of the PC (Communist Party); she was also a teacher. Kidnapped on 05/19/77, they attempted to capture them at the wake for Mirta's grandfather; only she was there.

Later, they went for Oscar at the couple's home at Fitz Roy 2294. The tile that reminds us of the commitment to struggle and the dedication of both, and simultaneously keeps alive the demand for Truth and Justice, was placed there on 03/16/13.

Oscar and Eliana Saavedra, Oscar's parents, who years earlier had sought refuge in Argentina fleeing Pinochet's Chile, honored the memory of their son and daughter-in-law by militating in the Padres (1), (2) and Madres de Plaza de Mayo (3) respectively.

She passed away on 04/16/19. Mirta gave birth on 08/11/77 in what was the Officers' Casino of the ESMA. Before they tore the child from her side, she marked him on an ear, surely to recognize him in a reunion that their executioners denied them both.

She battled to breastfeed her son, managing to do so for 3 weeks. Then came "the transfer." Such love had its reward: Emiliano Lautaro (4), their son, was abandoned at Casa Cuna, from where his grandparents managed to recover him on 12/14/77. "The Little One took him in her arms and hugged him tightly.

The baby never let her go again," recounts grandfather Oscar; the Little One is grandmother Eliana. That baby is today one of the founders of the HIJOS organization and the current Secretary of Human Rights for the Association of State Workers of the Province of Buenos Aires (ATE) (4).

Mirta, Emiliano's mother, is also remembered linked together with 14 other female comrades who were also murdered or forcibly disappeared by state terrorism on 4 tiles, placed on 03/27/19 at Güemes 3859, the headquarters of the Escuela Superior Normal 6, where they studied.

Footprints to make 15 stories of life and struggle visible. "Memory often travels curious paths. Many times, memories remain crouched, and suddenly, they strike us to tear away a smile or painful tears.

Images appear like photos, gestures, voices, gazes, that managed to mock the passage of time and remain there, resounding, full, indestructible. They are here, they are in us because they are part of our own history. They are pieces of the puzzle that makes up our identity." (Fragment of the reflection by her sister, Graciela Alonso, on the day of the tile installation).

Source: memoriapalermo.org.ar 03/16/2013

Date: 03-16-2013

Through an emotional letter written by their granddaughters, the family remembered Oscar Hueravilo and Mirta Alonso, PRESENT! They also dedicated heartfelt words to the memory of their great-grandmother, Eliana Saavedra de Hueravilo, PRESENT!, a Mother of Plaza de Mayo, just over a year after her passing.

Oscar Hueravilo, her husband, together with his son Emiliano, the first grandson born in captivity recovered from the ESMA, and his granddaughters, continue fighting for the Memory, Truth, and Justice of our 30,000 forcibly disappeared comrades, PRESENT. NOW AND ALWAYS

THE LETTER

Today, 43 years after the forced disappearance of Oscar Lautaro Hueravilo and Mirta Mónica Alonso by the last civic-military coup, we want to remember them. In the struggles, they are remembered as militants committed to their ideals of changing the functioning of the system and turning it into a better one.

But on this day, we also want to highlight everything they took from us by forcing their disappearance and everything they left us. Even though they took away the opportunity for us as a family to enjoy moments, birthdays, anniversaries, and joint struggles, they left us tools to decide how we can and how we want to see the world.

They left us a history of struggles that we have appropriated to make our own. But today, on this date when we always try to vindicate the struggle, we are missing the greatest pillar of this history. We are a little more shaken than usual.

We are missing Eliana, Oscar's mother, what we—especially I—called our light. Eliana Saavedra de Hueravilo passed away on April 17, 2019, as an old woman without knowing where the remains of her son and daughter-in-law are.

Enjoying the childhood and adulthood of three generations. First of her son, then of her grandson and her three great-granddaughters. But even so, we are left with the bitter taste that she did not see all those responsible for the last coup in common prisons with life sentences and effective time served.

However, we like to believe that she was able to reach that long-awaited embrace with her son and daughter-in-law. Eliana is gone, but her light is in us, and we have to continue our paths, fighting or not, but together.

Source: ctabuenosaires.org.ar, MAY 19, 2020

Date: 05-19-2020

Being born in a place where everyone was dying

Emiliano Hueravilo, the first child born in the clandestine maternity ward that operated at the ESMA, returned to the place where they were separated from his mother, as part of "The Five O'Clock Visit," organized monthly by the memorial site.

It is not easy to define what is more shocking: the history that is projected and narrated on the walls of what is now the ESMA Memory Site Museum—the former Navy Officers' Casino—or the history of those walls themselves, which to this day perceive marks, blows, and scratches from the 5,000 people who were held there as forcibly disappeared during the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship.

Among the victims, Oscar Lautaro Hueravilo and Mirta Mónica Alonso Blanco gave rise to a paradigmatic case. Both kidnapped in the early hours of May 19, 1977, they are the parents of Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo, the first child of the ESMA, who 42 years later returned to enter those walls to lead a new tour through its nooks and crannies.

Usually, any mention of the ESMA carries meanings that refer to death. Last Saturday, the Museum's director, Alejandra Naftal, described it as a "place where it can be verified that during the last military dictatorship, a plan of extermination, a genocide, a systematic plan of repression, torture, and death was carried out." The place is always associated with the massacre, because it was even from there that those death flights took off, whose tragic end was the Río de la Plata.

However, the third floor of the Casino was also a place that gave life, as it functioned as a clandestine maternity ward. In this context, in a room of no more than three square meters, Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo was born, son of Oscar Hueravilo and Mirta Alonso, who gave birth while shackled and assisted by two other kidnapped women.

There are still a few minutes left until five in the afternoon, but the Museum's facade is already full, with more than 200 people who, between chats and mate, await the start of the visit. On the last Saturday of each month, the ESMA Memory Site Museum organizes an open tour in the company of a special guest.

As soon as Emiliano Hueravilo takes the microphone and begins to elucidate his story, the sunny weekend atmosphere fades. The breathing, increasingly tense, accompanies Emiliano's sentiment, who, with glassy eyes, remembers his mother, his father, and above all his grandmother, Eliana Saavedra.

Emiliano's case can be categorized as the beginning of a systematic plan of child theft, Naftal mentioned during the opening of the tour, not without also remembering that to this day there are many children—now adults—who have still not recovered their identity.

Emiliano was born on August 11, 1977 (according to dictatorship documents) and spent the first twenty-two days in the company of his mother. Nothing was known about the whereabouts of the child until four months later when, for some reason that is also unknown, he was abandoned at the Children's Hospital of the City of Buenos Aires, the old Casa Cuna, and recovered there by his grandparents.

When speaking about his parents, Emiliano does so in the present tense. "My parents 'are' militants," he states at the beginning of the tour. To this day, Oscar Hueravilo and Mirta Alonso remain forcibly disappeared.

Of his mother, he mentions that she had the astuteness, as soon as he was born, to make a mark on his left ear, which accompanies him to this day. "It was to recognize me. She had the conviction of looking for me when she got out," interprets Emiliano.

But it never happened. A video at the entrance of the Museum remembers his grandmother, who passed away last April 17, and produces the first massive shedding of tears from the public. "This site says many things," Hueravilo concludes. "There were 30,000, it was genocide, there was State terrorism," and the applause began to thunder.

Today Emiliano is a doctor, founder of the HIJOS organization, Director of Human Rights of the Association of State Workers (ATE), and father of three children. Lara, his eldest daughter, accompanied him on Saturday during the tour, as well as several of his colleagues from the hospital, his colleagues from ATE, and even survivors of the dictatorship who had been kidnapped alongside his parents.

It is the second time he has returned to the place where he was born. The first was in 2004, during the recovery of the ESMA, which is today nominated as a UNESCO Memory Heritage site. Another of the protagonists of the visit was Osvaldo Barros, who was detained and forced to perform hard labor from January 1979 to February 1980.

During the tour of the ground floor, the attic, "La Pecera" (The Fishbowl), "Capucha" (The Hood), and "Capuchita" (The Little Hood), he described experiences and anecdotes that he keeps intact in his memory to this day. "This is the first place where we kidnapped people ended up.

We went down those stairs; those 10 steps are unforgettable, I counted them several times," he mentioned at the beginning of his speech in The Basement. There was also "La Huevera" (The Egg Carton), the torture chamber, which gets its name because it was covered with cardboard egg crates to isolate the sound of the screams.

In the hallway that led to the "interrogation" rooms, a sign stretched from side to side. Its inscription: "Avenue of Happiness." "We all went through a stage of hoods, shackles, beatings, and torture," recalls Carlos Muñoz, another survivor and now a worker at the Memory and Human Rights Space.

The value of identity, currently characteristic of the struggle for searches and restitutions, received another connotation back then. "From the moment you entered here, you lost even your minimal identity," he mentions.

He was number 4261 and, as he states, today he has the mission of giving a voice to those who could not leave alive. The tour was also marked by the desire for justice and the reference to the trials. The protagonists insisted on the importance of attending the hearings and putting pressure on the cases.

Today, several of the convicted have been granted the benefit of house arrest, and some have even been released, such as the case of "Pantera" Ferrari, mentions Osvaldo Barros. There was also the demand for the preservation of the site, which is also judicial evidence, but also the preservation of memory and identity.

Three hours later, the visit ended in El Dorado, a hall marked by a visual exhibition about the convicted, to the cry of "like the Nazis, it will happen to you, wherever you go we will look for you." The same song had been sung just one day earlier, at the march for the Monte massacre that took place in La Plata. For the last time that day, the applause thundered again.

Source: anccom.sociales.uba.ar, 06/06/2019

Date: 06-06-2019

Repudiation by children born in captivity at the ESMA regarding year-end parties in the building

"We hold the state authorities headed by Mauricio Macri as Head of State and Claudio Avruj as Secretary of Human Rights responsible, as they are responsible for everything that happens there. Both in this administration and the previous one, we have repudiated these types of festive events at a site that is sacred to us.

In that sense, I call for reflection from the leadership of the Verde y Blanca group of ATE Capital and its highest political leader, Daniel Catalano. There are many places where one can celebrate the end of the year; they chose the least indicated one because it is an emblematic site for the memory of our forcibly disappeared comrades, those of us who were born and lost our mom and dad, and those who today must have as a reference that site which must remind us not only of the horrible things that happened there, but that the cause of those people's death was a solidarity commitment to create a different country. We say with the same conviction as always: 30,000 comrades detained and disappeared, present, now and always. We do not forget, we do not forgive, we do not reconcile. Common, life, and effective prison for the military genocidaires and their civilian, business, and ecclesiastical accomplices." The cases of Mirta Mónica Alonso Blanco de Hueravilo, Oscar Lautaro Hueravilo, and Emilio Lautaro Hueravilo Both were militants in the Communist Party. They were illegally deprived of their liberty, with violence, abuse of authority, and without the formalities prescribed by law on May 19, 1977. She was kidnapped at the funeral of Oscar's grandfather, in the City of Buenos Aires. She was 23 years old and six months pregnant. Oscar was kidnapped in the early morning at his home. Both were taken to the ESMA, where they remained in captivity under inhuman living conditions, and where their son was born on August 11, 1977. Mirta marked him on an ear with a hot needle to make it easier for him to be recognized and placed a little band on his wrist that said "Lautaro." The birth was witnessed by Nilda Orazi (266). The child was found by his grandmother in an orphanage in the City of Buenos Aires, at four months of age. Oscar was nicknamed "Carlos." He was taken on a death flight before his son's birth, and Mirta a few days later. She was called "Mónica." Both remain forcibly disappeared.

Source: agenciaparalalibertad.org, December 17, 2018

Date: 12-17-2018

Account by Graciela Alonso, sister of Mirta Mónica Alonso Blanco

"For all of us, during these 36 years, it became essential to be stubborn in seeking memory, truth, and justice. There is no need to use high-sounding phrases, it is not necessary to use sensationalist resources to rescue the memory of our own, of those we love who were torn from us with impunity by the arrogance and brutality of barbarism.

It is so easy to separate light from darkness, life from death, beauty from horror, that we have no alternative but to rescue those lives severed by the disgusting claw of State terrorism. And to do so, there is no need to be solemn, there is no need to think of difficult arguments; it is only necessary to reestablish the ties that bind us indissolubly to the dreams and ideas for which they were robbed of their lives.

Remembering Mirta, my older sister, immediately transports me to childhood. In that stage, her presence occupied a central place. She loved life and carried out her projects with absolute dedication. She was a very responsible student.

Naturally restless and curious. Her cultural concerns made her a lover of cinema and an avid reader. Her deep gaze, her cheerful smile, and the tenderness of her infinite patience are conjured in my memory forever.

If during childhood, my sister meant an unquestionable reference for me because she was my guide, since she occupied the place of knowledge and was a person I could trust absolutely, as she was capable of watching over me in any circumstance; during adolescence, she embodied a different figure.

In those days, she began to consider a solidarity commitment to her environment; it was the time of political militancy and social concern. This meant an exciting challenge for me. It is true that although political concerns were always present in my house, fundamentally starting from the constant talks of my father and my grandfather on those topics, it was especially with my sister that I also began to question myself about social justice.

She was 24 years old, six months pregnant, when they kidnapped her that May 19, 1977, from the wake of our maternal grandfather, while her partner was also detained, in the same early morning, in this precise place.

The black shadow of the military dictatorship truncated their lives and destroyed us all. But her death, the death of her partner, and that of all the disappeared comrades stand as a symbol of struggle and resistance against the shameful ignominy of State terrorism.

Memory often travels curious paths. Many times, memories remain crouched, and suddenly, they strike us to tear away a smile or painful tears. This place, where we are today, is especially moving because they lived here, and for that reason, it is easier for those of us who shared those years to find the traces that daily life builds meekly.

Images appear like photos, gestures, voices, gazes, that managed to mock the passage of time and remain there, resounding, full, indestructible. They are here, they are in us because they are part of our own history.

They are pieces of the puzzle that makes up our identity. The ideals for which they fought, shared by our elders, remain alive, germinated in us, multiplied in our children, and pulsate with even more strength in a new generation that wants to look at itself in the mirror that reflects the commitment, the dedication, and the unyielding struggle to achieve a more just society.

Crimes against humanity place their victims, inevitably, in a heroic dimension, and so it must be; because the trampling of a right as elementary as life must transcend the individual. However, today I do not want to remember my sister in that way.

I wish for my evocation of her to be simple, singular, essentially intimate, because that is how I always remember her, because that is how I need her." Graciela Alonso, sister

Source: memoriasdepalermo.org.ar 03/16/2013

Date: 03-16-2013

ONE: Film about the process premieres

Con identidad propia is a documentary that narrates the story of Emiliano, who was born at the ESMA.

With the goal of telling his own story and also bearing witness to the country's most painful period, Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo, the son of forcibly disappeared persons, decided to bring to light what he views as “the truth about what happened during the military dictatorship” by creating the documentary Con identidad propia, which premieres today at 8:30 PM at the Cine Universidad, with free admission.

It is a local production by Mendoza filmmakers Mario Lázaro and Carlos Canale, which will also be shown on Saturday at 7:00 PM at the Cine Optico of the UTN (Rodríguez 273, City).

On both occasions, Emiliano Hueravilo and the H.I.J.O.S. organization will be present to hold a talk and debate. Emiliano was born at the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), one of the most important clandestine detention centers in Argentina during the 1976/83 military process, which has been converted today into a Museum of Memory by President Néstor Kirchner.

His mother, Mirta Alonso, was kidnapped on March 19, 1977, at her grandfather's wake; she was six months pregnant. His father, Oscar Hueravilo, was kidnapped the same day at his home in the Federal Capital, where the family lived. “Emiliano was handed over in December 1977 to his paternal grandparents, and he says they were told he had been abandoned at the door of the Elizalde Hospital (formerly Casa Cuna de Barracas) with a note stating his name and that his mother was abandoning him,” commented Lázaro, the documentary’s director, who embarked on this project between February and March of last year. He added, “Judge (María) Servini de Cubría was the one who handed him over to his grandparents, and she is one of the people who speaks in the film. Why he was returned to his grandparents and did not remain in the hands of the military or some family, like the majority of the more than 500 children born in captivity, is a mystery,” said the director of Con identidad… The documentary was filmed in digital format and features interviews and testimonies from the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, members of the H.I.J.O.S. organization, and former ESMA detainees. “Emiliano traveled to Spain to speak with Hilda Oracci, who was a fellow detainee of his mother and who attended to her during the birth; it was she who told him that his mother made a mark on his left ear with a needle or perhaps a pin with the intention of identifying him. This conversation is one of the many testimonies in the documentary,” Lázaro concluded. Direction and screenplay: Mario Lázaro. Production: Emiliano Hueravilo, Carlos Canale, and Mario Lázaro. Genre: documentary. Origin: Mendoza. Year: 2003/04. Duration: 69 minutes. Screening days: today at 8:30 PM at Cine Universidad (Lavalle 77, City) and Saturday the 24th at 7:00 PM at Cine Optico (Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Rodríguez 273, City). Admission is free.

Source: uncuyo.edu.ar 7/22/2004

Date: 07-22-2004

The Hueravilos: The Tragic Story of an Exiled Family

Oscar Hueravilo, a Chilean of Mapuche descent, arrived in Argentina fleeing political persecution at the end of the 1950s, but he found no respite: his son and daughter-in-law have been forcibly disappeared since 1977, and the reunion with his grandson, born in captivity at the ESMA, was worthy of a novel.

Shortly before the 30th anniversary of the bloodiest coup in his country's history, Hueravilo remains convinced that society can be changed to be more just. With sallow skin, dark eyes, prominent cheekbones, deep wrinkles, and hands calloused by his work as a bricklayer and painter, he recalls the most tragic passages of his family history to the AFP.

His account confirms that exile and intolerance in South American countries were a constant in the latter half of the last century, although in the 1970s, it would take on an unprecedented dimension with the so-called "Condor Plan" of repressive coordination between the dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay. "I arrived in Buenos Aires at age 22, fleeing the regime of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo with a group of several hundred political refugees in 1958.

Everyone in my family were Communist militants. The idea was to return, but I made friends, I liked the customs, and I decided to stay," he said. Shortly after, his wife and his son Oscar Lautaro, who was seven years old at the time, arrived.

Hueravilo and his wife continued to be active in the Argentine Communist Party, hopeful after the victory of Salvador Allende and outraged by the uprising of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973. But two and a half years later, horror would erupt in Argentina with the coup d'état of March 1976, the tragic setting for their kidnapping. "That week it was terribly cold.

On May 19, 1977, my son arrived at his apartment in the Palermo neighborhood late because he had been at the wake for his wife Mirta Mónica Alonso's grandfather. He didn't realize it, but the area was surrounded by military personnel, and as soon as he opened the door, they pushed him inside and began searching for weapons. "They took him, and then a group in civilian clothes went to the wake in two Ford Falcon cars, asking for my daughter-in-law.

Since they told her that her husband had been assaulted and was wounded, the woman did not hesitate to accompany them," he recounted. Oscar Lautaro was 22 years old, a student, and a leader of the Communist Youth.

Mirta Mónica was 23, a teacher, belonged to the same party, and was six months pregnant. Both were kidnapped in a Navy operation in which the infamous Alfredo Astiz participated, and they were taken to the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, according to Hueravilo. "We were very lucky to recover our grandson.

My wife did domestic work in the home of a young couple, and the employer was the niece of an Army colonel. One day, my wife knelt before the woman and, crying, asked her to find out what had happened to her family.

Shortly after, the woman told her that the boy would appear. And that is what happened on December 13, 1977. "That day, my son's former coworkers heard on the radio that a baby had been left abandoned at the Children's Hospital of Buenos Aires.

That the boy was well-fed, that he had a little bag with clean clothes, and that on one of his wrists, he had a little piece of paper with the name Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo Alonso. "We went directly to the hospital and showed the authorities our documents.

But they wouldn't let us see him. Only two days later did they hand him over to us. He was crying and kicking a lot." Emiliano relates that "I had the luck of being recovered and having the truth told to me from a very young age.

Little by little, I was able to reconstruct my history, and for that, I traveled to Spain in 2001 to meet Nilda Orazi, a Montonero militant who was released in 1978 and had been with my mother at the ESMA.

This woman assisted her in the birth. She couldn't believe she was seeing that baby who had been born in such a desperate situation. "Through her, I learned that my mother breastfed me for 22 days and then they transferred her, which was synonymous with execution.

She told me she was a very young girl, that she was very strong, and that she was thinking about being able to get out. "Also, that just in case, she had made a mark on my left ear with a needle so she could recognize me because she was sure she would see me again," the young man said.

At age 17, Emiliano returned to discover his roots in Chile and traveled to visit his aunts, uncles, and cousins in the San Miguel district.

Source: historico.elpais.com.co, September 9, 2003

Date: 09-09-2003

42 Years After the Kidnapping and Disappearance of Mirta Alonso and Lautaro Hueravilo

In 1977, Oscar Lautaro Hueravilo and Mirta Mónica Alonso Blanco were militants in the Communist Youth Federation. Lautaro was 22 years old, Chilean, of Mapuche origin. He had arrived in Argentina with his family, escaping persecution in his country.

In the city of Buenos Aires, he had begun studying law and worked at the Peñaflor wineries, where he was a delegate. Mirta was 23, a teacher, and the press officer for the party's youth sector. By May 1977, she was six months pregnant with a child who was due to be born in August.

It was cold. Mirta was at her grandfather's wake on Lavalleja Street. Lautaro was with her. Around midnight, he left because he had to get up early the next day to work. Between one and two in the morning, two Ford Falcons without license plates arrived looking for her.

A group dressed in civilian clothes introduced themselves as Federal Police. They told her that her husband was wounded and that he needed her. Mirta's father realized it was an ambush. "Mirta, don't get in," he warned her.

The police pushed him. "If you want to come with us, you can come too," the police said. When Lautaro arrived at his apartment, he did not notice it was surrounded. They lived at Fitz Roy and Paraguay.

As soon as he entered, a Task Force with long guns followed him. They beat him, ransacked the house, the furniture, and the bed, but they did not touch the books or the newspapers. They were looking for weapons, and they were looking for them.

Lautaro left his documents on a table and the jacket he had worn that day. Across from the apartment was a construction site. A night watchman who witnessed the operation managed to see the Navy crest on the door of a car.

Both were taken to this clandestine center. Around August 11, in shackles, Mirta gave birth to a boy she named Emiliano Lautaro. During the birth, she was assisted by Nilda Orazi and Alicia Milia, who were also kidnapped.

The Navy had developed the structure of a clandestine maternity ward where kidnapped women were kept alive until they gave birth, after which they were usually murdered and the newborns appropriated by naval officers or their associates.

Mirta marked her son's left ear with a needle, as other women did, anticipating that situation. She breastfed the child for 22 days before being "transferred," the euphemism used for execution. The child was exceptionally taken, four months later, to the Children's Hospital of the City of Buenos Aires, the old Casa Cuna that received abandoned and orphaned children.

The gang left the child with a paper stating his name, surname, date of birth, and feeding schedule. On December 13, his grandparents heard the news on the Radio Mitre news broadcast about a child found at the Casa Cuna who had appeared with a bag of quality clothes and toys.

The news said the child was well cared for, that he was robust, and that he was estimated to be 4 months old. The radio was actually broadcasting information that had begun to be circulated by the court of the then-juvenile judge María Romilda Servini regarding him.

The news began to be repeated on Radio Colonia and later in all the newspapers. That same night, the grandparents went to the hospital. They were frantic. They wanted to see the child. But the person in charge of the shift only confirmed that the news was true, that she could not put them in contact with the child, and that they should return the next day.

Lautaro's mother begged them to show him to her. But the woman did not let her. They spent the night awake. At three in the morning, they went to a newsstand to buy every copy they could find. And at six, they returned to the hospital.

The director sent them to the court. The judge showed them the paper with which the naval officers had left the child, the only document with which Emiliano began the long process of recovering his identity. "They left me wrapped in a blanket," he said during the ESMA oral trial. "The dictatorship said I was born on August 11 and they handed me over on December 14; in those months, I don't know what happened.

My grandparents don't know where I was, and I even less so. And today, as a person, I want to know, and I also want to know so I can tell my daughter, so she knows where her father was." Emiliano managed to be registered with his legal name in 1980. Mirta and Lautaro remain forcibly disappeared.

Source: museositioesma.org.ar

THE CASE OF EMILIANO LAUTARO HUERAVILO, BORN IN CAPTIVITY, RECOVERED BY HIS GRANDPARENTS: The Exception Could Only Prove the Rule

Restitution? Miguel Arce Aggeo, Emilio Massera's lawyer, used the word freely without question marks to refer to the case of Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo—a young man born at the ESMA, son of Mirta Alonso and Oscar Lautaro Hueravilo—whom his grandparents recovered on a December 14th, 21 years ago, and whom the lawyer intends to present as proof that the appropriation of minors of disappeared persons was not a systematic and substantial plan of the armed forces' policy during the repression.

Arce Aggeo apparently considers that, contrary to what common wisdom holds, the exception does not prove the rule, fantasizing instead that a single example is enough. That is to say, the recovery of Emiliano by his paternal and maternal grandparents, who reclaimed him through a long struggle, would relativize the remaining 200 cases denounced by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, where the minors remain in the hands of their appropriators or their friends.

Emiliano Lautaro works as a nurse at a hospital in La Plata and has the nickname "Pilón" because his companions in the H.I.J.O.S. organization observed that, like the Popeye character, he tends to devour double-decker sandwiches.

The last scion of a paternal genealogy of left-wing militants that begins with his grandfather Oscar Eusebio and his grandmother Eliana Saavedra, he knows that this is, like all previous moments, a time to remain calm.

However, he cannot avoid raising his voice to declare: "How can he use my case when he knows the lists of the naval officers and the friends of the naval officers, of the military and the friends of the military who used children as war booty and the houses where they are located?

So, how can he excuse himself by saying I was 'restituted'? I was not restituted by the armed forces. I was recovered by the struggle of the human rights people, and by the lawyer and my grandparents. No, I don't have fantasies of personal vengeance, but I do want to see Massera behind bars and not protected in his home, because it is incredible that they give five years to someone who steals a peso, and he, who killed 30,000 people, is kept in the warmth of his home." Nilda Tenembaum, a lawyer for the UMA at the time of the disappearance of Oscar and Mirta, and a member of the Argentine League for the Rights of Man, who represented Emiliano's grandparents in their search and in that of his parents, has another equally harsh version: "An edict published in the newspaper La Prensa informed us that there was a case filed as 'NN regarding abandonment of a person,' formulated by the National Court of First Instance in Criminal Instruction No. 1, Secretariat No. 3, headed by María Servini de Cubría, where it was reported that Emiliano Lautaro had appeared on the stairs of the Casa Cuna. It was a common procedure in those years to blame the disappeared for the alleged abandonment of their children. That is why I was worried about what Massera's lawyer said. He was not restituted. Did they return him at the ESMA? Without prejudice to what Pedrocini, the lawyer for the Abuelas who is one of those involved in the matter, says, it is not restitution. What there was, was a systematic plan of appropriation, but not a systematic plan of return. We made habeas corpus requests for the parents and another for 'persons to be born,' with their names and surnames. And the habeas corpus responses came back stating that Emiliano was not in any establishment. Even the Casa Cuna at the time did not respond. And it was not very difficult to tell the human rights organizations, 'the child is here.' Furthermore, the case file of the proceedings that were processed before Servini de Cubría's court was published by the court and not by the Navy. How can they restitute someone they claim they don't know exists?" History of Pilón "Galician, why don't you leave? You have to take care of the baby," Oscar Eusebio Hueravilo would "tease," according to his own expression, while touching the belly of his daughter-in-law Mirta Alonso. Being at a wake did not dampen the good humor of this extroverted bricklayer, Chilean by origin and a PC militant since he was on the other side of the Andes: in August, the grandson was going to be born, whose name had been the result of heated but friendly "internal debates" but which, ultimately, was a tribute to two brave men, Emiliano and Lautaro. But Mirta, a pretty 23-year-old brunette with straight hair parted down the middle like many of the young women who would later tragically populate the memorial notices of this newspaper, did not want to move from beside her grandfather's coffin. It was May 19, 1977, and "it was very cold," the survivors insist with that detailed memory with which fateful events are recorded. Her husband, Oscar Lautaro, left around 12:30 AM when he gave in to exhaustion: he worked as an administrator at the Peñaflor company, was beginning his law studies, and was a militant in the PC. Ten minutes later, two Falcon cars stopped at the door of that house located in the Palermo neighborhood. Some men who identified themselves as police asked for Mirta. Her husband, they said, had suffered an assault and had sent for her. Terrified, Mirta got into one of the cars. Her father, who had a grocery store right there on the corner, asked, "Why don't you take me?" Then one of the men replied, "Because we don't need you." Oscar Lautaro was "picked up" at his home at Fitz Roy and Paraguay through the usual disproportionate operation with men stationed on the rooftops and multiple long guns, paradoxically half a block from the branch of the Argentine League for the Rights of Man that Mirta, also a PC militant, had helped create. He did not manage to put on the jacket he had thrown on the table with his identity document in a pocket. Neither he nor Mirta ever appeared again. Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo was born at the ESMA, where the care during the birth consisted of keeping the mother blindfolded and her hands tied. "From my mother, I know that she had me by her side for 22 days, that she breastfed me, and that she made a mark on my ear to recognize me when she got out."

Source: pagina12.com.ar, no date

Account of Eliana Saavedra de Hueravilo

Eliana Saavedra de Hueravilo, his paternal grandmother, a PC militant like her husband, a petite and resilient woman who worked her whole life as a maid, began the long pilgrimages before the courts, became an expert in habeas corpus requests, and even went so far as to appeal to the sentimental rhetoric "from mother to mother" to move prelates, military officers, and wives of military officers supposedly formed in Christian devotion.

Nilda Tenembaum would accompany Eliana in the legal claims and, in the long run, would join the celebrations of Emiliano's birthdays, which his grandfather defines as "bourgeois" because "a gourmet relative brings us everything and because my grandson is more popular than Boca." On August 20, 1977, an edict published in the newspaper La Prensa reported the abandonment of "a creature of one week of life, male, dressed in a light blue outfit, a shawl, and a small blanket, which as a particular sign presented on the right ear a small perforation in the lobe, and that between the blanket covering the baby there was a rectangular paper 20 cm long by seven wide, written with a blue fountain pen with the following data: Name: Emiliano Lautaro Hueravilo: weight 3kg, length 46 cm. Born at 7 PM. Normal birth with episiotomy. Depressed baby, cord wrapped, no vaccination, S26 feeding." On August 25, Emiliano Lautaro was handed over by the Casa Cuna to an external nanny who received 50,000 of the currency of the time for taking care of him until December 14, when he was recovered. "The first time I saw a photo of my grandson," says Eliana Hueravilo, "I started to cry; he was just like my son at that age. They made me show up at the hospital at eight in the morning. I was only with the woman who had Emiliano in her arms for a few minutes. But she seemed very affectionate. She told me with patience what my grandson was like, what his sleeping habits were, that he was already eating squash. Months later, I met her again at the hospital where I went to have Emiliano checked. She was with another boy in her care. I told her what had happened to my grandson's parents and where he had been born. She wanted to die. They didn't tell her where the babies she was taking care of came from." Eliana Hueravilo thinks she has to trust her hunches and that the nanny was a good woman, fond of the children even if she earned a few pesos by taking care of them. Nilda Tenembaum took advantage of her appearance as a beautiful, well-bred blonde with philanthropic fantasies to offer herself as a volunteer at the Casa Cuna; there, she found out that Emiliano had occupied a place in bed 31 of ward 3, but nothing more. The Hueravilos, happy with the recovery of their grandson and with the caution typical of a long experience in clandestine militancy, thought that 1977 was not the time to "stir the pot." The dictionary says that to restitute is to give someone what they had before it was taken from them, to return something to the state it was in before. Can one restitute, that is, return to its primitive state, a situation that included lying appropriation and a fictional identity established against the backdrop of the biological parents' torture? Is there restitution when, as Dr. Tenembaum testified, one had to fight for the birth registration and prove the young man's filiation? Emiliano Lautaro was not restituted, but abandoned by his captors. Was it due to a random impoverishment of the market of adopters in the field of the armed forces and their relations? Because his dark skin devalued him before a demand that prioritized white-skinned war trophies? Because of the management of a priest determined to maintain the image of charity even in a hell of non-fiction? Because of an internal dispute? Or was it a precautionary plan, an alibi like the one Aggeo now intends to construct? What is certain is that the signs sent by Mirta Alonso from the interiors of her prison were decisive: like other women who gave birth in captivity, she said her son's name to the companion nearby, the one they had planned "outside," turning it into a clue for their relatives. And then she made that notch in his ear, in the manner of a signature or a tattoo, with which the one who would never appear left him something "forever" and guaranteed—here the word is appropriate—the restitution.

Source: pagina12.com.ar, no date