When babies were kidnap victims in Argentina
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
When babies were kidnap victims in Argentina
By CESAR CHELALA
NEW YORK — The recent conviction of two former Argentine dictators for their role in baby thefts brings to my mind a meeting I had in 1991 with Adriana Calvo de Laborde, an Argentine physicist who in 1977 had been imprisoned by the military while she was 6½ months pregnant.
I asked her to tell me her story and after some initial refusal to do so — on the grounds that she had been luckier than most of her friends in prison — she told me what had happened to her and the role that one of my medical colleagues, Dr. Jorge A. Berges, had in her mistreatment.
"I was in prison when my daughter Teresa was born," Laborde told me. "The day that happened — it was April 15, 1977 — in spite of the cold weather, the fear, the pain I was having, and also in spite of the filth surrounding me, I had felt the need to wash myself up. This was ludicrous, since I had already been in prison for more than two months and during all that time I had been unable even to take a shower.
"That day, however, I pulled off my dress and began to sew it. I then washed my underwear and began to pull the hairs off my legs. Since I didn't have the means to do it properly, I scratched my fingers against the cement walls so that they would become rough enough to pull out the hairs in my legs. As soon as I finished, I started having labor pains.
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