Victoria Montenegro Stolen as a baby 50 years ago!
Montenegro, a mother and grandmother, lived half her life as María Sol Terzlaff and half with her true identity, Victoria Montenegro.
Buenos Aires, Mar 22 (EFE).- By Esther Rebollo
Montenegro was a baby stolen when she was 13 days old in 1976 by an Argentine military man who ordered her parents thrown from a “death flight” into the Río de la Plata, said in an interview with EFE: “50 years after that tragedy, we continue to resist.”
Montenegro, a mother and grandmother, lived half her life as María Sol Terzlaff and half with her true identity, Victoria Montenegro.
She was born on Jan. 31, 1976, in William Morris, Buenos Aires Province, and 13 days later, she, her mother, and her father were kidnapped in a military operation. On Mar. 24, the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón was overthrown by a military coup, and on May 28, María Sol Terzlaff was born.
While her parents were missing, Victoria was searched for, while María Sol grew up in Campo de Mayo, a military garrison on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, where the dictatorship (1976-1983) had established a detention and torture center. From there, “death flights” departed with illegal detainees who were thrown into the river or the sea.
However, military personnel and their families also lived there, including the Terzlaffs.
“I am the daughter of Roque Montenegro and Hilda Torres. They lived in the province of Salta. Before the military coup, my entire maternal family was politically active: my grandmother, mother, father, and uncles. There was repression everywhere, so my parents came to Buenos Aires. I was born on Jan. 31, 1976, when my parents were still free. They named me Victoria.”
With these words, she begins recounting a life similar to those of many other Argentinians. Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 people disappeared during those years.
Mar. 24 will commemorate the 50th anniversary of a coup that has affected several generations.
“Colonel Hernán Antonio Tetzlaff led that operation. They entered our home in William Morris, and from that moment on, my father, who was 20 years old, my mother, who was 18, and I, who was 13 days old, disappeared,” Montenegro detailed.
Her parents met in high school in Salta and were active in the Peronist youth movement, then in left-wing politics.
“In addition to my parents, 25 children disappeared in their small town, which is a huge number,” she added.
Montenegro described her childhood, the shock of discovering her true identity, and the moment she realized, with great pain, that Hernán Tetzlaff, the man who had posed as her father, had kidnapped her and ordered the murder and disappearance of her parents.
“Human rights organizations reconstructed everything that happened to me. First, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo looked for mechanisms to identify the babies. Then, the forensic team identified the remains of the disappeared,” she added.
Her case began with an anonymous complaint. “It started in 1984, and I appeared in 2000. For all those years, a sector of the justice system did everything to prevent my appearance,” she emphasizes, referring to the power held by the colonel who kidnapped her.
According to Montenegro, “Argentina had a systematic plan for the kidnapping of children.” She was taken, bleeding from the ears, to the San Martín Women’s Brigade, a police station in the province of Buenos Aires. “They kept a group of babies there, all children of the disappeared.”
Once the baby had recovered, a nun handed her over to Tetzlaff to be raised “with Christian values.”
“I never doubted that I was the biological daughter of the Tetzlaffs. I loved that my dad was the boss of all the barracks. He was two meters tall and weighed 150 kilos. To me, he was the greatest in the world,” she said regretfully.
“I fought with the Grandmothers because they didn’t just come to tell you that you have a different name, surname, and date of birth. They came to destroy everything you believed was good. It wasn’t just the bond with my appropriators; it was that my father was the head of the operation and had killed my parents,” that’s why Victoria got angry when she discovered the truth.
Victoria had sworn to her kidnappers that she would stay with them no matter what, but a judge forced her to take blood tests against her will.
At that moment, she didn’t want to know anything about her biological family.
“All I cared about was that my dad wouldn’t go to jail because of me. I appeared at 25, but it took me seven years to say my name.”
“You cannot forgive someone who does not repent; you cannot forgive someone who does not ask for forgiveness,” Victoria told EFE. Despite everything, she never broke her bond with her kidnappers, and she cared for them until the end of their lives. Tetzlaff died convicted of kidnapping and stealing Victoria. EFE
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