Doria Garcia appears at a photos of her adopted daughter Adamary Garcia at her home in Coconut Creek, Florida, on February 19, 2025. Chilean native and US citizen Adamary Garcia returned to her birthplace to fulfill her organic household after being separated from them as a baby through the Pinochet dictatorship and adopted within the US. Agence France-Presse
SANTIAGO — 4 a long time after they have been cruelly compelled aside, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her beginning mom fell into one another’s arms Saturday on the airport in Santiago, Chile.
With out talking, they embraced tearfully: A uncommon reunification for one the 1000’s of Chileans taken from their moms as infants and given up for adoption overseas.
“The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, stated as she beheld her daughter for the primary time since her beginning 41 years in the past.
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Garcia had flown to Santiago with 4 different ladies born in Chile and adopted in america.
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Reviews have estimated there have been 20,000 such instances from 1950 to 1990 — most of them through the army dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
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Garcia lives in Puerto Rico, the place she works within the monetary sector. On her option to reunite together with her organic household, she spoke to AFP at a resort in Houston.
She broke down in tears as she recounted how, as a baby, she by accident came upon she was adopted, after which tried for years to shelve the information, earlier than lastly making peace with it.
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“I’m lucky. I’ve my mother and pop (in america), and now I’ve one other mother and three brothers” in Chile, she stated.
Final October, a DNA check confirmed her origins and Garcia organized to fulfill her beginning mother via the muse Connecting Roots, which has thus far reconnected 36 Chilean ladies with youngsters taken from them towards their will.
‘Trickery, threats and coercion’
Infants have been taken from their moms in Chile in a money-making scheme involving docs, social staff and judges, in keeping with investigations into the matter.
They have been delivered to international adoptive dad and mom, in some instances for as a lot as $40,000.
“How have been these youngsters taken? Some have been (falsely) declared useless at beginning, others have been stolen from hospitals and establishments or taken from moms who have been manipulated and pressured into giving them up for adoption via trickery, threats and coercion,” Connecting Roots vice chairman Juan Luis Insunza informed AFP.
Earlier than Saturday’s reunion, Bizama recounted how she was bullied into giving up her new child daughter by a social employee who informed her she couldn’t adequately care for an additional little one.
She was 23 years outdated on the time, with two different youngsters and a job as a home employee, she informed AFP in her house metropolis of San Antonio, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Santiago.
The daddy of the kid had left her.
“Then they took the child, and as soon as every thing (the paperwork) was accomplished, they despatched me away… I left, wanting round, not understanding what to do. I wished to run and discover my child, but it surely was already accomplished.”
Bizama stated she “by no means forgot” about Adamary, though she didn’t know even her identify.
“She was at all times right here in my thoughts, in my coronary heart. That’s why now I name her ‘daughter of my coronary heart’.”
For Garcia, whose search began final 12 months after she learn an article about child thefts in Chile, “it has been complicated to course of this new actuality,” by which she regards each her beginning and adoptive moms as victims.
However from the primary video name with Bizama, she stated, she felt “solely love.”
‘Out of the blue’
In Coconut Creek, Florida, the condo of Adamary’s adoptive mom Doria Garcia’s abounds with images of her daughter at completely different ages.
The 80-year-old Cuban-American informed AFP how in 1984, she traveled to Chile to obtain her three-month-old daughter, after finishing “the same old procedures.”
“I’ve her little face ingrained in my reminiscence: once they handed her to me, smiling,” the retired medical assistant recalled.
“And once I held her in my arms, I swear it felt like my coronary heart was bursting.”
With delight she describes her daughter as an expert with an excellent job, however above all “completely happy.”
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It was via Adamary’s journey that she realized about Chile’s stolen infants, she stated, and expressed gratitude that her daughter has discovered a “household that, out of the blue, seems when she’s already 41 years outdated.”