Disappeared children of Argentina's Dirty War

• DATE: Disappearances occurred between 1976 and 1983
• THE EVENT: From 1976 to 1983, a military dictatorship was in power in Argentina, and about thirty thousand people whom the government considered to be political dissidents or active opponents of the military were taken from their homes by force, interrogated, tortured, and killed. The “disappeared” included young children captured with their parents and pregnant women who were imprisoned until they gave birth. Many of these children were adopted illegally or raised under false identities by families associated with the military. Later, relatives of the disappeared filed inquiries with the courts to try to determine the fates of their children and grandchildren. An organization founded by grandmothers of disappeared children successfully lobbied for changes in Argentine laws to allow grandpaternity testing and to establish, by law (1987), a national genetic database to aid in identifying children who had been taken from their families.

SIGNIFICANCE: The efforts of the Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (known in English as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) were essential in the recruitment of the help of international scientists in identifying children who had been separated from their families. The scientists helped establish an Argentine national genetic database, created by Law No. 23.511 (1987), and confirmed the validity of tests for grandpaternity. By conducting genetic testing, scientists were able to reunite a number of families, including identifications continuing through 2025.

In 1977, the women of the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) began to gather weekly in the main public square of Argentina’s capital city, Buenos Aires, to protest the military government’s practice of “disappearing” opponents. These women, mothers of missing sons and daughters taken by the government, succeeded in bringing international attention to Argentina’s “dirty war.”

Also in 1977, twelve grandmothers of children who had disappeared because of government actions formed the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Although the military dictatorship was still in power, the Grandmothers began to protest and to gather information about the disappearances of their children and grandchildren. Their focus was on locating the missing children; they launched an international campaign to gather support and met with human rights organizations from around the world. By 1982, the Grandmothers had collected information on some three hundred grandchildren whose parents had disappeared. They knew of the possible whereabouts of fifty grandchildren. After his election to the presidency ended military rule in Argentina in December 1983, Raúl Alfonsín appointed the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) to investigate what had happened to the disappeared.

Application of Forensic Science

The Grandmothers sought help from international scientists. Among those who worked on the problem of identifying the missing children were Dr. Fred Allen, an expert on blood groups; Dr. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a population geneticist; Dr. Mary-Claire King, a geneticist; and Pierre Darlu, a mathematician. The scientists took an approach that had never been taken before when they applied the idea of grandpaternity testing, that is, they used the same methods used for standard paternity testing to determine the genetic relationships between children and their grandparents.

For the identification of related individuals, genetic markers that are passed from parent to child and that are highly variable in the population are needed. Initially, the scientists used immunological techniques to identify the grandchildren; they examined blood samples from suspected stolen children, their possible grandparents, and other living relatives. No samples were available from the parents of the children because they had been murdered by the military. The genetic markers examined were blood group antigens from red blood cells, such as ABO, Rh, and Kell, and from white blood cells, such as human leukocyte antigens (HLAs).

King and other scientists also worked to determine what additional genetic markers could be used to identify the children. Mitochondrial DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is isolated from the blood. The sequence of mitochondrial DNA is an excellent genetic marker for tracking grandpaternity because mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited, that is, it is passed from a mother to all of her children. Fathers do not pass mitochondrial DNA to their children. Also, a noncoding region of the mitochondrial genome contains highly variable sequences used in identification.

The mitochondrial genome is a 16,569-base-pair circle that is present in many copies in each mitochondrion, and there are many mitochondria per cell. Because many copies of mitochondrial DNA exist in each cell, it is easier to obtain mitochondrial DNA than it is to obtain nuclear DNA in many cases. In the use of mitochondrial DNA to identify individuals, the highly variable region of mitochondrial DNA is sequenced, and the sequence is compared with the sequences of known persons in a database. Some mitochondrial sequences are unique to particular maternal lineages and can be used to identify grandchildren in these lineages, even if the parents cannot be tested.

When the scientists found genetic matches for suspected stolen children, the Grandmothers, the courts, and psychologists worked together to try to ensure that the children were not subjected to further trauma. According to Argentine law, a child could not be considered matched to a family unless circumstantial evidence pointing to the relationship existed in addition to findings from genetic testing indicating a greater than 95 percent probability of a relationship. By 2002, information about more than two hundred grandchildren had been gathered, and more than sixty grandchildren had been identified and returned to their relatives. That number reached 140 grandchildren by 2025.

Bibliography

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Penchaszadeh, Victor B. “Genetic Identification of Children of the Disappeared in Argentina.” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, vol. 52, 1997, pp. 16–22, www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/pubhealth/p6438/readings/penchaszadeh-argentina.pdf. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.

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Tondo, Lorenzo, et al. “Adopted by Their Parents’ Enemies: Tracing the Stolen Children of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War.’” The Guardian, 16 Jan. 2023, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jan/16/tracing-stolen-children-of-argentina-dirty-war. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.

Vishnopolska, Sebastián A., et al. “Genetics and Genomic Medicine in Argentina.” Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine, vol. 6, no. 4, 26 July 2018, pp. 481–91, doi:10.1002/mgg3.455. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.