Silvia Quintela - Argentine Transition To Democracy

Argentine Transition To Democracy

In 1983, after the junta relinquished control of the government, Abel Madariaga returned to Argentina and tried to find out what had happened to Silvia and their child. He began to suspect that Major Norberto Atilio Bianco, a military doctor linked by witnesses to pregnant detainees, had in fact taken Quintela's son himself. Babies delivered at the base were either given up for adoption or given to soldiers' families, and Bianco had an adopted son, Pablo, whose age fit into the timeline. Furthermore, Pablo's birthday, 1 September 1977, matches the reported date Silvia Quintela gave birth.

In 1986, the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo went to the school of Bianco's children in order to request a DNA paternity test. However, Bianco immediately escaped to Paraguay. Bianco and his wife Susana Wehrli were extradited to Argentina in 1998, while their children continued to live in Paraguay and refused to recognize any other person as biological parents. Madariaga endeavored to resolve Pablo's paternity through DNA testing, but Pablo has, as of 1998, declined to cooperate.

The Argentine magistrate Roberto Marquevich has indicted the former dictator Jorge Videla on charges of kidnapping concerning this and other cases of "stolen babies". Videla was transferred to the Caseros Prison, where Bianco himself was also detained on charges of kidnapping and forgery of official documents (his wife was also detained in the Ezeiza Prison). In 1999, Bianco was released and succeeded in joining the private clinic Buen Ayre and in being re-admitted by the Buenos Aires Medical Board.

Apart of Silvia Quintela, Pablo may also be the son of Beatriz Recchia, a friend of Silvia Quintana who was detained in the same period, while four months pregnant. Since no DNA tests have been made, the case has not been cleared yet.

According to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo on 6 May 2008 Atilio Norberto Bianco was detained. He was denounced by the association in December 2006 as the head of the clandestine maternity unit that functioned in the Military Hospital of Campo de Mayo during the last military dictatorship in Argentina.

Bianco was summoned for questioning scheduled for 1 April 2008 by the judge Martner Suares Alberto Araujo, owner of the Federal Court No. 2 San Martner, in Buenos Aires province.

In February 2010 a 32-year-old man was recognized, by DNA testing, as Silvia's son and became the 101st. recovered grandson by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The young man was appropriated and raised by Víctor Alejandro Gallo, an Argentine Army officier who has previous records of crimes against humanity.