The Argentine junta murdered tens of thousands in the 1970s and 1980s, and some of the orphans were fostered by regime loyalists. Only in recent years have they begun to learn who their real parents were
When Guillermo Gómez (above) was a boy, in the mid-1980s, he was lying in bed next to his mother at their home in Buenos Aires, when she asked him a strange question: “What would you do if one of these days, when I’m working, a woman comes along and tells you she’s your mother? Would you run away with her?” Guillermo didn’t understand. How could he have another mother? Tears welled in his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whimpered. “You’re my mother.”
Teodora, was a short, heavy-set woman with an explosive temper, but she’d always been devoted to her son, working long hours as a housemaid and cleaner to pay the bills. Guillermo thought of the two as an unbeatable team. “United against the world,” as he put it, but united especially against his father, Francisco.
