Thousands of families in Chile are still searching for answers regarding their missing children taken during the Pinochet regime. One son managed to locate his biological mother after forty-two years apart.
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00:00 A mother reunited with her biological son after 42 years apart.
00:08 Jimmy Lippert Thiden has traveled all the way from the United States to Santiago for
00:12 this very moment.
00:15 He is just one of the thousands of children who were trafficked during Augusto Pinochet`s
00:19 regime.
00:20 Thanks to the NGO Nos Buscamos, Thiden discovered that his adoption was falsified and that his
00:25 biological family had not consented to the move.
00:30 She responds to all of these texts.
00:32 She says, "Mijo, you have no idea the oceans I`ve cried for you.
00:37 How many nights I`ve laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what
00:42 happened to you."
00:44 Through painstaking research, Nos Buscamos discovered that he was born in a hospital
00:48 in Santiago.
00:50 His mother was told he had died and his body had been disposed of.
00:55 A DNA test confirmed he was 100 percent Chilean and helped connect him with his first cousin
01:00 and subsequently his mother.
01:03 Constanza del Rio, founder of the NGO, says that over the last nine years, they have overseen
01:09 over 450 reunions between adoptees and their biological families.
01:16 This is what`s not for saving them from poorness or saving them from starving or whatever.
01:25 That was the movie they present.
01:27 But the real story was that where these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women
01:33 that didn`t know how to defend themselves.
01:36 During Pinochet`s 17-year reign, child trafficking was just one of the many human rights violations
01:41 that took place in Chile.
01:43 According to government figures, thousands of people were killed during the dictatorship
01:47 with tens of thousands more tortured or imprisoned.
01:50 You guys are awesome.