The DNA result of The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo was negative, and as the judge in charge of my case said: “This case is closed now”. Even though Claudia Carlotto told me that since technology continued to develop, there was still a chance that a relative could be found in their DNA bank, for me the path was now closed.After receiving the news on that 30th of March, 2016, I didn't want to know anything else regarding my search, my expectations, or myself.More than anything I felt shame. For 14 years, I had convinced the people around me of my story, that I was part of a historical event, that I had relevance, that I was the answer to the search of a grandmother who was desperately looking for her stolen grandchild. I was special. I had even managed to convince myself of that. But now there was evidence. I was not. In my mind, and to the rest of the world, I went back to being just another adopted person, I had been given away, or sold. I was the daughter of a poor person, a mistake of someone who, unlike the middle and upper class, did not have access to the possibility of abortion. How did it occur to me that I could be anything else than that? Hadn't everyone already made it clear to me? Me and my supposed “slum-genes.”

As I said before, I returned to Sweden and decided to lock myself in my music studio, dedicate myself to work, and pretend that I disappeared. That I didn't exist. That I better never ever even think about touching the subject of the search for my biological identity,I felt so ashamed…But what was happening to me? Because it wasn't just the pain and hopelessness of not having found a biological family, there was something else torturing my soul. I could hear the voices inside me when I closed my eyes. I could see the scenes of my childhood and adolescence repeating themselves over and over again and I couldn't find a way to defend myself from these “truths” that harassed me day and night.

My partner at that time,  when he saw that I did not allow myself to feel the pain of the result of the DNA test, told me: “Whether you are the daughter of a missing person or not, it does not change the fact that a tragedy did happen when you were born”. He told me that the fact that I had not grown up with my biological family was hurtful enough. I didn't understand what he was talking about. I listened to his words, I could understand what he was saying, but didn’t comprehend its meaning.

Why couldn't I feel compassion for my own history? Why did I revoke myself the right to feel my own pain and instead just felt shame?It was difficult for me to identify the enemy that was haunting me this time. An intelligent and stealthy enemy, which was hidden between the folds of my cerebral cortex and the muscular tissue of my heart, from where it pumped its poison permanently.

What had found a perfect host in me was the racism that surrounded me from such a young age. An internalized racism that had been normalized in the form of an inner voice that repeatedly gave me the reasons over and over again why I was genetically inferior. An assertive and insistent voice that was almost imperceptible. A voice that was not mine. A voice that belongs to the world we live in that categorizes people as superior and inferior. An extended weapon of the ruling power that aims to maintain those differences, the structures of power and privileges, by dividing us between blacks, browns and whites, heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals, women and men, “civilized” societies versus “primitive” societies, “developed” countries  versus “developing” countries and much more, since the European colonialism.

Well, it was my way of surviving.It was what I had to adopt as a child in order to find a space where I could be accepted.Basically, my inner child told herself: “if you can't beat them, join them,” and despite the pain it caused her, she chose to reject herself and at least feel like she had something in common with the group of people surrounding her, at least something she could relate to.

All that toxic discourse had taken root in me, but not in the classic way in which racism is usually expressed. That wouldn't have been difficult for me to detect. The racist discourse was expressed in the rejection that I felt towards the color of my skin, towards my curly and dark hair, towards my hips, towards the roundness of my body, towards the features of my face, the color of my eyes, the tone of my voice, my big mouth and my loud laughter.

All this was, I had been told, clear signs that I was inferior.Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is the explanation that my Mexican friend gave me, when she told me why it had been so difficult for her to come out of the closet and recognize herself as homosexual. My friend told me that her family and the upper-class, Catholic society that surrounded her all her life, was strongly against homosexuality. What's more, homosexuality was associated with immorality, with perversion. Years later, even after she had settled in Sweden, far from the society in which she grew up, and extremely comfortable with the inclusion and open-mindedness of Swedish society towards the variety of gender and sexual orientation, she still felt that it was impossible for her to come out of the closet. And once she managed to do it, it was a slow process to get rid of the shame of her sexual orientation. Although none of the people close to her in her new life in Stockholm found it problematic that she was not a heterosexual woman, it took her years to accept it herself.

The strange thing, she told me, was that she never ever felt rejection towards other homosexual people. She would never treat someone the same way she treated herself, she would never think the same way about other people. She would never look down on anyone for not being heterosexual. The homophobia she felt was only towards herself.

The ego's survival mechanisms can be very intelligent and disguise themselves as whatever it takes to make sure that we are safe.Shame thinks it saves us from the searing pain of other people's rejection by rejecting ourselves first. Something like: “You don't need to hit me, I already hit myself. There is no need for you to reject me, I already know that I should not be accepted." Attack first, to avoid being attacked, and thus minimize or control the impact that the reality around us would have on our inner child, who so much wants to be accepted and seen. But of course it hurts the same,  everything impacts us the same.

Here, a clear example:Like many other children, when I was little, my mother sent me to summer camps. The ones I was sent to belonged to the German community. Every day the bus picked us up, which took us to the German sports club, where we spent the entire day. There is a recurring scene from those times, from when I was 6 years old, that I will never forget. It describes how I, as a little girl, had already understood how I was perceived by the people around me. We were changing in the locker room, all the girls from the camp and me. I saw that they were looking at me and talking to each other. I saw how they avoided me, I saw how they murmured. So I approached a couple of them and said, “I know I'm from a lower class, a browny. You don't have to play with me if you don't want to." I don't remember exactly what happened next, more than seeing relief on the girls' faces. They didn't have to reject me anymore, I had already done it for them. 

Already then, racism had been internalized. And the most interesting thing was that thanks to understanding the pain it caused in me, I would never in my life treat another person that way. Only myself. I was a mistake. I was wrong. Nobody else.Many years later, to this was added the unspoken message from the Argentine society, which indicated that I had a much greater value as a possible appropriate daughter of a missing person than if I was simply the daughter of a poor person. A message  that was felt and confirmed by several people who went through the same search process that I went through.

Needless to say, racism exists everywhere. Without doing a deep analysis of why it is something so common among human beings, it is undeniable to see how easily it takes root and how it acts among us most of the time unconsciously and even in some people consciously and openly.Sometimes, people can stop to check whether their own thoughts or actions are racist, and correct their way of thinking and acting, and try to broaden their perception of the world around them, and sometimes they do not have the ability to do so. Sometimes, people are so used to seeing things the same way and their beliefs are so ingrained, that the mere fact of seeing things from another point of view gives them a migraine, a panic attack or an outburst of rage. “Because if there is no superior and inferior race, then where do we position ourselves and what value do we really have?” says the lazy ego that refuses to change or the scared ego that doesn't want to be rejected but wants instead to belong to the right group of people. To the chosen and privileged group.

Personally, although I recognize myself as a limited human being who does what she can with the tools she has, I have to say that I prefer every day of my life to exercise my brain and expand my perception of the world around me. Question the supposed truths I grew up with and challenge my ego's fear. The world for me is much more interesting that way. Racism  never gave me anything  but pain and prejudice, and that life is not the one I choose to live.

Once back in Sweden, that same shame, that internalized racism, was torturing me, consuming me. That's why my plan was to isolate myself, go to twelve-step meetings, go to my therapy, dedicate myself to work, and leave all this behind. But as I just mentioned, that was never my destiny. My restless soul was not going to let this one go. I wasn't going to let the fear in my ego have its way. 

So when Simon and John decided to make an “intervention” and convince me to continue, I did.Thanks to Martin, we came in touch with Los Bartuquitas, and thanks to them a new door was opened.It was Paola Klejman, the first one who spoke to me about a certain “Mercedes Yañez” from the human rights department at the capital's civil registry.

The first thing I understood was that this woman had access to the files of the municipal hospitals and that was why she could find the biological mothers. It seemed so easy. I simply had to show up at her office with my birth certificate and she would help me. “But be careful, she is a complicated woman. If she doesn't like you, she probably won't help you,” they warned me. So as soon as Simon, John and I arrived in Buenos Aires, in May 2018, I gathered courage, took the subway to the Tribunales station, walked to 753 Uruguay Street, where the Central Civil Registry is located, went up to the 5th floor, and there it was. 

On the door there was a modest sign that said. "Human rights". I was really surprised to find that office there. I knocked on the door timidly, and from inside someone answered me with a hoarse voice: “Come in!” I opened the door carefully and there sat a lady with long, wavy white hair and a severe look. “I'm eating my lunch,” she said with an almost imperceptible dialect from the province of Tucuman, which actually meant: “You came to bother me in the middle of my lunch!” “I'm not in a hurry,” I answered with my most diplomatic and stone-faced Swedishness, “Take your time and let me know when you are ready, I'll wait outside.” I closed the door and sat quietly outside waiting, until a little while later her small figure opened the door and in a calmer tone she said: “Come in.”

I entered her office. There was a desk with a computer and many folders and files everywhere. I sat down in one of the chairs and, almost doubting that I had come to the right place, said something like:: “Hello, well, it turns out that I am adopted and they told me that you could help me find my biological origin”. “Did you bring your birth certificate?” She answered, “Yes” I responded and took out the document and showed it to her. As soon as she took a look at it, she smiled and said: “Huh, the prolific Dr. Bartucca.” Apparently by the time I went to ask for help, many other people had already approached The Human Rights office with birth certificates signed by the same doctor. “But you know, it's not just him, this is a family business…the sister…the son, the whole family is in it.” Mercedes already knew well where this doctor operated. In fact, at one point he became the head obstetrician at the Santojanni municipal hospital.I imagine that it wasn’t difficult to get babies to sell when you are in such a powerful position, practically like leaving a flock of sheep in charge of a wolf.

That first talk with Mercedes was a long and sincere talk. Mercedes didn't keep her mouth shut, she told me everything to my face, and I found that striking. She said things against the government, against the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, against an entire system of corruption, even against the people who came to seek their identity. Of the many things she said, this is the one that hit me the most: “People come here to look for their biological identity and they think that finding that will solve all their problems. No! They think that all traumas begin and end here. Noooo!!!! Do you know what identity is? The story of your life! What you build every day! I say take responsibility for your lives, man!!! You are all grown ups now!!!!” I didn't dare to make a sound. More than anything, I smiled with fascination for having found a person like Mercedes. She didn't pretend to be anything else than what she was. Even though I am pretty sure that she is a person who is very sensitive to the energies around her, aware that there is more than the physical and material world, she told me:"I'm not going to lay the cards here for you, I'm not here guessing, I'm going to investigate."

I am going to try to explain the work of Mercedes, the liberator of slaves, and I know that I am going to be short on vocabulary. If you ask me, I think a book should be written about her and her research method. Mercedes is a source of knowledge that the world cannot afford to lose.It turns out that at some point, when Mercedes was already working for the Central Civil Registry, a desperate man approached looking for his biological family. He insisted and insisted and finally Mercedes approached her boss and told him: “Someone has to help this man” and that is how she started what would eventually become the Human Rights office, where they seek to restore the biological identity of people with substituted identity. From then on, what she did until she retired was the following: First, she interviewed the person who came to her office. She asked for details, because in the story that people received from those who told them the truth about their biological origin, there were generally details hidden that would otherwise not be found. For example, when the baby arrived at his new home, did he still have the umbilical cord? Or had it already fallen off? Or, in what area did they go to look for that baby? 

These types of questions are often overlooked.. Then, with the birth certificate, she would go to the civil registry files and begin the second part of the investigation: The recognition of false information in the documentation. That is to say, Mercedes learned to detect when a birth certificate looks strange. For example, a girl was born one day, died the next and the reason the doctor wrote was very unclear. She was also primarily looking for young, single mothers whose babies would never appear in any other registry again.She  also looked before the date of birth that the certificate said and after, because since the information in the documents was generally false, she had to search around the date it said. This way she reached a number of potential mothers. From these, she found out if they lived, where they lived, their current address and, if possible, a telephone number. Then she listed them in order of whoever was most likely to be the birth mother, and it was up to those looking for their identity, following that list, to go and meet those mothers

Of course this also takes preparation. The way one approaches these mothers, she explained to me, was also very important. First of all, it was important not to call on the phone! Because if they knew we were coming, they would never receive us. Second, once we approach and they open the door, in the event that it was someone other than the mother we were looking for, lie. Never ever say the reason why we came there. That mother, perhaps never told anyone that she had a daughter. That girl could have been the result of a rape that she wants to forget, or the result of a love that could not be, and now that she had rebuilt her life, perhaps she had never told anyone what happened. Instead, one should, for example, say that one is the daughter of a primary school classmate who died who wanted to give her a message before she passed. And finally, when one meets the mother, start by saying that one is on a search, that one is adopted and that according to what could be found out, this mother in front of us had had a daughter in such a hospital, on such a day, and ask if there were any chances that that daughter was me. While all this is happening, it is very important to check out the physical resemblance. And if everything goes well and the mother feels comfortable, ask for a DNA test.

I'm going to add something else to this list. We should also tell them how we found them, where we got the address and telephone number from, and that if they had any questions, that they could contact the Human Rights office. That their identity and information are protected, and that the only reason we obtained it is because it was given to us. It may be because of my codependency, but for me it is also important to remember that these this women woman we are visiting suffered a loss many years ago, a loss that we came to remind them her of, so to approach them her with gentleness, calmness, honesty and warmth is the most important thing, that this life has already been difficult to the individual women standing in front of us.

Once Mercedes explained all of this to me, she asked me: “Do you have any more questions?” “No. It’s  time to go knock on doors then”, I responded with a mixture of fear and expectation, feeling small, fragile and invincible all at the same time.