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Chapter 2-Why a documentary?
In order to answer that, it is necessary to start by explaining what happened in 2015.
After getting the call from the Argentine Embassy that the Argentine Foreign Ministry was looking for me, I panicked. Panic to the point that I did something I had never done before in my life. I called my boyfriend and told him crying: "They found me, they found me. Please come home."
I'm not that kind of person. I'm not usually the one to call people and ask them to come and save me, but that day I had such a severe panic attack that I actually asked for help.
This reaction actually had to do with something that happened a few months before, when almost at the end of my annual trip to Buenos Aires, I decided to go to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to ask the last questions about what would happen if I left my DNA and they found my biological family.
I understand how such questions may seem irrelevant to people in general.
I mean, if you compare it to the solving of crimes against humanity and the restoration of my biological identity, everything else should reasonably be irrelevant.
But for people like me, who are on this side of history, it is not. So in my opinion, anyone who has something to say about it, if they are not in the same position as we are in, who have to face such decision, please remain silent and try to understand instead.
At least for me, it was something I had been thinking about for 13 years, before I could take the big step. And I had actually had already decided that I would do it. On that same trip to Buenos Aires, I sat down with my adoptive father for the first time and told him that it was time. That the grandmothers still searching for the stolen children and grandchildren had grown old and could not wait any longer.
He replied that "I also think it is good that you do it" and that "if I had ever suspected that you came from one of these families, I would have never accepted it". My father gave me permission.
All this was also happening because of what my mother said two years earlier on her deathbed. Before she fell into a morphine-induced coma, when the cancer was already beyond recovery and there was no turning back, she admitted to my aunt that "I hope Natalie finds her biological mother."
We all suspected that I was a stolen child, the daughter of "desaparecidos" or disappeared. By the way, when you talk about the "desaparecidos" or disappeared in Latin America, you mean people who were murdered by the military and police during the dictatorship, whose bodies were never found.
So, as I had understood it, there were two things that would happen if my DNA sample matched with any DNA in the stolen children´s gene bank:
By law, my last name would be changed to the last name of my biological family
A legal process and a police investigation would begin to determine if my father had anything to do with the military dictatorship's systematic theft of babies, which could lead to him having to deal with brutal scrutiny and even receiving a prison sentence.
This for me meant mainly two things:
1. My German passport would be invalid (which is very problematic for someone like me who has lived in a European country for 13 years, because as we all know, getting a visa for staying in Europe is not easy as an Argentine)-and secondly and more importantly, perhaps most importantly, my father would have a very tough time.
It wasn't an easy decision, but I had already taken it. So I went to The Grandmother of Plaza de Mayo in March 2015 to ask the last questions before returning to Sweden and leaving the DNA at the Argentine embassy there.
With such bad luck that I was met by the person in charge of my case who tried to convince me to leave the DNA then and there for an hour and then, when he finally realized that I would not give in to it, he threatened me that they would force me to leave it anyway.
A psychopath in the place where they were supposed to be working to repair the damage caused by the psychopaths of the military junta in 1976. If these are the good guys and they treat me like this, I can only imagine how the bad guys would treat me. "Argentina is truly the upside down kingdom" I thought and swore to never come near the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo ever again.
The worst part, as always, was that no one believed me. How could there be such a psychopath working there? Could it have had something to do with my attitude? Hadn't I just imagined what happened? Me being so sensitive... And after all, if I was still thinking about leaving the DNA anyway, why did it matter to leave it there or in Sweden?
It mattered a lot. Leaving the DNA because it is my own decision, within a context where I am leaving it because I am part of an historical event, where I had no power at all and I was a victim along with my mother of the decision of a group of people, and then ended up in a family that had nothing to do with me, mattered a whole lot. I was giving up the identity that I had built for 38 years and my dad's love in exchange for the truth. If that was the price to pay, then at least may it be my own decision.
I went back to Sweden and closed that door. But they found me. So I went to the embassy and spoke to the judge who was in charge of my case. Basically he told me that they wanted my DNA, that the case had been opened and that if I didn't leave my DNA willingly, they would have to send the Swedish police to search my house and obtain the samples.
I told him to give me a month to think about it.
I needed a month, because I was traveling to Argentina for my dad's 75th birthday. I needed to get in and out of the country without being hassled. He said yes.
But a week later they called me from the embassy saying that they already had the papers and that I should come by to leave the DNA.
They told me that the judge had told them that I agreed.
That's when I had enough and understood that if I didn’t document everything, no one would ever believe what happened. Also, that in these times where everything is on social media, people tend to behave when they are in front of a camera.
So that's why I contacted Simon, a friend of my boyfriend. Simón was studying script writing at that time, and already filming documentaries. He found my story very interesting so he asked me if he could make a documentary of my search. I told him yes. As long as he filmed all these procedures so I could protect myself at least a little bit from all the abuse.If that was the case, I agreed to be a part of his documentary and Simon and I started filming. Because if there’s one thing we both had learned was without witnesses, there is no truth.
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By Natalie KIn order to answer that, it is necessary to start by explaining what happened in 2015.
After getting the call from the Argentine Embassy that the Argentine Foreign Ministry was looking for me, I panicked. Panic to the point that I did something I had never done before in my life. I called my boyfriend and told him crying: "They found me, they found me. Please come home."
I'm not that kind of person. I'm not usually the one to call people and ask them to come and save me, but that day I had such a severe panic attack that I actually asked for help.
This reaction actually had to do with something that happened a few months before, when almost at the end of my annual trip to Buenos Aires, I decided to go to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to ask the last questions about what would happen if I left my DNA and they found my biological family.
I understand how such questions may seem irrelevant to people in general.
I mean, if you compare it to the solving of crimes against humanity and the restoration of my biological identity, everything else should reasonably be irrelevant.
But for people like me, who are on this side of history, it is not. So in my opinion, anyone who has something to say about it, if they are not in the same position as we are in, who have to face such decision, please remain silent and try to understand instead.
At least for me, it was something I had been thinking about for 13 years, before I could take the big step. And I had actually had already decided that I would do it. On that same trip to Buenos Aires, I sat down with my adoptive father for the first time and told him that it was time. That the grandmothers still searching for the stolen children and grandchildren had grown old and could not wait any longer.
He replied that "I also think it is good that you do it" and that "if I had ever suspected that you came from one of these families, I would have never accepted it". My father gave me permission.
All this was also happening because of what my mother said two years earlier on her deathbed. Before she fell into a morphine-induced coma, when the cancer was already beyond recovery and there was no turning back, she admitted to my aunt that "I hope Natalie finds her biological mother."
We all suspected that I was a stolen child, the daughter of "desaparecidos" or disappeared. By the way, when you talk about the "desaparecidos" or disappeared in Latin America, you mean people who were murdered by the military and police during the dictatorship, whose bodies were never found.
So, as I had understood it, there were two things that would happen if my DNA sample matched with any DNA in the stolen children´s gene bank:
By law, my last name would be changed to the last name of my biological family
A legal process and a police investigation would begin to determine if my father had anything to do with the military dictatorship's systematic theft of babies, which could lead to him having to deal with brutal scrutiny and even receiving a prison sentence.
This for me meant mainly two things:
1. My German passport would be invalid (which is very problematic for someone like me who has lived in a European country for 13 years, because as we all know, getting a visa for staying in Europe is not easy as an Argentine)-and secondly and more importantly, perhaps most importantly, my father would have a very tough time.
It wasn't an easy decision, but I had already taken it. So I went to The Grandmother of Plaza de Mayo in March 2015 to ask the last questions before returning to Sweden and leaving the DNA at the Argentine embassy there.
With such bad luck that I was met by the person in charge of my case who tried to convince me to leave the DNA then and there for an hour and then, when he finally realized that I would not give in to it, he threatened me that they would force me to leave it anyway.
A psychopath in the place where they were supposed to be working to repair the damage caused by the psychopaths of the military junta in 1976. If these are the good guys and they treat me like this, I can only imagine how the bad guys would treat me. "Argentina is truly the upside down kingdom" I thought and swore to never come near the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo ever again.
The worst part, as always, was that no one believed me. How could there be such a psychopath working there? Could it have had something to do with my attitude? Hadn't I just imagined what happened? Me being so sensitive... And after all, if I was still thinking about leaving the DNA anyway, why did it matter to leave it there or in Sweden?
It mattered a lot. Leaving the DNA because it is my own decision, within a context where I am leaving it because I am part of an historical event, where I had no power at all and I was a victim along with my mother of the decision of a group of people, and then ended up in a family that had nothing to do with me, mattered a whole lot. I was giving up the identity that I had built for 38 years and my dad's love in exchange for the truth. If that was the price to pay, then at least may it be my own decision.
I went back to Sweden and closed that door. But they found me. So I went to the embassy and spoke to the judge who was in charge of my case. Basically he told me that they wanted my DNA, that the case had been opened and that if I didn't leave my DNA willingly, they would have to send the Swedish police to search my house and obtain the samples.
I told him to give me a month to think about it.
I needed a month, because I was traveling to Argentina for my dad's 75th birthday. I needed to get in and out of the country without being hassled. He said yes.
But a week later they called me from the embassy saying that they already had the papers and that I should come by to leave the DNA.
They told me that the judge had told them that I agreed.
That's when I had enough and understood that if I didn’t document everything, no one would ever believe what happened. Also, that in these times where everything is on social media, people tend to behave when they are in front of a camera.
So that's why I contacted Simon, a friend of my boyfriend. Simón was studying script writing at that time, and already filming documentaries. He found my story very interesting so he asked me if he could make a documentary of my search. I told him yes. As long as he filmed all these procedures so I could protect myself at least a little bit from all the abuse.If that was the case, I agreed to be a part of his documentary and Simon and I started filming. Because if there’s one thing we both had learned was without witnesses, there is no truth.