El Salvador mother and daughter meet 29 years after civil war abduction
El Salvador mother and daughter meet 29 years after civil war abduction
Emotional reunion is 389th case of 'disappearance' resolved by tiny charity as wartime abuses remain live political issue
Nina Lakhani in San Salvador
The Guardian, Sunday 29 December 2013 14.04 EST
The two women looked at each other for a moment before drawing together in an embrace of joy and sorrow. Around them, a room full of relatives let out a collective gasp, astounded at the resemblance between mother and child, reunited after 29 years.
In 1984, Josefina Flores Osorio had been forced to hand over her two-year-old daughter, Xiomara, for adoption at the height of El Salvador's brutal civil war. Now, she seemed oblivious to the commotion around her as she wept in her daughter's arms. "I feel I've been born again," said Osorio, 52. "I always believed she was alive and I am so grateful to have found her. I've dreamed about this moment for so long."
The emotional reunion marked the 389th case of a "disappeared" child to be successfully resolved by the tiny charity Pro Búsqueda Association for Missing Children since the dirty war ended 21 years ago. Pro Búsqueda was founded by a Spanish Jesuit priest in 1993 to investigate the enforced disappearances of children, stepping in where the state refused. It has located missing children in the US, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Guatemala and Honduras using dogged investigators and, more recently, a DNA database developed with the help of volunteer forensic scientists based at the California department of justice.
The database holds the genetic profiles of 550 families searching for more than 900 disappeared children. Another 103 people abducted as children are looking for their families. Between 10 and 20 new cases come forward each year.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/29/el-salvador-family-reunion-civil-war