Introduction
The problem of transnational adoptions of Chilean children during the military dictatorship gained public interest in 2014 following a series of complaints from families who blamed the priest Gerardo Joanon as an intermediary in adoption processes considered irregular.1 Subsequently, several press reports began to make visible the testimonies of families affected by this problem, which highlighted a phenomenon of great magnitude. As a result, the authorities decided to appoint a visiting minister to investigate these cases. Said investigation was assumed in 2017 by the prominent minister of human rights cases, Mario Carroza. The first antecedents of this investigation pointed to the responsibilities of the Swedish Society for International Child Welfare Adoption Center (from now on, Swedish Adoption Center) in these “irregular adoptions.”
Investigations by the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI, for its initials in Spanish) into the Swedish Adoption Center indicated that professionals from this institution, who worked principally as social workers, developed the role of “captors”2 of children mostly from impoverished families. They conducted this activity in public hospitals, orphanages, daycare centers, or social aid agencies throughout the municipalities.
Public knowledge of these facts encouraged the appearance of a movement mostly of mothers looking for adopted children abroad and of people who were adopted as children and sought their biological origins in Chile. In recent years, the number of victims of what the press has called irregular adoptions has grown, both inside and outside Chile.3 The increased quantity of denunciations has had significant political repercussions in countries receiving Chilean children, which has led to an ethical questioning of the authorities and international adoption institutions by society.4
For this reason, this paper seeks to understand the characteristics and political scope of the process that allowed the adoption of Chilean children by Swedish families during the military dictatorship. Specifically, we are interested in observing the political character of discourses on childhood in the context of the Cold War and the part that adoption played in the diplomatic relations between Chile and Sweden. Therefore, we pose the following questions: What was the political role of Chilean childhood under the military dictatorship? What was the impact of adoptions of Chilean children by Swedish families on diplomatic relations between Chile and Sweden?
As a hypothesis, we propose that the transnational adoption of poor Chilean children to Sweden was valued by the military dictatorship as a mechanism of diplomatic and political proximity since it allowed establishing links with institutions and sectors of the extreme right in Sweden. It sought to generate political alliances to stop the so-called “anti-Chilean campaign,” led mainly by the community of Chilean exiles who denounced the human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship.
We can also point out that adoption was part of the dictatorship’s childhood policy, which sought to impose a traditional family mandate, contrary to the figure of single mothers and illegitimate children. This approach responded to the construction of a subsidiary State,5 which transformed the family into the main unit responsible for satisfying the needs of the population.
This research consists of a review of diplomatic documents from the Chilean Embassy in Sweden—specifically, reports describing the dissemination of the image of Chile and its children in the Swedish media between 1973 and 1990. Additionally, the study reviewed reports, periodicals, and official documents, which reflect the reaction of the Chilean authorities to the criticism of the Swedish press and irregularities in adopting children. To this end, the Fondo Suecia [Sweden Fund] at the General Historical Archive of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (aghmrree) and the Fondo Ministerio de Justicia [Ministry of Justice Fund] at the National Administration Archive (arnad) were consulted. Periodical publications, studies, and historiographic and journalistic research on transnational adoptions were also examined.
Adoption as a mechanism for the political regulation of the family has been widely addressed in the work of anthropologist Diana Marre. She has analyzed transnational adoption concerning filiation and foster care, the dynamics of child abduction and trafficking, migrations, and biographical trajectories, as well as the problems of the origins of adopted children. The author has also conducted in-depth research on the movements of mothers searching for abducted children, principally in the case of Spain.6
In the case of the Southern Cone, Carla Villalta’s research7 on child adoptions and appropriations in Argentina stands out. Villalta warns that these practices have been studied as isolated events, which leads to concealing the ideological and political plan of the State. The author also analyzes institutional networks that operated under the family mandates8 of the Argentine dictatorship, showing their markedly classist and “salvationist” imprint on the popular sectors seeking to legitimize the regime in the eyes of civil society.
International literature points out Chile as one of the principal countries that sent children for transnational adoption during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite this, very few Chilean studies have addressed this problem. Pioneering work in this regard is the journalistic investigation by Ana María Olivares and Pablo Soto,9 which focused on the Swedish Adoption Center and institutional networks built in that country. On the other hand, we highlight a previous work by Karen Alfaro that, based on a life story, explores the adoption of numerous Chilean children in the Netherlands based on the intervention of the Las Palmas Foundation, an organization led by Gertrudis Kuijpers, a lay religious of Dutch nationality.10 From the point of view of social psychology, Irene Salvo’s work on adoption policies and the search for origins in Chile stands out.11 In this line and from a comparative perspective, we find the recent work of De Lorenzi, Gallego, and Fernández, which identifies common elements in dictatorships concerning irregular adoptions and the complexities of democracies to establish regulations favoring the knowledge of the families of origin.12 In the mentioned studies, discussions have focused on vindicating the right to know the origins of adopted children as a fundamental part of the right to identity. While recovering the debates on the transnational nature of adoption, our work delves into a political and diplomatic dimension that has not been dealt with in depth in previous research.
The political nature of childhood under military dictatorships is one of the current concerns of those working from the perspective of recent history.13 In the case of Chile, historiographic production has incorporated truth reports14 as its central sources. Although some of these documents record cases involving child victims of human rights violations, they do not examine the diversity of violence against children. In this sense, the problem addressed in this article—forced adoptions during the dictatorship—seeks to contribute to the processes currently underway that demand on behalf of the families affected clarification of what happened. The creation of organizations such as Hijos y Madres del Silencio [Sons and Mothers of Silence] has made it possible to articulate a public demand for truth and justice.15
To address the described problem, this article is divided into four sections. First, we develop a literature review on transnational adoption and identify the most relevant contributions of ongoing research and debates. Second, we review the bilateral relationship between Chile and Sweden, strained by the Nordic country’s international positioning on human rights. In the third part, we focus on the treatment given by the Swedish press to the Chilean situation—specifically, the state of underprivileged children—which had an impact on public opinion and the disposition of Swedish families towards adopting Chilean children for humanitarian reasons. Finally, in the fourth part, we examine the political scope of transnational adoptions as a means of diplomatic proximity between the two countries, which, for the military authorities, had as its principal objective to stop the political isolation of Chile.
1. Transnational adoption
The origins of transnational adoption are associated with the irruption of North American philanthropy during the post-war period, established as a mechanism to help abandoned children.16 Studies on this issue point to the difficulty of measuring the phenomenon since there are no official records in the countries sending and receiving children. This is due to the regulations in force in Chile and other Latin American countries that did not regulate adoption abroad, which, added to a slow process of modernization of identity registries, created an institutional scenario conducive to the recruitment of children for adoption in the First World.
Faced with the magnitude of displacements, mainly since the 1970s, some authors like Weil categorized adoptions as a silent migration,17 which restricted their understanding to a demographic phenomenon.18 Authors such as Yngvesson19 and Marre and Briggs20 have warned about the economic and political nature of the circulation of children through transnational adoptions, a practice that configured North-South dynamics, which, in the context of the Cold War, turned adoption into a political propaganda tool of developed countries that intervened in situations of high population vulnerability, in areas of armed conflict or in countries under military dictatorships or civil wars.
Within the said framework, the legal regulations of adoption were in response to global dynamics, which configured a geography of receiving and sending countries in the transnational adoption circuit. In the case of Latin America, the modality of “legitimizing” adoption expanded during the post-war period, and Chile was the second country to implement it through Law 16346 of 1965. The objective of this modality was to establish a civil bond by recognizing the adopted person as a “legitimate child” of the legitimizing-adoptive family.21 Secrecy was a central element of this type of adoption, the purpose of which was to ensure the irreversibility of the act.22
It is precisely in the period in which this law was in force, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, that the specialized literature points out Chile as one of the principal countries of origin of children through transnational adoption.23 The dynamics of adoptive legitimization resulted in the development of a “clean break” with the biological families of the adopted children, which led to irreversible processes in legal terms and in terms of geographical displacement.
The opacity around the issue of transnational adoption is evidenced by the absence of records and official statistics on this matter, given that foreign adoption was only regulated in 1988, with Law No. 18703. Additionally, the long military dictatorship configured a bureaucratic-authoritarian framework that implemented various mechanisms of social and legal violence against the popular sectors. This not only restricted the freedoms of these sectors but also made it difficult and discouraged the denunciations of forced adoptions.
2. Chile and Sweden, diplomatic conflicts during the Cold War
For the history of Latin America, the cultural and social dimensions of the Cold War24 are a broad field of study,25 specifically for the Southern Cone countries that experienced military dictatorships, given the impact of a political conflict transferred to all spheres of society.
For our study problem, the characteristics of bilateral relations between Chile and Sweden in this complex scenario—strained after the 1973 coup d’état—are of great interest, mainly because of the role played by the Nordic country in defending human rights at the international level. The horror of human rights violations after the coup immediately led to a broad rejection by the international community of the upstart military regime, aligned with the Western capitalist bloc. This became evident on October 8, 1973, when at the United Nations Assembly, during the presentation of the Chilean Foreign Minister, Vice Admiral Ismael Huerta, several representatives abandoned the meeting room. This situation inaugurated a progressive process of political isolation of the Chilean dictatorship.26
The recognition achieved by Sweden in the international community can be explained in this period by the impact of the so-called “Palme line,” as a reference to the character of international relations adopted by Sweden when Sven Olof Joachim Palme became Prime Minister in 1969. This political line was characterized by a rapprochement with Third World countries, such as Chile, during the government of Salvador Allende, in addition to providing humanitarian aid and contributing to international cooperation. In this context, the Swedish government condemned the Vietnam War, Franco’s dictatorship, and later Pinochet’s dictatorship, among other political regimes.27
Part of this democratic tradition was also the Swedish Ambassador to Chile, Harald Edelstam, who played a central role during the military dictatorship in saving the lives of hundreds of Chilean men and women to whom he facilitated asylum and conditions for exile.28 In November 1973, there were registers of 153 asylums granted by diplomatic headquarters, in addition to 73 safe-conducts for asylum seekers granted by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 80 pending safe-conducts, among others.29 Edelstam’s commitment to human rights led the dictatorship to declare him persona “non grata”30 and to his having to leave the country. Because of this situation, Sweden did not appoint another ambassador to Chile until the return to democracy in 1991. Under the military regime, the only functioning position was that of Chargé d’Affaires.
The embassy stated that by 1981, Chilean residents in Sweden numbered 9,300 people, of whom 7,904 were in the country legally and made up the largest Latin American colony there. Humberto Sepúlveda Munita, Consul General of Chile, indicated that 8,458 persons were registered at the consulate. The remaining difference probably corresponded to those with a Swedish travel document (Resedokument), which allowed them to travel to socialist countries, or a passport for foreigners issued directly by the Swedish authority (Framlingspass).31 The Chilean colony was mainly composed of workers occupied in minor services who came from the provinces of Santiago, Valparaíso, Antofagasta, Iquique, Concepción, and Temuco. According to Sepúlveda’s report, only a minority of the exiled Chileans were professionals.32
The arrival of exiles in Sweden was facilitated by networks and relationships forged by the Chilekomitté, which had been founded to support the process of the Unidad Popular, a bloc of leftist political parties and social movements that sought to build the Chilean path to socialism through the government of Salvador Allende. This organization, together with others that made up the exile community, acquired a leading role in disseminating and condemning human rights violations. Their main activities included distributing propaganda, collecting money to support political actions, and organizing spaces to disseminate information about the Chilean situation.33 They produced materials to raise awareness among the population, including in schools, where they handed out pamphlets with basic information and didactic examples on social inequality, the situation of popular sectors, the role of the Church, childhood, education, political repression, the social impact of the coup d’état, comparative information on Chile and Sweden, among other related topics.34
After that, the diplomatic relations between the two countries were characterized by the contradictions of the Cold War, which led to campaigns in Sweden both in favor and against Chile. These actions were known as “pro-Chilean,” favoring the Pinochet regime, and “anti-Chilean” campaigns, in opposition to it. In early 1977, the Chilean ambassador to Sweden, Svante Törnvall, reported an “intensification in the anti-Chilean campaign” based on publications about repression, torture, and missing persons. The ambassador pointed out that the main cause of this was the “escalation of the Soviet campaign” to isolate Chile economically, politically, and diplomatically. These actions would be materialized, according to Törnvall, by the group of exile organizations in Sweden, the Chilekomitté, the Communist Party, social democracy, the Confederation of Swedish Trade Unions, and “infiltrators” in the Liberal and Center Parties, which pressured the Swedish Government to take an “aggressive” position against Chile. Another circumstance to which Törnvall attributed this offensive was the international human rights campaign in Eastern Europe, which forced the Chilean dictatorial regime to public pronouncements of rejection.35
To counteract the “anti-Chilean campaign,” the military regime set out to develop a plan in Sweden to improve the country’s image, which was made possible through links with extreme right-wing sectors and Swedish businesspeople and foundations from the conservative sectors. This articulation gave rise to the Sweden-Chile Society, which collaborated with the military regime through political propaganda and the provision of information on the activities conducted by Chilean exiles.36 The impact of this alliance was decisive for diplomatic relations between the two countries and the connection that the dictatorship established with the Swedish Adoption Center.
Exiles and organizations that expressed solidarity with the situation in Chile were aware of the close ties between the Swedish and Chilean societies. For this reason, the circumstances in Chile were widely known among Swedish public opinion. In the following section, we will focus on the Swedish media’s treatment of the state of childhood in Chile, which reveals the degree of awareness among Swedish families of the grave human rights situation of children.
3. “Children accuse Pinochet.” Chilean childhood in the Swedish media
“He was beaten by the police, his father detained in the National Stadium, and after the military coup, he dropped out of school;” this is how Swedish journalist Leif Persson described the situation of a child in Pinochet’s Chile in August 1974. Later, in the Arbet newspaper—a press linked to the Social Democratic Party—Persson described the negative impact of the military dictatorship on poor children:
The children are the ones who suffer; they flee through the streets when need and hunger reach the shanty town population (poblaciones callampas).37 The trucks that deliver free bread and milk no longer go once a day […] the drama of a 12-year-old boy who left his home because there was no food, the father was unemployed while the mother had occasional work as a cleaner and laundress for some wealthy people in Las Condes.38
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter—known for Mats Holmberg’s writings against the governments of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay—published the report called “The rebellion begins here” on March 6, 1976, which, in the framework of the International Women’s Day, presented the experience of the “Chilean Women’s Committee in Uppsala.” According to Hilda Cid-Dresdner’s statement, “every day the Junta’s repression in Chile means hunger and misery, especially for children;” thus, this committee dedicated itself to supporting the unemployed and relatives of political prisoners. To this end, it collected three and a half tons of clothing to be sent to Chile and funds for soup kitchens, an initiative supported by the Catholic Church in the poorest sectors of the country.39
On July 17, 1977, a former Swedish missionary in Chile, Berndt Hörstrand, authored the article “Terrible terror continues as in the beginning” in the newspaper Aftonbladet. The publication described the repressive scenario in Chile and emphasized the crisis the popular sectors were going through under the regime. Regarding children, he pointed out:
Malnutrition among children has increased catastrophically. In the big cities, there are areas where 40% of the children suffer from malnutrition, which is not disseminated in the press, but doctors and social workers can certify it.40
News about malnutrition in Chile was also spread by the Chilekomitté, which openly called for a boycott of Chilean products: “While we eat shrimp, Chileans suffer from hunger.”41 This organization distributed fliers in schools describing the Chilean educational system, divided into schools for the rich and the poor. In detail, the publication pointed out that poor children could only access public schools of low quality. They had poor concentration, as they “ate little” and had to work after studying to support their families.42
Bengt Lindström, Latin America correspondent for Dagens Nyheter, published the article “The economy is good, says the Junta, but children are starving. Great misery in the slums” on July 17, 1977. Lindström pointed out that, although the Chilean government had highlighted the indicators associated with the drop in inflation “from 340 to 70 %” and a “surplus in foreign trade,” pro-market policies had a high social cost: “An investigation of 17,000 children in a slump neighborhood showed that over 60% suffered from severe malnutrition. Infant mortality has risen by 18%.”43 The article pointed out that the regime was aware of the situation, as it set up special clinics for children, but did not publicize the results, given that nine out of 20 children died in these medical centers:
I have cried before, says Susana Schneider, but never like this time. It is absolutely horrifying to see your child die because you could not get food […] because you cannot get money to eat. Susana has just buried her youngest son. He was only four years old. He died of hunger.44
The correspondent clarified that data related to child malnutrition were outside the official indicators, given that the regime was determined to disseminate an image associated with economic development. Critical data came from those doctors who worked with the Vicariate of Solidarity: “Of 17,616 children examined during the 1975/76 period, 10,869 or 61.69% were malnourished.”45
The misery that poor children experienced under the Pinochet regime had not only to do with material deprivation or the absence of basic goods but also with the repression that State agencies systematically applied against the popular and opposition sectors. A relevant dimension in disseminating information on the Chilean situation was repression against children and youth; stories of humiliation, torture, and murder were part of the narrative that ran parallel to the regime’s discourses of economic progress.
The cultural and press attaché Luciano Vásquez reported on the circulating image of Chile in Sweden in a report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in May 1975. According to the diplomat, the political crisis in Sweden was related to an international publicity campaign by the Government and social democracy to “serve the objectives and interests of international communism,” whose main target was Pinochet’s Chile. In the same year, criticism and denunciations of human rights violations increased. Although accused of being truculent and sensationalist, the mission recognized them as a “new publicity offensive” promoted by refugees and the Chilekomitté, which incorporated a new type of accusation: “children tortured by the Junta.”46
On May 27, 1975, the liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter published the story “The desperate junta. Torture of children.” It reported the case of Tamara, a girl who was tortured in the presence of her parents, intending to force them to inform about a clandestine resistance:
Torture of children in Chile continues to increase. Desperation in the face of the impossible situation in the country has led the military junta to torture children in the presence of their parents so that they will give testimonies about clandestine resistance. This is reported by a 33-year-old Chilean builder who arrived last Friday in Stockholm and is the father of 4-year-old Tamara, who has been subjected to the most bestial torture and is now hysterically afraid of all people in uniform.47
On May 3 of the same year, the newspaper Aftonbladet published the case of a 3-year-old girl named Macarena Aguiló Marchi, who was “held hostage by the Junta to force her father, an activist of the MIR [Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario], to turn himself in.” Regarding this publication, the Chilean ambassador himself sent a note to the newspaper to deny the case. He pointed out that the girl was given all the facilities to leave the country after her asylum in the Venezuelan Embassy. This clarification was never published, however.48
For the Chilean mission in Sweden, the entire Swedish press was part of an “offensive” against Chile, based on “frightening accounts of suffering and torture of young Chilean children.” Despite the above, the cultural attaché persisted in affirming that such statements did not have the expected effect on Swedish opinion and pointed out that those who knew Chile were skeptical about the allegations of torture of children. In a sarcastic tone, Vásquez stated in his report that the increase of Chilean fruit in the Swedish market demonstrated the positive image that Chile still had abroad.49
In January 1977, Ambassador Svante Törnvall alerted the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Chile, Patricio Carvajal, about the “intensification of the anti-Chilean campaign” in the Swedish media, mainly because of two articles on prison, torture, and missing detainees, one appearing in Aftonbladet and the other in Dagens Nyheter. These had a high media impact, were commented on television, and led to an ecumenical mass in Stockholm attended by the Minister of Education, J. E. Wikström.50
One of the publications that most concerned the Chilean mission was the article “Children executed in Chilean nursery,” published in Aftonbladet in January 1977. It affirmed the systematic murder of children by Chilean soldiers. These would have been relatives of leftist militants:
Filled with hatred and fear, the Chilean soldiers burst into the nursery of the Technical University and killed all the children. In the hunt for opponents, the military executed small children to make the mothers talk, especially in the marginal populations of La Legua and La Bandera […] On the outskirts of Santiago, the soldiers entertained themselves by killing disabled children, telling the peasants that it was a humane way to free them from that burden.51
Leif Persson, the author of the article, quoted witnesses who stated that, in La Bandera,52 the murders were “revenge” killings against the “solidarity” existing in the neighborhood. One “political prisoner” released from the Chacabuco prison camp said he saw children tortured to death in front of their parents to get them to confess. Another witness quoted by Persson described how soldiers killed a disabled child and told his parents: “It was for the better that he died; we must create a new race of Chileans, without defects.”53 These denunciations reveal the eugenic and racist vision deployed through different methods of repression by State agents.
Törnvall described the publication as “the most libelous article against Chile published so far in Sweden,” concerned because it quoted witnesses, because it was published in Santiago, and because Aftonbladet was the newspaper with the largest circulation in Sweden. The reaction of the Chilean government was not long in coming. Using the newspaper El Cronista, it treated Leif Persson as a “terrorist managed by the ussr.” He was accused of participating in terrorist actions and having contact with Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (eta) and Latin American terrorist groups such as mir.54 As a consequence, he was banned from entering the country.55 Without waiting for rectification from the newspaper, the embassy proposed to respond to the attack with statements in the Chilean press that were to include the voices of non-governmental organizations, such as trade unions, women’s and youth organizations, the International Red Cross, and churches (Catholic and Lutheran Church secretariats).56
In October 1979, the Swedish Association of Preschools (Sveriges Förskollärares Riksförbund [sfr]) made public its concern about the situation of children in Latin American countries. The statement speaks of 46 missing children in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, victims of Operation Condor, children born during the “captivity of their mothers” who were detained during their pregnancy or raped in detention centers. According to the document, the evidence presented shows that the separation of children from their mothers was established as a strategy of the dictatorships to eliminate the political link and provide these children with families considered “suitable.” “Security services separate children from their mothers and take them under false promises to other countries and cities abroad.” There they are abandoned and stripped of any information associated with their origin. The statement ends with the case of two Uruguayan brothers who disappeared. They were last seen in Buenos Aires, but they were found several years later in the Chilean port of Valparaíso.57
As we have seen, childhood in Chile was a topic constantly alluded to in the Swedish media when referring to the Chilean situation. This image was maintained even late in the press. A significant milestone in the denunciation of repression of poor children in Chile was the Children’s Tribunal, which took place on November 7-8, 1987, in the auditorium of the Kungsholmen Gymnasium in Stockholm. It was organized by the International Committee of Children’s and Adolescents’ Movements (cimea), the International Falcon Movement-Socialist Educational International (ifm-sei), in addition to the Chilekomitté. Ten children from the Ocarin and Manque organizations were present and made their testimonies public. The jury was composed of Swedish Social Democrat parliamentarian Hans Göran Franck; Soviet lawyer Sergei Tourtsevich, member of the ussr Committee of Youth Organizations; lawyer Klaus Eschen, member of the Organization of Social Democratic Lawyers of the Federal Republic of Germany; Jacquie Cottyn, Secretary General of ifm-sei, Belgium; and Sandor Molnari, Secretary General of Cimea, Hungary.58
The magazine Liberación published a special report, “Children accuse Pinochet,” with testimonies of those attending the Tribunal. One of the organizers, Ruth Baltra Moreno, pointed out that 80% of the 3,700,000 children under 14 years of age suffered from nervous problems and “psychic illnesses,” “600,000 lacked family life, housing, and daily meals,” and some “300,000 consumed alcohol and narcotics,” among whom there were children as young as four years old.59 Ten-yearsold Gabriel González, from the city of Temuco and of Mapuche origin, spoke of the land theft suffered by the Mapuche people and accused the Pinochet regime of perpetuating poverty, dividing the communities, and leaving children without education:
Now the children have no education. There are no Mapuche schools. When the Mapuches finish elementary school, they must go to the city to continue studying. Often, they don’t have clothes or shoes and can’t go to school because hunger and misery become harder on the streets of Chile.60
In addition to these testimonies, there is that of Iris Labé, a 12-years-old girl from the San Bernardo district of Santiago, who described the precarious living conditions of her family:
I think that where I live, poverty is concentrated. There are many people there who don’t have enough to eat […] The house is in very bad condition. When it rains, the water comes through. My father works but doesn’t have enough money to fix it. We are five siblings. My younger sister, who is two years old, is malnourished; she has second-degree malnutrition. She has only lived with us for the last six months because the rest of the time she had always been hospitalized. To be attended at the polyclinic where we live, we must queue up at 5 a.m., and when the numbers run out, they don’t see anyone else, no matter how sick the child is. I only have tea for breakfast because my father cannot buy milk for us, and for lunch, we drink broth that my mother makes, which is the cheapest meal.61
The Children’s Tribunal heard one of the most relevant testimonies about the horror of State terrorism, that of Carmen Gloria Quintana, who was 19 years old at the time. She recounted that on the morning of July 2, 1986, she went to downtown Santiago with her sister and some friends, among them Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, to participate in a new day of national protests against the dictatorship. At a certain point, they ran into a military patrol that chased them until they caught up with Rodrigo and Carmen Gloria. More than thirty soldiers brutally beat them, sprayed them with benzine, and set them on fire. After losing consciousness, Carmen remembers waking up in a ditch on the outskirts of the city with Rodrigo, totally disfigured. They struggled to stand up to look for help on the road. They were diagnosed with deep second and third-degree burns on 62% of their bodies. Rodrigo survived for only four days, while Carmen recovered and left Chile to denounce to the world the atrocities committed by the Pinochet regime. The magazine Liberación published a brief interview with Carmen Gloria, in which her struggle for human rights in Chile became evident:
All the young people in the exile feel Chilean, and I would tell them that if they are thinking of returning to Chile, they should do so, and if they cannot do so yet, they should fight wherever they are and get settled both in the exile and in Chile if they return, and work hard to recover freedom and democracy […] as young Latin Americans we should no longer accept the misery imposed on our peoples by North American imperialism.62
After hearing the testimonies, the jury summoned to the court concluded that children were “deprived of their childhood” due to “imprisonments, exile, executions, and killings,” their lives were under constant threat by the “actions of the armed forces,” “the rights to adequate shelter and housing are not respected at all,” there was no right to equality in education due to the socio-economic conditions of the country, budget cuts, and privatization, and there was no basic health care for children either. Finally, the jury stated, “Due to the extreme poverty that affects one child in two and the high unemployment rate, children are forced to work and prostitute themselves for the family to survive.”63
For the Chilean Embassy in Sweden, the Children’s Tribunal was nothing more than a “circus” carried out by organizations with a “communist facade,” in line with the anti-Chilean campaign, in the words of the Minister Counselor Chargé d’Affaires, Julio Riethmuller Vaccaro.64
Thus, while reporting on the grave events in Pinochet’s Chile, systematic human rights violations, and the poverty of the population, the Swedish media reflected, through children, the worst face of the regime. The testimonies of malnutrition, high infant mortality, and repression experienced by children shocked the Swedish community. The widespread circulation of information on the Chilean situation in the Swedish media sensitized public opinion, which promoted humanitarian aid actions, including the option of adopting Chilean children.
4. Adoptions of Chilean children at the center of the policy
In 1975, a report entitled “Scandalous trafficking of Chilean babies,” signed by Wolrad Klapp, appeared in a Chilean newspaper, which dealt with a series of denunciations regarding the departure of Chilean babies to Sweden for adoption purposes.
Some seventy Chilean babies were taken to Sweden during the last three years to be adopted by couples who could not become parents or wanted to increase the family with a new sweetheart from this country.
It seemed to be an act of plausible generosity; nevertheless, the matter suddenly became dark when travelers from abroad realized here that Chilean babies are offered for adoption in several European countries, as it happens with ill-fated children from Vietnam or Korea. In other words, the cunning attack intends to present Chile at the chaotic level of the unfortunate Asian nations.65
In the report, the concern for the country’s image is noteworthy, given the increased number of adoptions of Chilean children. It reports on actions taken by the Ministry of Justice to investigate previous complaints, which led the judge of the First Juvenile Court of Santiago, Ana Luisa Prieto, to travel to Sweden in 1974 to learn about the Swedish Adoption Center. Her impression was that “it is a serious institution that opens to Chilean children the wide door to a new and optimal world for their development.”66 This visit opened a communication channel with institutions and political organizations in Sweden that sought to promote adoption in that country.
The Swedish Adoption Center was founded in 1969 and developed its activities in Third World territories. Its activities, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, were focused on humanitarian aid and intervention to recruit children for international adoption. As a non-profit institution, it received contributions from the Swedish State, allowing for linking this institution with the political class, especially with conservative and moderate pro-family sectors.67
Despite the positive report on the institution derived from the judge’s trip, in November 1976, the Chilean Embassy in Sweden expressed concern about the existence of an “anti-Chilean press campaign based on the adoption of Chilean children.” Ambassador Törnvall—in response to an aerogram of October 18, 1976—pointed out that, during 1974, the press used the work carried out by the Swedish Adoption Center to “launch malicious attacks against Chile,” a campaign that, according to the Ambassador, continued until 1976.68 This period coincided with the rise to power of the leader of the Center Party, Thorbjörn Fälldin, who put an end to social democratic governments. This turn in Swedish internal politics in 1976 implied the weakening of the organizations of Chilean exiles.
It did not take long for the regime’s authorities in Chile to become aware of the political implications of transnational adoptions. In January 1977, Brigadier General Rigoberto Rubio Ramírez, Intendant of Region viii, wrote to the Minister of the Interior about the matter. In his communication, he requested to investigate and intervene in the problem, indicating that he was aware of the authorizations given in the Juvenile Court of Concepción for the adoption abroad of Chilean minors, a process in which the Swedish Adoption Center had participated. Although the action had been supported by the legislation, the political impact of the phenomenon called the attention of the authorities of the time:
Even though the judicial resolution conforms to the legislation in force, I have considered it appropriate to address you on the matter, since the departure of Chilean children from the country and their adoption by foreigners represents a factor that can be politically exploited against the Supreme Government by political sectors interested in distorting its true image.69
Raúl Benavides Escobar, Major General and Minister of the Interior, agreed with Rubio’s statement and extended the request for an investigation to Miguel Schweitzer, the Minister of Justice at the time.70 Schweitzer responded that he was aware that the Swedish Adoption Center had applied to his office for a concession to obtain legal personality in Chile. He added that background information on the case would be compiled to inform the Minister of Health,71 who at the time oversaw the National Children’s Home, the institution that centralized the adoption processes, starting with the implementation of the National Plan for Minors of the dictatorship (1978-1982). This plan established among its objectives the expansion of the number of adoptions as a strategy to overcome the so-called “irregular childhood,” referring principally to children of single mothers, impoverished families, and who did not respond to the family mandates of the regime. An extensive adoption promotion campaign was developed through the media to increase the number of adopted children.
The National Information Center (cni, for its initials in Spanish), the principal repressive apparatus of the regime, also warned about the international scope of these measures. In a confidential communication, Brigadier General Odlanier Mena, director of this agency, informed the then Minister of Justice, Mónica Madariaga:
There are indications that minors are being adopted in Chile by foreigners, who are subsequently taken out of the country with unusual frequency. Apart from the possible political implications of these events, there is the possibility of human trafficking.72
Colonel Eduardo Avello, Deputy Minister of Justice, responded that the only information they had was the Swedish Adoption Center’s communication with the Ministry of Justice. Indeed, on July 6, 1976, this Center, represented at that time by Anna María Elmgren Söderquist, requested a legal personality to operate in the country. However, a complaint by the Civic Family Organization S.O.L. stopped the process, and the Ministry of the Interior decided not to grant the legal status, which left the application in “processing” status. Said complaint was made directly to the Presidency of the Republic, expressing concern about a “presumed market of minors,” in which Anna Elmgren and the Italian priest Piergiovani were allegedly involved.73
On the other hand, the head of the Office for Minors, Gloria Baeza Concha, responsible for the National Plan for Children during the dictatorship, tried to clarify and restrict the debate around the current regulations of adoptions. She communicated with the Ministry of Justice to indicate that, beyond the political problem of “the image that could be formed abroad,” adoption should be considered a legitimate alternative to help underprivileged children.74
In July 1979, the Chilean consul in Stockholm, Ricardo Benavente Holley, reported from Sweden on the frequency of applications to adopt Chilean children in the country, which could reach fourteen cases per week. Benavente explained that the procedure had three different mechanisms. The first consisted of requests for guardianship and subsequent adoption carried out by the Swedish Adoption Center, which established contact with the court of the locality where the child was located and then entrusted guardianship to a Swedish couple without the participation of the natural father or mother. Humanitarian, economic, or environmental reasons were given as grounds for the action. The second mechanism allowed married couples to grant a power of attorney to the Center to search for Chilean children and arrange the adoption with the juvenile courts in Chile, as they were empowered to do so by Law No. 16618 of March 8, 1967.75 The third and last mechanism consisted of married couples who granted power of attorney to flight attendants of any airline—or to any person capable of transporting a child from Chile to Sweden—once a court order was assured in Chile. As a result, the children lost their original surnames and acquired the adoptive ones without the sentence indicating the surnames of origin.76
Until 1977, it was not clear how many Chilean children had been adopted and had left for the Nordic country. The consul stated that he did not have information to determine the precise number of adoptions already arranged to the date. The authority did not know whether they involved “orphans from the National Children’s Home,” those picked up by the police, or it was some kind of trade promoted by “unscrupulous mothers.” For these reasons, he requested an investigation of the origin of these adoptions and the agencies involved.77 Some known data indicated that the adoptions had begun in 1972, with figures ranging between 150 and 200 children adopted annually.78
However, Chile’s image abroad remained a guideline for the diplomatic mission in international policy. In September 1979, Benavente suggested to the Chilean Embassy to provide the Swedish Adoption Center with material about Chile to improve the country’s image. The consul contacted this institution, where they expressed interest in sharing brochures and films about Chile with Swedish couples:
This corporation is interested in being able to disseminate brochures and even films about Chile among future adoptive parents. They found that the magazine CHILE (summer 1977) was high quality and told me that it could be sold at a fair price. I also believe that film screenings at the Adoption Centrum to applicant families […] could have a positive impact on the image of Chile.79
Transnational adoptions during the Pinochet regime reached their peak between 1978 and 1982 with the National Plan for Children. This policy established adoption as “the ideal welfare system for healthy and normal children who lack a home of their own. Through it, a child is given to those who have been denied one by nature.”80 This plan aimed to “significantly increase the number of adoptions in Chile as a way to provide a home for children who lack one.”81 To this end, the regime sought to promote a “public opinion movement in favor of adoption,” which set the State the task of informing and promoting adoptions to speed up the adoption process.82 The official press, municipalities, and civil-military agents were in charge of “broadly promoting the adoption of helpless children, making known both inside and outside the country the principles governing the system.”83 This policy became a mandate that subsequently facilitated the management of public officials in hospitals, municipalities, and childcare institutions to favor the delivery of underprivileged children to institutions and agencies that processed transnational adoptions, as was the case of the Swedish Adoption Center operating in Chile until 1992.
Conclusions
Adoptions of Chilean children by Swedish families took place during the military dictatorship in a context of diplomatic tension caused by the international condemnation of human rights violations in Chile. These adoptions functioned, at first, in an irregular manner in the period 1973-1977 and were mainly associated with humanitarian aid because of the problematic situation of Chilean children. They contributed to the so-called anti-Chilean campaign in Sweden and alerted the military to the political scope of the treatment of children abroad. Thus, in a second phase (1978-1988), adoptions became accepted by the regime, and their regulation and promotion became a diplomatic and political strategy to iron out differences with Sweden and improve the country’s image internationally.
The adoption of Chilean children by foreigners during the Pinochet dictatorship was a strategy of political proximity, especially in countries like Sweden, where a considerable number of Chilean exiles concentrated. Links through transnational adoptions allowed Chile to foster political relations with authorities and institutions, such as the Swedish Adoption Center and the most conservative sectors. Thus, the adoption of Chilean children in Sweden was placed in the field of a political dispute that sought to reverse the isolation of the military regime in the international context. Intending to institutionalize the practice of forced adoptions of poor children, the dictatorship drew up the National Plan for Children, which promoted adoption, shortened adoption processing times, and centralized applications at the National Children’s Home, where representatives of the Swedish Adoption Center also worked.
It should be highlighted that there are no official figures in Chile on the total number of children who arrived in Sweden for adoption. Many of these cases were forced adoptions of underprivileged children through civil-military power, which regulated the care of children and judicially disqualified single mothers and families from caring for their offspring. This conflict remains unresolved and keeps many families in legal proceedings at present to find their sons, daughters, mothers, or fathers.