Juan Cabandié

Mariano Recalde (left, with dark clothes), with Juan Cabandié and others, in 2009.

Juan Cabandié was born in March 1978 in the former ESMA (Navy Petty-Officers School), located in the northern area of the City of Buenos Aires. There Alicia Alfonsín, her mother, was in captivity after being kidnapped by the Armed Forces during the civil-military dictatorship (1976–1983).

His father, Damián Abel Cabandié, who was then 19 years old, was kidnapped in his house in Solís 688 of the Congreso neighborhood, on November 23, 1977. A few hours later, he also abducted his mother, who was 17 years old at the time. pregnant with Juan. Both were taken first to the clandestine detention center known as El Banco and then to the Athletic Club. In December her mother was taken to the ESMA, being installed in the so-called "piece of pregnant women".[2]

In March 1978, she gave birth in her cell to a boy whom she named Juan.[3] Both parents remain missing. The obstetrician doctor Jorge Luis Magnacco (1941–) was the one who attended the delivery.[4]

Juan stayed the first 15 days of his life with his mother. Moments before the separation of the child, the prefect Héctor Febres announced to Alicia Alfonsín that she had ordered her "transfer" (euphemism used for murder and disappearance of the body) and asked her if she wanted to write a letter to her family. Alicia wrote the letter and left it with the baby. That night the boy was removed by a non-commissioned officer with the nickname of Pedro Bolita and then it was appropriated by a member of the Argentine Federal Police related to the illegal repression, named Luis Falco, who together with his wife made the child believe that he was biological son of both, giving him a false name and date of birth.

Cabandié grew up as Vanina Falco's brother, with whom he established a close affectionate relationship. His appropriator, on the other hand, maintained a relationship without affection, establishing permanent differences with his biological daughter, Vanina. His appropriator encouraged him to enter the Military Lyceum, something that the boy was about to do.

In 2003, after 25 years of his birth and appropriation, Juan Cabandié began to seriously doubt his origin, due to the treatment received, his personal characteristics and the lack of memories and records in the family about his birth. Cabandié himself says that at that time and in those circumstances "to be an adopted son was not to be an adopted son, it was to be the son of the disappeared".

Juan then pressed his mother to tell him if he had been adopted, and finally she recognized him. Shortly after, accompanied by his foster sister, the young man went to the association Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to start inquiries about their origin.

A few months later, on January 26, 2004, the young man knew the truth and knew his real name. He also knew who his parents had been and who made up his biological family, especially his grandparents and grandmothers, whom he met shortly after, and who had searched continuously since the day of the disappearance of their parents.

Luis Falco considers it simply and simply as an appropriator who stole his identity. Teresa de Falco considers her as her "foster mother", although she has had ambiguous feelings towards her. Vanina Falco considers her his sister. She requested to appear as a plaintiff with her brother in the trial for the appropriation of minors that follows Luis Falco, but the court denied the request due to the relationship between them.

Cabandié has related repeatedly that, during his childhood and adolescence, he had chosen for himself the name of Juan, and that he had dreams in which his mother in twilight cradled him as a baby and breastfeed him by calling him Juan. Cabandié attributes these sensations to memory mechanisms derived from the two weeks that she stayed with her mother in the cell, before she was killed.

In 2011, the appropriator Luis Antonio Falco received the maximum penalty granted so far for the crimes of appropriation of minors and suppression of identity: 18 years

From adolescence and long before even suspecting that he was a son of the disappeared, Juan Cabandié began to participate in solidarity activities with the most disadvantaged sectors of the population, and to engage with popular political movements. After the recovery of his identity in the year, 2004 was invited by the then President Néstor Kirchner to give a speech at the official act of recovery of the former ESMA as a memory space, made in the same place where he was clandestine detention center. Cabandié read an emotional letter there, which was worldwide disseminated.

In 2005, Juan Cabandié was appointed by President Néstor Kirchner as coordinator of the Federal Youth Council.

In the Peronist movement, Juan Cabandié is part of the national driving table of the La Cámpora group.

He was the head of the Youth Secretariat of the Justicialist Party. Later he was secretary of Human Rights of the PJ.[5]

On March 24, 2004-on the occasion of the official act of recovery of the ESMA (School of Mechanics of the Navy) and its reconversion into a space of memory-, Juan Cabandié read a message.[6]

His letter begins:

In this place they stole my mother's life, she is still missing. In this place they devised a macabre plan of theft of babies. Here there were people who thought they were unpunished playing with me and taking my identity for 25 years.

Later, Cabandié reconstructs the moment and circumstances of his birth:

My mother was in this place detained, she was surely tortured and I was born here in the same building. But the sinister plan of the dictatorship could not erase the memory of history that was flowing through my veins and brought me closer to the truth that I have today ... My mother in here hugged me and named me, so the stories of the compañeras say Today you can tell it. I was her first and only child and both she and I would have liked to be together but this damn system did not allow me that.

At the culminating moment of his story Cabandié says:

Today I am here, 26 years later to ask those responsible for this barbarism if they dare to look at me in the eye and face me and tell me where my parents are, Alicia and Damián. We are waiting for the answer that the Final Point wanted to cover.

Finally, Cabandié included in his message one of the principles related to human rights and the memory that he usually reiterates: "The truth is absolute freedom", to conclude by saying:

Please, let this never happen again. Thank you, thank you to the Grandmothers, thank you all.

In 2007 he was presented for the first time to elections, as fourth candidate for legislator of the city of Buenos Aires by the Front for Victory. The coalition won three seats in the Legislature, but Ginés González García, one of the three elected, said that -to be able to take on Argentina's ambassador in Chile- he would cede his bank to Cabandié.

After two years of the Buenosairean legislature, Juan Cabandié appeared like first legislator of the list 604, that took like candidate to head of Government of the city of Buenos Aires to Daniel Filmus and like vicejefe to Carlos Tomada. Being elected, he assumed as head of the Front for Victory block. He also submitted requests for reports.

In 2013, Cabandié was elected a national deputy for the city of Buenos Aires and currently serves as vice president of the Commission for Consumer Defense, User and Competition, where he presented a project about price display, which aims to "guarantee consumers the real exercise of their freedom of choice and their right to information when choosing a product".

In the 2017 legislative elections of the City of Buenos Aires, he will participate as a third candidate for a Citizen Unit deputy and will compete in the P.A.S.O. of Unidad Porteña together with Itai Hagman – NOW Buenos Aires – and Guillermo Moreno de – Honesty and Courage -.