“Your birth certificate is fake”, “your adoption is illegal”, “if they ask you at school, your mother is from  Argentina”. Since I was a little girl, they told me that I was adopted and that it had been an illegal adoption. According to what my parents said, the story was the following: A mother from my brother's kindergarten had told my mother that there was a baby who needed to be adopted, so my mother went  with my father and my brother to the other side of town, close to downtown Buenos Aires, to pick me up at a doctor's private practice. They were always afraid that people would find out about it, because they thought they were going to be put in jail for it. It wasn't until 2018 that I found out that the crime of baby trafficking expires after 12 years, which is completely absurd, but then again, so is this world. No 12 years old or younger child is going to go around suing their own parents for having illegally adopted or appropriated them. In case you wonder about the legal consequences the doctor would face, well, that’s even milder. He would just have to face charges for birth certificate fraud, which is considered a misdemeanor.Big difference in the case when this happens in the context of the appropriation of babies that has to do with the military dictatorship, which is classified as a crime against humanity and never prescribes. 
The doctor who sold me, filled out the birth certificate with the name of my new father and mother and a date of birth that we don’t know if it is the right one or not. According to my mother, when they asked him about my biological origin, the doctor menacingly responded: “Do you want her or not?” And at that time, during the military dictatorship, everyone knew better than to ask any questions, so without any further ado, they took me home. And it was not until The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo asked me for my birth certificate that I never thought about that doctor or the relevance of my forged papers. I had already moved to Sweden and little by little started my new life when one day, a friend called me and told me that The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo asked me to contact them. It turned out that the doctor who signed my birth certificate was already being prosecuted in other cases so it was very possible that I was one of the granddaughters they were looking for and therefore asked me if I could come by and leave a DNA sample. That was in 2002.The doctor who signed my birth certificate, Celestino Bartucca, was the reason why all this started.Many years later, when I approached the human rights office of the civil registry of the city of Buenos Aires to continue my search, I found out that Celestino was a doctor that was, in the words of who was in charge of that office at that time, Mercedes Yañez, ”very prolific”. It was known that for years he not only sold babies but also performed clandestine abortions in his private clinic. And if that wasn’t enough, he was also the head obstetrician at the Santojanni municipal hospital. Yes, Celestino was apparently a very hard-working man. In fact, there were so many children sold by him that they formed a group with around 30 people who call themselves the "Bartuquitas". All of them with what is called a “substitute identity” and delivered or better said, sold through Celestino. But Celestino was not acting alone. It is impossible. Selling babies is not as easy as it seems. Or actually it is, but it requires people because of all the logistics involved. For example, midwives are needed to deliver babies. They were the ones who either convinced the mother who was about to give birth to give up her baby with the promise that the baby was going to have a better future in a middle class family, or also for example robbed them by faking the death of the newborn. In addition, there was also a need for people to contact middle-class couples who would want to buy the babies. Like any company that sells a product, there are people who have the raw materials, in this case the poor mothers who go to municipal hospitals, those who buy the raw materials, that is, the midwives, there is the seller, in this case Celestino, which is in charge of legalizing the procedure by falsifying the documents and finally the buyers, middle class people who want to have children and either got tired of waiting for the legal adoption process, or they know that they are not going to be allowed to  legally adopt, or they simply don't care at all and just want a baby and that's it. In any case, business is good in a country like Argentina. Babies can be worth up to the value of an apartment, depending on whether they are white and blonde, white with dark hair, or those who are less worth like me, with brown skin and dark hair. Anyway. I guess we shouldn't forget the police in the area where Celestino worked, who probably knew perfectly well what was going on. All these people were part of the same machinery, without forgetting perhaps the most important part:The social consensus. Because without social consensus, this does not happen. I know, it's complicated. Nothing is black or white. A social situation as difficult, at least as the way it was in Argentina when I was born, an economic situation that never improves, social classes that seem like social castes, the great need and absence of social security and in the midst of all this, the poor mothers, totally defenseless against a system that does not value them and sees them as pariahs. This context easily gives rise to all of this existing, having existed and continuing to exist. I grew up hearing all my life that I was lucky. “Because imagine where you would be now if you hadn't been adopted.” And it is partly true. The difference between eating and not eating greatly influences a child's growth. The stress of parents from having to fight every day to keep a family afloat with the most basic needs also greatly influences how that child is formed. The education I received, and in my case the passport I inherited, which allowed me to move to Sweden without any problems, also influenced my life. But then, if it is so, why do I feel within me such a need to know what happened at the moment of my birth? Why do I want to know what the story was behind my purchase, that even though it is a hard story, full of injustice, darkness and cruelty, I still prefer it before continuing with the emptiness of uncertainty? Why not instead write an ode of gratitude to Dr. Bartucca to his family and his henchmen? Why don't I just feel gratitude towards my parents, my history and the social consensus that made all of this possible?Why are there groups on Facebook of people desperately searching for their biological identity and their truth, no matter what that might be?And what did my parents think when they went to pick me up at that doctor and as my mother said “they had promised us a blonde girl”? “If we dress her well and wash her hair with Helena Rubenstein's shampoo for blonde hair, she won't look so dark and no one will ever ask where she came from?”Or could it be that no one, absolutely no one really thought this through and what this all would mean?Yeah. I know. Nothing is black or white.And even though it hurts me to my core, I want to believe that everything is part of everything.And that in some inexplicable way, in this life, there is a plan for everyone.Even for Dr. Bartucca.

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