Mercedes, like most of the people I crossed paths with in my search, with a couple of exceptions, initially treated me with a bit of distrust and distance. Almost as if she had said to me: "Did you come here to waste my time?" Sitting in her office, she showed me a stack of folders that were cases waiting to be picked up. "See that pile? Well, it's from people who came, left their birth certificate, and never came back. They made me search for nothing! Everyone wants to be saved, but nobody takes responsibility for their own lives! And let me tell you something, there's a queue, so you leave this here now and it'll be months before I have anything."It seemed that there was a queue for the investigation. Many people approached her office with their birth certificates, so Mercedes had a lot of work. I explained that I came from Sweden, that I was filming a documentary, and that as soon as I had a folder with all the information about the potential mothers I needed to visit, I would definitely do it, because otherwise, the documentary team would kill me. This wasn't just about me anymore. I was sitting there alone, but I came with a group of people following me. This wasn't a spontaneous outburst; I was on a mission. Because as we filmed and the years went by, I realized that child trafficking was so common, and those of us searching were so many, and the social consensus so wide, that what started as simply a search for my biological identity gradually became a need to make something visible that seemed invisible to most people.

Mercedes explained many things to me, one of which is that I wasn't illegally adopted because an adoption is always legal. There's a document that says who the mother is, what time one was born, and where. Instead, I had a substituted identity. That is, I had an identity at birth, which was erased and completely replaced. And although growing up with people who aren't my biological parents affected my psyche in the same way it would affect anyone else who didn't grow up with their biological family for whatever reason, the substituted identity, she said, carries a special flavor that arises from the context in which it happens. There's a respect for the history of the newborn and for the mother who gave birth in the legal adoption, which disappears in the substitution of identity. The newborn, completely unprotected, is a product up for sale. The mother who gave birth generally lacks any rights or decision-making power. Consciously or unconsciously, we, the substituted, know this.
Mercedes explained all this and more. She helped me put words to sensations and emotions that I've carried in my body for so long without really knowing what they were about. We also talked about the significant difference the family we grow up with can make, how the parents handled the truth, and managed their own distress.By the end of that trip in 2018, understanding our special situation, Mercedes prepared a list of fourteen women to visit. Yes. Not one, not two, not five. There were fourteen. We counted with Simón, somewhat depending on how much I could bear emotionally, and we concluded that it would be fourteen days of visiting mothers, plus a couple of days of rest in between. That would imply that our stay would be extended by almost another month, and we didn't have the budget to stay that much longer in Argentina. We couldn't do it on that trip, so I told Mercedes that we had to organize ourselves and come back as soon as possible. She looked at us distrustfully when we said it, but in the end, there was a documentary being filmed, with a production company involved, she knew that giving up the search wasn't an option.
As I mentioned earlier, I can always count on life to ruin my plans. In that same year, 2018, after that trip to Argentina, the thirteen-year relationship I had with my partner, slowly but surely, came to an end. Besides having to deal with the practicalities of moving out along with the emotional fallout, I also didn’t didn't have the money to travel to Argentina in 2019, so Simon and I organized a crowdfunding campaign to be able to travel as soon as possible. On February 15, 2020, we held an event where I had a concert with my band , and between songs, Simon showed images of what we had filmed in the previous trips to Argentina. The event was a total success, and we raised the money we needed to travel. We planned to do it in May 2020, but we didn't count on what put the world into a lockdown less than a month after the concert. We didn't count on that supposed badly boiled bat soup. We didn't count on the whole world entering a lethargy for the next few years, or that Argentina would be one of the countries with the longest and strictest lockdown in the world.Just like many others did, it was time for me to reorganize. A time for introspection, time to wait, while the world adjusted to the pandemic. In Sweden, the restrictions were barely felt. Social distancing already existed before the pandemic, so there wasn't much of a difference. Live events like concerts were canceled, but in the face of the new reality, the message that this life is fragile, that it can end at any moment, hit people hard, and contrary to what I expected, I had a lot of work producing music. Everyone wanted to fulfill their dream of recording their songs. It was as As if suddenly everyone realized that it's in this life that you have  to fulfill your dreams, because there's no sequel to this movie.News from Argentina reached me through my dad, who unfortunately fell down the stairs of his house in 2021, which quickly worsened his health. Argentina was very difficult. The pandemic was making everything that was complicated before the pandemic even more complicated. In Stockholm, people asked me how things were going in Buenos Aires, how people were surviving. And I answered them what I've been answering since I moved to Sweden: "Argentinians are used to crises. They have developed the incredible ability to move forward in ways that one could never imagine from here."
Indeed, I learned that despite everything that was happening, in Argentina, many other people with substituted identities had organized themselves and advocated for the right to biological identity. In other words, many people like me were tired of nobody helping them and were fighting for the right that all people have to know our genetic and cultural heritage, our biological parents, and the circumstances of our birth, among other things. Furthermore, they had presented a bill to Congress to receive government assistance in the search for their biological identity.Finally, on April 21, 2022, the Law of Biological Identity or Origin was approved in the Senate of the Province of Buenos Aires. That law is legislation that seeks to be a tool for those who have doubts about their biological origin. The purpose of this law is to guarantee people's free access to all information related to their own origin identity, which is recorded in the various registers of provincial public bodies, for which the State must provide the necessary means.In other words, the work of Mercedes, who only worked in the Capital, became a law that is slowly being approved in all provinces of Argentina. As I said before, happily, we are destined to evolve.
When we returned in June 2022, post-pandemic, Mercedes had already retired, so instead, we went to the Human Rights Office to talk to Cecilia, her successor. Cecilia, like Mercedes, took her time to explain each case to us, and we could ask all kinds of questions. With patience and tenacity, Ceci helped us in every way she could, following the investigation to the last case.I saw Mercedes on the last day before leaving back to Sweden. As always, a hard and warm welcome at the same time. We met at a café in downtown Buenos Aires, along with Simon, who was filming the meeting. I was so happy to see her, I had so much to tell her! And she had so much to tell me! She ranted as always against the government and the country's corruption, demanding that people start taking responsibility for their lives and stop blaming everyone for everything. She talked about the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo as always, and she told me again about her own story and the disappearance of her brother before the military dictatorship of '76. Mercedes herself had survived so much. We cried together, laughed together, and before leaving, I said to her, "Don't you want to adopt me instead?" referring to the fact that my birth certificate is fake anyway. I didn't want to leave. If there is one person in the world who understands what I went through, what it cost me, what I've been carrying, and the emptiness inside, it's Mercedes. But time is a tyrant, so I had to say goodbye and continue my journey.
Mercedes is an unstoppable force who never gives up. She's the kind of person I deeply admire, someone who, without fanfare or glory, did what needed to be done because it was the right thing to do. But where did that calling come from? Why did she dedicate all that time and energy to the substituted, to those whom nobody cared about? Before I left, I took courage and asked  her, and the answer was as beautiful as Mercedes herself. It went something like this: "Well, someone has to do it. This can’t continue like this."I remember the time she told me the story of her name, "Mercedes". "Do you know what it means?" she said. "Liberator of slaves."Within her, the desire for justice burns fiercely. Was it always her destiny to be who she is?Thank you, Mercedes, and thank you, Cecilia, for freeing all of us, slaves to our emptiness, slaves to our search.

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