Forensic anthropologists identify disappeared dictatorship victim in Mendoza

The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, by its Spanish initials) identified the remains of Carlos Simón Poblete, a man who was forcibly disappeared in 1977 during the last military dictatorship. 

He had been buried in a mass grave in a cemetery in Mendoza province.

The EAAF announced the discovery on Thursday. While Poblete’s remains had been found by the team in 2010, they were only able to identify them now thanks to a blood sample provided by his daughter earlier this year.

Poblete is the fourth dictatorship victim to have been identified at the municipal cemetery of Mendoza city, the provincial capital.

Who was the victim Carlos Simón Poblete, who was born in the province of San Juan, was 33 years old when he was kidnapped in Córdoba alongside his wife, María del Carmen Moyano, 22. She was around eight months pregnant at the time. 

They were both members of the armed left-wing organization Montoneros.

According to witness testimonies, the couple was illegally held at the La Perla death camp in Córdoba. The woman was later transferred to Buenos Aires and gave birth to a girl at the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), one of Argentina’s largest centers of torture and extermination during the last military dictatorship. 

María del Carmen Moyano remains disappeared. Her baby was appropriated by a policeman and his wife and raised as their own.

The EAAF said in a statement that Poblete was buried without identification in a sector of the Mendoza Municipal Cemetery that had been used to bury unidentified dictatorship victims. The exact date is unknown.

His remains were removed from the cemetery in 2010 as part of an excavation project that continued until 2015 to find dictatorship victims in the cemetery.

Poblete’s daughter The identification of Poblete’s remains was not possible until this year, when his daughter, Miriam Fernández, reached out to the EAAF to provide a genetic sample.

The woman, who was born in 1977 at the ESMA death camp, was illegally appropriated as a baby and raised under a false identity by Armando Osvaldo Fernández — then a member of the Mendoza provincial police intelligence department — and his wife, Iris Luffi. 

They were both convicted of this crime in 2021. Fernández was also convicted of several other crimes against humanity.

Miriam found out she was Poblete and Moyano’s biological daughter in 2017, after she was called in by the judiciary and was requested to provide a genetic sample following an investigation into the appropriation case. 

She is the 127th grandchild found by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo organization.

Controversial video Last March, in the context of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup, Miriam Fernández was at the center of a controversy after she took part in a video recorded by the national government that aimed to question human rights policies and the guerrilla groups that were active during the 1970s.

According to human rights organizations, it was part of a campaign by the government of Javier Milei to deny or relativize the crimes against humanity committed during that era.

In the video, Fernández — who refused to change her legal name to Miriam Poblete Moyano — said that she felt “forced” to engage in the process that led to her identification as the daughter of two dictatorship victims, an experience she described as “painful and traumatic.”

She also said that she found out the couple who raised her were not her biological parents in 2000, but had not been interested in finding out about her origins. 

An investigation began after a relative filed a judicial report stating that she had been appropriated, she added.