Opinion | Chiles Stolen Children Deserve Justice

For 42 years, my mother thought I was dead.I, like thousands of Chilean children, was stolen at birth.I was born in a Santiago state hospital on Oct.

31, 1980.My Mamá remembers staff members telling her that I was jaundiced and needed to be put in an incubator.

Before she could name me or even hold me, I was taken from her.They later said to her, “Your son is dead.

You can go.”What she didn’t know was that I had been taken to a state orphanage just blocks away from the hospital.The plan was simple: Traffickers took babies out of hospitals, then created fraudulent documents to put the children through illegal adoptions.

Babies were given to adoption agencies and private adopters, both of whom rarely ensured the legitimacy of their status.When I was 2, I was adopted from the orphanage by a couple in Virginia, who were unaware that I had been stolen.

My American mom and dad offered me an education, a home and a loving family.But I was stripped of my language, culture and Indigenous roots.

I was assimilated, given the new identity of an American boy named Jimmy.Some people will read this last sentence and think: “You should be thankful.You probably had a better life.” Adoptees are often expected to be grateful.

But this isn’t about giving an adopted child a better life, this is about stealing kids.Under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean state promoted international adoptions as a way to reduce poverty rates.Mr.

Pinochet was not only a dictator, he was profoundly classist, and his administration sought to better Chile’s economic standing at the expense of the country’s lower economic class.As part of this goal, a national network of judges, lawyers, medical care providers and clergy members frequented churches, hospitals and women’s shelters to take babies from poor and Indigenous women, often single and marginalized — like my Mamá.International adoptions saved the government money, compared to the cost of supporting impover...