Woman reunites with birth mother after discovering she’s part of Chilean forced-adoption scandal
By Tommie Clark
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BALTIMORE (WBAL) — A Baltimore woman who recently learned she’s one of tens of thousands of Chile’s “children of silence” was reunited with her birth mother.
Cara Miranda, 35, has always known she was adopted from Chile. Until recently, she and her adopted family had no idea about the corruption behind her case until an organization called Nos Buscamos helped her figure it out.
“Becoming a mother has really shaped me and made me think a lot about my roots and my adoption, which is what led me to this search,” Miranda told 11 News.
Miranda told 11 News she is at the center of a decades-long adoption scam carried out in Chile under a dictator’s reign in which children were stolen at birth and trafficked worldwide to be put up for adoption. It’s now under investigation by justice officials.
Miranda reunited with her birth mother, Oriana Aristondo Rosas, who said she was coerced into giving her daughter up at 3 months old.
“She said, ‘I memorized your face, and you look exactly the same.’ So, she remembered me all these years,” Miranda told 11 News.
Jimmy Lippert Thyden González said Nos Buscamos discovered his adoption paperwork leads back to the same scandal. The group alleges that from 1973 to 1990, the regime took children from vulnerable young women and sold them to adoption agencies.
“She tells me, ‘The people involved in your case are the two most notorious traffickers in Chilean history,'” González told 11 News.
González’s birth mother, MarÃa Angélica González Cuevas, said she was told her son died shortly after birth.
“There’s coercive adoptions, there’s forced adoptions and then there’s just stealing of children,” González said.
Now González, a lawyer and retired Marine, is working with the nonprofit to help reunite more families and hold those accountable for decades of counterfeit adoptions.
“In a few weeks, I’ll be returning to Chile, to Santiago, to work with a firm. We’re going to be filing our case starting to look for justice in this. And, for the first time, we’re going to have our own voice in seeking justice,” González told 11 News.
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