Power Structures Behind Child Trafficking During Dictatorship in Chile

Original article: Las redes de poder tras el robo de niños en dictadura

Testimony reveals how an organized network targeted vulnerable families to sell their children abroad.

The phenomenon of illegal adoptions in Chile, most prevalent between 1973 and 1990, involved a systematic operation to abduct children and export them under the guise of legality, turning poverty into a lucrative market.

This network operated with the collaboration of judges, doctors, social workers, and religious individuals, who identified families in vulnerable situations to take their children. A common method involved deceiving mothers in hospitals by falsely informing them that their babies had died, while failing to provide the bodies or any real documentation.

Exploitation of Vulnerability

Orlando Martínez vividly recalls the hardships of his childhood in El Cortijo of Conchalí. His mother, María Bravo, was subject to intense scrutiny from social service networks while he was hospitalized due to an accident. According to njegov accounts, figures like social worker Telma Uribe approached families with promises of assistance to gain the trust of vulnerable, single women.

In Bravo’s case, «there was long-term surveillance as they came directly to her home ostensibly to help her,» Martínez claims, noting that the social worker collected extensive information about the family and understood their dire circumstances.

This type of manipulation aimed to identify the psychological vulnerabilities of mothers to enact the abduction of newborns at their most fragile moments—something they had to confront later on.

The Medical Deception

When Orlando’s sister was born on February 22, 1990, the network activated a scheme to separate her from her mother. Under pressure from doctors like Claudio Ferrada from the Air Force, María was told her daughter needed a life-saving bone marrow transplant that could only be performed abroad.

Fear became the main instrument to force her to quickly sign legal documents she couldn’t fully comprehend, registering the child in the Civil Registry of Independencia, where years later Orlando would learn that Telma Uribe’s cousin worked.

«My mom signed the documents very quickly because she was extremely scared,» he recounts, adding that after this, the little girl was taken to an alleged clinic located at 38 Monseñor Miller Street in Providencia, which, as Martínez later discovered through investigations, was simply an office where fake medical treatments were staged to facilitate illegal adoptions with foreign families.

Profit and Military Connections

Orlando Martínez spent years researching what happened and points to a link between Chilean and American military personnel. By June 1990, his sister ended up with a family connected to the U.S. Air Force, facilitated by an international adoption network that involved Swedish Ana María Elmgren and her husband, Carlos Carmona Kops, an officer with Carabineros. After the child was placed, María Bravo was falsely informed that her daughter had died during the procedure, a lie that caused her years of depression.

Martínez states that these operations were not acts of charity or empathy toward families unable to conceive, but rather a multi-million-dollar business: «Ms. Uribe managed to acquire over 20 properties in her name,» he claims, thanks to activities like child abduction.

He further reveals that the network continued profiting years later, asking adoptive parents for money for relatives in Chile. This was the case when he needed surgery himself, and his sister’s caretaker family sent the necessary funds, which they never actually received.

Political Debt and Irreparable Harm

Despite locating his sister in the United States nine years ago through his research and social media, the emotional bond remains fractured due to cultural shock and the trauma of deception. The case underscores the lack of state support, as there are still no reparative policies or significant advancements in justice, where the systematic nature of these crimes against humanity has been downplayed.

«The state has completely abandoned the individuals who were victims of this. There has never been any form of reparation or support,» critiques Orlando, who has already proposed legislative projects to disqualify those responsible from engaging commercially, advocating for measures to prevent these individuals from profiting from the assets acquired through illegal adoptions.

While the perpetrators live freely with various fortunes, hundreds of Chilean families continue to wait for acknowledgment that their children were not lost but sold.