The unknown cases of babies and children kidnapped during the military regime in Brazil

For at least a decade, Rosângela Serra Paraná has been searching for her biological parents.

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He is the victim of a little-known state crime: the kidnapping of babies and children of activists who opposed the military regime in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in Brazil.

Rosângela was illegally appropriated by a military family in the 1960s and only discovered her status much later, during an argument with family members.

Eleven of the 19 known cases of child abduction during the military regime are linked to members of Araguaiaan opposition guerrilla movement that developed between the late 1960s and 1974 in the Amazon region, at the confluence of the states of Pará and present-day Tocantins.

These 11 victims are children of guerrillas and peasants who gave shelter to the movement.

Child abductions occurred in the first half of the 1970s, during the governments of General-Presidents Emílio Garrastazu Médici and Ernesto Geisel.

The 19 cases are listed in the report book Cativeiro sem fim (“Endless captivity”), written by me.

Contacted at the time of writing the book, the Ministry of Defense and the Army and Air Force commands did not respond to the request for information.

In an interview in a book published last year, General Eduardo Villas Bôas said that the reports on the kidnapping of babies during the military regime “lack credibility“.

Looking for birth parents

“I live in a nightmare every day, thinking that my mother could be alive, needing me,” says Rosângela Serra Paraná.

“Today I live with the anguish of not knowing who I am, how old I am and not even knowing who my parents were,” he adds.

The woman was appropriated by Odyr de Paiva Paraná, a member of a military family in Rio de Janeiro.

The family says the baby was adopted in 1963.

A birth certificate gives the date of birth as October 1, 1963. But the registration was made in the civil registry on September 22, 1967.

In the document prepared in the Civil Registry of Catete, Rio de Janeiro, it is stated that Rosângela is the illegitimate daughter of Odyr and Nilza.

The document does not provide the name of the biological parents. Nilza, according to her family, could not have children.

Rosângela Serra Paraná today. (Photo: personal file)

Odyr is a driver by profession.

According to Rosângela, her adoptive father worked as a driver for General Ernesto Geisel.

“He had a big black car that he was always cleaning,” he remembers.

Rosângela’s birth certificate lists a property at Rua Marquês de Abrantes, 160, Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro as her place of birth.

The property belongs to Rio Previdência, an entity of state employees, which bought it in 1958, according to the property certificate.

The same birth certificate has two witnesses. One of them is Alcindo Quintino Ribeiro, owner of a property where the Serra Paraná family lived.

The other is Paulo Cardoso de Oliveira, a driver by profession, like Odyr. The witness’s residence address, however, does not exist.

Odyr’s father, Arcy Paraná, was in the army. According to the Official Gazette, he reached the rank of sergeant. In the 1950s he was promoted and began working in the administrative sector of the military.

The cases of Juracy and Miracy

In the guerrilla region of Araguaia, in the early 1970s, the military kidnapped two children from the same family.

The first, Juracy Bezerra de Oliveira, was a mistake by the military forces.

The target was Giovani, son of one of the guerrilla leaders, Osvaldo Orlando da Costa, alias Osvaldão, with a woman named Maria.

In 1972 or 1973, Juracy had about 7 years. The military thought that he was the real son of the guerrilla Osvaldão with Maria Viana da Conceição. But Juracy’s mother was Maria Bezerra de Oliveira and her father, Raimundo Mourão de Lira.

The confusion in the kidnapping would have occurred because the soldiers were looking for a dark-haired boy, between 6 and 8 years old, the son of a white woman, with a large body and light-colored eyes, named María.

José Vieira is the son of a peasant who was killed by the military. (EDUARDO QUEEN/BBC)

They found Juracy’s mother with the same characteristics and took the child away.

He ended up being appropriated by Army Lieutenant Antônio Essílio Azevedo Costa, who registered him in a notary’s office as if he were his legitimate son and lived with the military’s family for many years.

“One day they came and took me away. My mother doesn’t even remember what she did. I was a child when the Army took me. I spent 15 days in the forest,” he said.

The hostage was left with a deformed hand due to the burns he suffered. He says that the soldiers decided to punish him for thinking that his father had killed a soldier.

Later, in the city of Fortaleza, Juracy was raised by the mother of Lieutenant Antônio Essílio.

In the early 2000s, he decided to return to the Araguaia region, still thinking he was Osvaldão’s son.

Upon arrival, he met Antônio Viana da Conceição and discovered his true story.

He was reunited with his biological mother, Maria Bezerra de Oliveira, when he discovered that his brother, Miracy, had also been kidnapped by the military.

Today he lives on an island in the middle of the Araguaia River.

Juracy Bezerra de Oliveira with her biological mother, María Bezerra de Oliveira. (Photo: personal file)

Juracy’s brother Miracy had light skin and light eyes, unlike his brother.

He was taken by Sergeant João Lima Filho to the city of Natal, in Rio Grande do Norte, also in 1972 or 1973.

Years later, Juracy and his mother, Maria Bezerra de Oliveira, went looking for Miracy. But they found no trace of the sergeant who took him away; Nor did they obtain information at the army barracks in Natal about the whereabouts of the soldier.

Other kidnappings

After Juracy’s mistaken kidnapping, the military found Giovani, son of Osvaldão and Maria Viana da Conceição.

the boy had between 4 and 5 years old when he was kidnappedaccording to another of Maria’s sons, Antônio Viana da Conceição.

The kidnapping occurred in 1973, in the city of Araguaína, today Tocantins.

The existence of this son of a guerrilla fighter in Araguaia is also revealed by Sebastião Rodrigues de Moura, Major Curió, now a retired military officer and responsible for hunting down guerrilla fighters from 1973 in Araguaia.

Giovani’s whereabouts are unknown.

Also in Araguaia, Lia Cecília da Silva Martins, daughter of guerrilla fighter Antônio Teodoro de Castro, known as Raúl, was kidnapped.

Lia was taken to an orphanage belonging to an Air Force lieutenant in Belém do Pará. She was adopted by a couple who worked at the entity.

Six peasant children were also separated from their biological families and taken to army barracks, from where they were later released: José Vieira; Antonio Jose da Silva, Antoninho; José Wilson de Brito Feitosa, Zé Wilson; Jose de Ribamar, Ze Ribamar; Osniel Ferreira da Cruz, Osnil; and Sebastião de Santana, Sebastiãozinho.

Only José Vieira was located. He is the son of Luiz Vieira, a subsistence farmer and resident of the São Domingos do Araguaia region. Luiz was killed by military forces.

The number of babies that was kidnapped is unknown. (Photo: Getty Images)

There were also cases of kidnapping of babies and children in Paraná, Pernambuco and Mato Grosso.

The responses of the military

When I was researching in 2018 for my book, the Ministry of Defense, the Army and the Air Force did not respond to the questions sent.

The Ministry of Defense suggested that new requests be sent to said institutions, alleging that the requested information should be guarded under the command of these military bodies.

The Army responded: “The Institution clarifies that it has nothing to report in this regard.”

The Air Force stated that “on November 16, 2009, the Attorney General’s Office for Military Justice expressed interest in analyzing the documents produced and accumulated by the Air Force Command, from 1964 to 1985.”

“In that sense, on February 3, 2010, the collection, which contains 212 boxes with 49,867 documents, was collected from the Regional Coordination of the National Archives of the Federal District (COREG), where they are in the public domain,” he added.

Last year, in an interview published in the book “General Villas Bôas-Conversation with the Commander”, by Celso Castro, from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the soldier questioned whether kidnappings of children really took place during the dictatorship.

“Recently someone linked to human rights brought up a topic that I had never heard, that a hundred children had been kidnapped and taken from their parents,” said Villas Bôas.

“This and other narratives, such as an alleged massacre of indigenous people, in the opening of the highway that connects Manaus with Boa Vista, lack credibility and contribute to the lack of exemption in the conclusion of the investigations,” he added.

Source: Elcomercio