Mother Reunites with Daughter Taken 40 Years Ago During Pinochet’s Dictatorship

“I knew she’d find me,” Edita Bizama, 64, said from her home in San Antonio, Chile, after finally reconnecting with the daughter who was taken from her over 40 years ago during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Adamary Garcia was separated from her mother shortly after birth and sent overseas for adoption, one of the estimated 20,000 children forcibly taken from their families by a military regime that viewed international adoptions as a solution to child poverty.
“There was a social worker who was persistent, really persistent,” Bizama recalled. It was 1984, and Bizama, already a mother of two young children, had initially thought about adopting during her pregnancy but started having second thoughts.
“But the social worker said, how are you going to raise three children? You don’t have a job, you don’t have a home, you don’t have any stability.”
Bizama spent five days bonding with her daughter, feeding and holding her, before being taken to an office hours away, where she was forced to give up her baby and sent back home on a bus.
For decades, this secret was kept from most of her family. She had no way of finding her daughter, nor did she know her name.
Meanwhile, Adamary Garcia, who grew up in Florida and now lives in Puerto Rico, knew she had been adopted but had no details about the circumstances. Then a friend told her about Tyler Graf, a Texas firefighter who discovered he had been taken as a baby during the dictatorship. Graf founded an organization, Connecting Roots, to help reunite adoptees with their biological families in Chile.
Using a birth certificate from Garcia’s sister and a DNA test, Connecting Roots identified Bizama as Garcia’s birth mother.
However, when they spoke for the first time over Zoom, Garcia noticed the difference in accents. Her Puerto Rican Spanish, with Miami influences, contrasted with her biological family’s distinct Chilean accent.
“We were all kind of looking at each other and not saying much,” Garcia said, recalling their first Zoom call. “Looking at my mother’s eyes and saying, ‘This is the person that gave me life, and oh my God, I look so much like her.’”
Then, last week, their emotional reunion took place in person at the airport.
Garcia was one of five adoptees brought to Chile by Connecting Roots this year, marking the fourth such reunion trip organized by the NGO.
Graf explained that while the government supports their efforts, the NGO’s goal is more about reunification than politics. “These mothers are getting older, some of them have passed away,” Graf said. “So we’re in a race against time.”
Graf added that in most cases, adoptive parents had no knowledge of how the adoptions occurred. Garcia shared that her adoptive parents have been very supportive of her search.
Now, Garcia is diving into Chilean culture, learning the language, food, music, and traditions, with plans to explore Patagonia with her sisters and embrace her Chilean heritage more fully.
“It’s been non-stop laughs and tears,” Garcia said. “I think this is a moment that helps everybody get closure on things that happened 40 years ago and at the same time begin to establish relationships that are going to last a lifetime.”