Ruptly
"María Bellizzi is 101 years old and has spent 49 years searching for answers about the fate of her son, who disappeared in Argentina within the framework of Operation Condor when he was only 24 years old. Footage recorded Tuesday shows the elderly woman together with her daughter Silvia at their home in Montevideo, displaying photographs of her son Andrés Humberto Bellizzi and other memories of him. On April 19, 1977, Humberto disappeared. Since then, María has continued the search to find out what happened to him. The young man lived in Buenos Aires, where he worked as a painter. He was also a member of the Party for the Victory of the People and participated in student groups. According to his mother’s testimony, he was kidnapped during an event protesting against the Uruguayan dictatorship. “For attending a meeting, an event held against the Uruguayan dictatorship, which according to them was unauthorized, they took around 101 Uruguayans at that time, and my son was among them,” she said. Throughout these 49 years, the family has filed complaints, gathered testimonies, and pursued court cases in Uruguay, Argentina, and Italy in an effort to reconstruct what happened, although so far they have not obtained a definitive answer. “To know the past, what exactly happened? Because it’s not only about us, society as a whole wants to know what happened. It’s not about living in peace by hiding and concealing things. People live in peace when the truth is told, when it is known what was done,” she explained. Operation Condor was a secret transnational network that allowed Latin American dictatorships to persecute political opponents in exile. It was carried out beginning in 1975 by the leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay."
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