Victoria Donda
Encyclopedia
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
) is an Argentine human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activist and legislator
Argentine Chamber of Deputies
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Argentine National Congress. This Chamber holds exclusive rights to create taxes, to draft troops, and to accuse the President, the ministers and the members of the Supreme Court before the Senate....
. She is the first daughter of a "disappeared" person, born in captivity, to become a member of the Argentine National Congress
Argentine National Congress
The Congress of the Argentine Nation is the legislative branch of the government of Argentina. Its composition is bicameral, constituted by a 72-seat Senate and a 257-seat Chamber of Deputies....
. She is also the youngest woman to hold that office.
Early life
She was born in 1977, in the notorious clandestine detention centerInternment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
called ESMA
ESMA
The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics , commonly referred to by its abbreviation ESMA, is a facility of the Argentine Navy that was employed as an illegal detention center during the dictatorial rule of the National Reorganization Process...
in Buenos Aires while her mother, María Hilda Pérez de Donda, was "disappeared
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
" for her leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
activity. Her father, José María Laureano Donda, was also held in captivity during the same time. Both remain disappeared and are presumed to have been killed during that period. She is one of approximately 500 children known to have been born to disappeared political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s during Argentina's Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
(1976–1983), who were kidnapped and registered under false identities.
After her mother was killed, Victoria was handed over to another family, who raised her but never told her about her biological parents. Her case is particularly unusual because her paternal uncle, Adolfo Miguel Donda Tigel (her father's brother), was a naval officer who was one of the primary individuals responsible for ESMA, and participated in the imprisonment, torture, and killing of her parents.
Recovery of her identity
In 2003, when she was 26 years of age, Victoria Donda discovered her true identity after communicating with the group H.I.J.O.S.HIJOS
HIJOS is an acronym for Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio . It is the name of organizations of the children of people who were "disappeared" in Argentina and in Guatemala. The Argentine organization was founded in 1995 in Córdoba and La Plata...
(Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence) and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo is a human rights organisation with the aim of finding the babies stolen during the era of the Argentine dictatorship known as the "Dirty War" . Its president is Estela Barnes de Carlotto....
.
Despite that, even knowing that her real mother was one of the ESMA disappeared, for a long time she was reluctant to have her DNA tested in order to find out who her biological parents were.
On May 24, 2004, when ESMA was converted by the government into a memorial center, Donda spoke at the ceremony:
One week later, DNA analysis revealed Donda's true identity. She was the first "sister" found by H.I.J.O.S. and the 78th granddaughter found by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Some weeks later, her kidnapper was detained; he is currently on trial, along with Juan Antonio Azic and other prosecuted, for 62 crimes against humanity
Crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
.
Human rights activism
Before Victoria Donda knew her identity, she had already been interested in human rights and poverty issues, working for a soup kitchenSoup kitchen
A soup kitchen, a bread line, or a meal center is a place where food is offered to the hungry for free or at a reasonably low price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, they are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church groups or community groups...
called "Azucena Villaflor
Azucena Villaflor
Azucena Villaflor was an Argentine social activist, and one of the founders of the human rights association called Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which looked for desaparecidos .Villaflor was the daughter of a lower class family, and her mother, Emma Nitz, was only 15...
", name of a disappeared human rights activist and first president of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Donda became later member of the Movimiento Libres del Sur.
Elected office
In 2006 Victoria Donda was elected a councilmember in the municipality of AvellanedaAvellaneda
Avellaneda is a port city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the seat of the Avellaneda Partido, whose population was 328,980 as per the ....
, Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...
.
In 2007 she was elected, as a member of the Front for Victory
Front for Victory
The Front for Victory is a Peronist political party and electoral alliance in Argentina, although it is formally a faction of the Justicialist Party. Both the former President Néstor Kirchner and the current President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner belong to this party, located on the left-wing...
front on the Popular and Social Encounter list, to Argentina's Chamber of Deputies
Argentine Chamber of Deputies
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Argentine National Congress. This Chamber holds exclusive rights to create taxes, to draft troops, and to accuse the President, the ministers and the members of the Supreme Court before the Senate....
(Argentina's lower house of Congress), with her term beginning in December 2007.