DNA Identifies Missing ‘Dirty War’ Child

Genetic tests have confirmed that a Washington, D.C., man who was adopted as a child is the son of Mexican revolutionaries who apparently vanished in police custody decades ago, a special prosecutor said Thursday.

Juan Carlos Hernandez, 33, had been unaware of the violent circumstances that led to his adoption before he was found late last year by his sister, Aleida Gallangos.

Mexican prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto told Hernandez on Thursday that DNA tests had confirmed that he was the biological child of Roberto Gallangos and Carmen Vazquez.

Carrillo is in charge of prosecuting the crimes of the so-called dirty war of the 1960s and ‘70s, during which the Mexican government cracked down on leftist guerrillas. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has documented the disappearance of at least 275 suspected rebels.

Carrillo said he probably would seek an arrest warrant within two months for those believed responsible for the disappearance of the parents.

In 1975, Gallangos and Vazquez, along with their 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, then called Lucio Antonio, disappeared during a government raid on a Mexico City hide-out used by a leftist rebel group.

Lucio ended up at an orphanage and was later adopted and renamed.

Aleida Gallangos began her search in 2001; Mexican authorities joined in two years later, picking up a trail of hospital, law enforcement and adoption records that led to the siblings’ reunion.

Hernandez said he would not change his name.”The name of Lucio Antonio is a symbol more than anything else,” he said.