“We started without knowing how to look for a daughter, a son, a grandson,” said Delia Giovanola one of the last times she shared in public the experience she forged during 46 years of searching, a path that became his entire life. Delia, who was part of the group of twelve founders of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, who was able to hug her grandson Martín de ella, to whom her struggle restored her true identity in 2015; who attended the weekly meetings of the Grandmothers until the coronavirus pandemic deprived her of her permanent walk, He passed away on Monday at the age of 96.
Delia Giovanolla was 50 years old and was a teacher at a primary school in La Plata when in mid-October 1976 she learned that a gang had taken her only son, Jorge Ogando, and her daughter-in-law, Stella Maris Montesano, from the apartment where they lived in La Plata. The repressors left Virginia, the couple’s first daughter, who was three years old at the time, in the house. Stella Maris was 8 months pregnant. Since then, her life “changed forever,” said Delia before the Federal Oral Court of La Plata during the testimony that she offered in May of last year in the context of the trial for the crimes of the Banfield, Quilmes and Lanús Investigation Brigades. At Banfield Well, Delia learned, her grandson had been born.
“I never thought this was going to be forever. I thought that since Stella was 8 months pregnant they would release her quickly. I didn’t think it was going to be forever and never again.”declared Delia in that testimony, the second and last that she offered before the Justice.
“I was born from Mothers to be a Grandmother”
What came after the absence was the search, whose beginnings Delia remembered improvised: “There was no way to look for a child, there was no model. Automatically we find a group of mothers looking for our children. We didn’t know each other, neither knew how. Exchanging ideas, trying and making mistakes many times we move forward. This is how our first rounds were”, he summed up in the framework of one of the meetings of the Project “Archives, Museums and Sites of Memory in Argentina. Synergies for the management of public policies of Memory, Truth and Justice” organized last October by the ESMA Memory Site Museum, the National Memory Archive and the Sites Directorate of the Nation’s Human Rights Secretariat.
Like the rest of the Mothers, Delia learned in a short time to write and present habeas corpus, to speak with judges and soldiers, with police and religious. At the same time, he took charge of raising his granddaughter Virginia, who died in 2011. Months after joining Madres, she participated in the foundation of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo: “I was born from Mothers to be a Grandmother,” she said. Delia was the founder of the Grandmothers together with Alicia Zubasnabar from De la Cuadra, Mirta Acuña from Baravalle, Beatriz Aicardi from Neuhaus, María Eugenia Cassinelli from García Iruretagoyena, Eva Márquez from Castillo Barrios, María Isabel Chorobik from Mariani, Clara Jurado, Leontina Puebla from Pérez, Raquel Radío de Marizcurrena, Vilma Sesarego de Gutiérrez and Haydee Vallino de Lemos.
The fight they built exceeded each particular case and was overcoming each barrier they faced.. Many of them died without finding their granddaughters or grandsons. Delia was lucky enough to be able to hug her son, Martín, whom the search for by the organization and the National Commission for the Right to Identity identified after 37 years of absence.
Delia learned of the fate of her son and daughter-in-law shortly after the end of the dictatorship, through the testimony of a survivor of the Banfield Well, Alicia Carminatti, who assured him that he had shared captivity with them. Through Alicia, she also learned that Martín was born in the kitchen of that clandestine center and that he was taken from Stella Maris, who told her that they were going to hand him over to his family, but they never did.
Independent, strong, optimistic, Delia embraced the search with hope, committed even after her grandson was found.. An active participant in meetings and events, an avid user of new technologies that allowed her to stay connected during the shelter that the Grandmothers had to maintain during the pandemic; she was very clear when speaking and sharing her experience, “this year she spent her time giving talks”, they assured from Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. In 2021, she was distinguished by the National University of San Martín with the Doctorate Honoris Causa.
The photo that traveled the world
Thus, it has always supported and pushed each idea, each proposal, each plan that the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo devised to find the babies that the genocides of the last civic-military dictatorship snatched from hundreds of families.
A photograph of her traveled the world: She is seen on the street holding a sign that says “The Malvinas are Argentine, the disappeared too” and that she herself wrote in the kitchen of her house, outraged – she said – “to see the city wallpapered with those legends about the war and nobody talked about the Mothers or the Grandmothers, who had been there for six years going around. They didn’t see us.”
The meeting with his grandson Martín
In early November 2015, almost 40 years after walking and walking, the founding Grandmother received the long-awaited news. One noon they called her and told her “come quickly to Grandmothers”, and she was surprised by her rush, she did not imagine what was to come. He arrived and they told him: “We found your grandson, we found Martín”. The 37-year-old had lived in the United States for more than a decade. and spontaneously approached the human rights organization that same year, with doubts about his identity. Since then, he built a loving bond with Delia. Until the end of his days.
“Enormous sadness”
“Enormous sadness. We still haven’t fallen. Delia Giovanola, one of the founders of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, passed away. Militant of memory, truth, justice and joy. In 2015, after almost 40 years of struggle, he was able to find his grandson Martín”, was the message with which Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo fired Delia on their social networks.
President Alberto Fernandez He joined the farewell “with great pain” and remarked that “his legacy will remain in our memory as a true teaching: never abandon our struggles. Until forever, Delia.”
“With immense pain we bid farewell to our beloved Delia Giovanola, one of the twelve founders of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo Association, an example of resistance and commitment,” said the Nation’s Human Rights Secretariat. In her message, the secretary who leads Horacio Pietragalla Corti He also recalled that “after 39 years of searching, in 2015, Delia found her grandson Martín born in captivity and never gave up the fight to find the others.”