Kyle Adler, a Chilean American man adopted by a U.S. family as a baby, has reunited with his biological mother after learning he was allegedly taken from her during Chile's dictatorship, one of thousands of cases tied to illegal adoptions under Gen. Augusto Pinochet's regime.
According to the Associated Press, Adler was adopted by an American family when he was 9 months old and raised in an affluent Chicago suburb. He later discovered that his birth mother, Ana María Navarrete, had not voluntarily given him up. The reunion took place in Chile earlier this year after DNA testing confirmed their relationship.
"It has been very revealing to see who my people are," he told AP. "I feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care... it's nice to have a family again."
Navarrete was 19, single and working nights at a fish market in the coastal city of Coronel when her son, whom she had named Marcos Antonio Navarrete, was taken. Because she could only afford one room for herself, she paid a woman to care for him and visited when she was not working. One day, the caregiver told her that an American couple had taken the baby after a local priest arranged for a child who "needed a family," Navarrete said
Navarrete later learned from a police investigator that her baby was likely taken through a broader fraudulent adoption network involving adoption agencies, immigration officials, judges, nurses and doctors. The AP said it could not independently verify every detail of what happened.
The Chilean government estimates that more than 20,000 children were stolen from families during the Pinochet dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1990. Many came from poor and Indigenous communities.
"The justice for poor people in Chile does not exist; it still does not exist," Constanza del Río, founder of the nonprofit Nos Buscamos. The man began searching for his birth mother in 2017 after finding Nos Buscamos online. The organization, along with Connecting Roots and DNA platform MyHeritage, has helped reunite hundreds of Chilean adoptees with their biological families.
Their first in-person meeting came on Valentine's Day, two days after Navarrete's 56th birthday. During their week together, they visited the hospital where he was born, the beach in Coronel and the house from which he was taken.
Navarrete said the reunion brought happiness but also reopened decades of grief.
"I searched so long to find him. And then to spend one week together only for him to leave," she said through tears, according to Univision. "It's like I found him, but now I lost him again." He told her: "I'm not just the son you lost. I'm the son you found. I have come back to be your son."
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