Constanza Del Rio

Constanza found out, at the age of almost forty, that she had been illegally adopted. Through her own personal search, she discovered a huge international network of child trafficking in Chile and abroad, being the first person to start denouncing and spreading the word about this crime all too often disguised as “help”. Today, as founder and director of the NGO Nos Buscamos, she embraces the mission of thousands of illegal adoptees who are looking for their biological families from whom they were separated in violation of the law. She provides scientific search tools for families and adoptees, creates support networks, and advocates for changes in the judicial system and for a large-scale genetic data bank, which would grant many more of her peers the basic human right to an identity.

Constanza del Rio learned at the age of 40 that her grandmother had bought her as a gift for her adoptive parents. But instead of turning her bewilderment into grief, she took action and since then has worked tirelessly to help the up to 50,000 illegally adopted Chilean children find their families of origin, covering the issue under its many facets.

Addressing this issue meant acknowledging deep emotions: mothers who feel guilty, adoptees who sense they are "different" without knowing why and who do not know their medical history. It also touches on a wide range of society that was complicit in this practice: nuns who made illiterate women sign death certificates for their healthy babies, air hostesses who took children along in exchange for a fee, adoptive parents who paid without asking questions, social workers with millionaire’s assets, judges who are still awaiting judgement for falsifying documents. Most of all, this was a collective imagination that disguised human trafficking as a gesture of charity – and the laws allowed this.

However, as opposed to other associations, Constanza’s NGO “Nos Buscamos” puts “love”, the healing process, at the center of her work. The team pursues judicial matters, but their symbol is and stays “The Hug”. Constanza strongly advocates for dignity in the form of an official public recognition of this crime, being the ultimate goal to see the rights of the child prevail over the rights to privacy of adults. Her approach is all about restituting identities: those of trafficked children, and those of mothers whose instinct tells them that their baby is somewhere out there. She has developed a method which allows for reconciling emotions, but also for broadening the circle of action from this specific target group to all kinds of human trafficking. Today, they have perfected a system around DNA testing and storing the results in an international genetic data bank so that one day hopefully anyone interested can find their biological family.

Unlike in Argentina, where during the dictatorship political prisoners’ babies were systematically stolen to be brought up by military families, in Chile the main motive behind trafficking was money. Since the sixties, through both authoritarian and democratic governments, it is estimated that at least 25,000 Chilean children (according to police estimates, up to 50,000) were sold in an illegal human trafficking scheme involving social and health care workers, the Church, judges, parliamentarians, flight attendants and international adoption agencies. The process involved deception and snatching of minors from their mothers - many with low income, illiterate, without networks, underage, imprisoned, or from Catholic families who did not want the "shame" of a single parent. Only in the nineties did the government pass an amendment which obliges both parents/guardians to sign the permission for a child to leave the country. However, traffickers merely adapted by “creating a child” where traffickers could appear at the civil registry office with two witnesses (without the baby, without a birth certificate) and register it as theirs. These documents are then used to create new identities for trafficked children.

In 2018, a lawsuit was filed with a specially appointed judge, which by now has counted almost 1,000 testimonies. Yet the courts still have not issued any binding sentence against the perpetuators, whose names are well-known by now thanks to investigative journalism, and worse, have failed to change another scandalous omission in the law: trafficking children for adoption has not been typified as a crime by Chilean legislators. As of now, trafficking exists only for the purpose of sexual exploitation and work.

The issue of illegal adoption is simply not on the political agenda, and despite verbal support for victims, no authority has ever recognized this crime and apologized for it, let alone created a public policy. Whereas Chile’s democratic governments granted families of detainees by the military dictatorship the assurance of a “Nunca Más” (Never Again), a dedicated museum, compensation pay, access to psychological treatment and, in many cases, justice, the mothers whose children were declared dead or simply disappeared have not received this type of support or attention. Part of this may come from strong social influences – from a predominantly male Congress uninterested in opening doors for extramarital children and their heritage claims to anti-abortion institutions like Fundación San José and Fundación Grada whose role in this “cession” is, to put it nicely, not clear.

The fight against illegal adoption thus requires two fundamental paradigm shifts in public opinion. First, mass social acceptance of illegal adoption comes from the misconception that traffickers are doing the children a favor by taking them away from their economically instable families. Most adoptive parents paid substantial sums to the agencies abroad (and those, to the traffickers in Chile), but it simply never occurred to anyone in the system to investigate the origins of their child, causing havoc not only in emotions ("Why do I look different from my parents?") but also in practical terms ("I don't know my medical history"). The second necessary shift requires changing regards current adoption law, which puts the mother’s right to privacy over the right of the child to an identity. Attempts to reform this have sat in Congress for over a decade now with no progress in sight.

Finally, there still remain practical and logistical difficulties. Even in today’s technified world, widespread DNA testing is not yet a routine habit, which makes it difficult for adoptees to find their families of origin. And in Chile, the search process is worsened by language barriers since the state agency in charge does not even have English-speaking staff who can work with international adoptee requests. They are extremely slow to respond, and in most cases, there is little time left: since the scheme started in the sixties, many of the mothers are already over 70 years old, whereas the children today are between 25 and 55 years old.

Constanza situates herself, a trafficked child, in line with all others who are struggling for the right to an identity: prostitutes, enslaved persons, illegal migrants, etc. Hence, she is tackling the entire system, not only by helping reunite families but also looking at the broader legal frameworks and mindset shifts that must occur to prevent something like this from happening anywhere else. Thanks to the Foundation’s website and Constanza’s intense activity in social media, especially TikTok, as well as on national and international TV, thousands of children are today in the process of finding their biological families, enabling them at least to draw a clear background that allows them to understand where they come from and, hopefully, find out who their parents are.

At the center of her work is reconnecting children and families. Women looking for a child can submit a DNA (saliva) test, which is sent to MyHeritage in the United States where DNA test prices have gone down from USD 400 in 2014, to only USD 39 today. Constanza receives them for free and has also managed to convince the Chilean post office to mail the tests for a minimal fee and not pass them through customs. Since many of the women affected live in rural, remote areas, the Foundation has taken to bringing resources directly to these areas, using a minivan obtained through government grant, which has a multiplicative effect. It is used by the volunteers as a mobile office, and in whichever village the team arrives in, they talk to locals and invite them to DNA testing. In rural contexts, where most crimes happened, the van grants the necessary privacy for women who usually lack a safe space where they can cry, tell their story, receive comfort, or even talk to their children via videoconferencing.

Over the years, Nos Buscamos has received requests from over 7,000 adoptees eager to find their families. And since the only way to find families is to compare their DNA samples stored at MyHeritage, with those of possible Chilean relatives, Constanza promotes mass DNA testing especially in Southern Chile where many adoptees come from. She is constantly explaining to Chilean authorities the advantages of international, rather than national genetic data banks. She views this as an enormous resource for the judicial system, starting from proof of violations to alimony payments (another big issue in Chile) to combating hereditary diseases or increasing blood donations.

Once a match is made, the Foundation initiates its elaborate protocol for all subprocesses involved, which is also published on its website. The design of the encounters is carefully planned according to the families’ needs and wishes, with special focus on preparing the adoptees for economic and intercultural differences that might be shocking at first sight. They are advised to just be present, without any other gift rather than possibly pay for education for other family members. Inheritance claims are not an issue because most mothers are from vulnerable economic situations. For the Foundation’s volunteers, English is mandatory, and they often take on international requests referred to them by the government.

Families involved receive ongoing support not only by volunteer psychologists, but also from their peers, in tailor-made WhatsApp groups. The reunification cases are published on social media, only if all parties consent, to encourage others to look for their origins.

Although 400 re-encounters out of the incredible number of reported missing children (up to 50,000 according to Policía de Investigaciones, PDI) may seem little, each case involves an enormous amount of investigation which Constanza now hopes to reduce by using better technology. She sees artificial intelligence as her best ally: together with IBM, she is currently exploring how organizations like MyHeritage, Family Search, Facebook, Instagram, etc., can work together with governments, the Civil Registry Office, Church, and civil society to digitalize police, birth and other registers, and use genetic data banks in a safe and productive manner.

Aware that migration will only increase the population vulnerable to trafficking, Constanza is now focused on the broader social mindset shift. Her persistent lobbying on mainstream media sets the basis for a much-needed change in basic assumptions on human trafficking by saying “Yes, selling people is a crime, you’re not helping them escape from poverty”. And “Yes, every person has a right to an identity”. Creating awareness on social media also has a preventive aspect: trafficking becomes more difficult if more stakeholders are aware of the problem. Even today, the foundation talks to the increasing number of infertile couples who are in the process of artificial insemination or adoption and who were approached by medical staff offering them babies. So, if they did not know about the issue of illegal adoption, they might fall into that trap.

The National Institute for Human Rights has recently included the violation of the rights of illegally adopted children for the first time in the annual report to the President. In parallel, Nos Buscamos lobbies to correct existing policies and strengthen new public policies, so that irregular adoptions can be finally typified as a crime, making it difficult, as well as to guarantee the right to an identity to any adopted person. This is especially important because illegal adoption keeps happening, above all at the national level, and the elimination of the loophole to register a child without a birth certificate would be the first step in preventing this, in the quest for restoring reproductive rights to underprivileged women.

Constanza regularly brings state agencies together in a round table working to ensure the right to an identity. Her strategy is to resolve, not to blame, which has helped put this tremendous human rights issue on the media agenda. She is constantly present on social and mainstream media, sharing the message with society and asking courts and legislators to act. Since the legislative and judicial branches have been slow to act, her approach is to reach out to the widest network possible: she gets together with the State, peer organizations, the widows and children of detainees disappeared by the military dictatorship, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and international adoption agencies. Furthermore, Constanza has identified well-known traffickers, and brought this to the attention of the judicial system; however, no perpetrators have been jailed yet and Constanza continues to lobby the judiciary. For example, she was able to get close to Telma Uribe, the notorious “social assistant” who not only sold children for decades, but also saw a business opportunity in charging returning adult adoptees for her well-kept Kardex files with possible information pointing to the biological families. Thanks to Constanza’s hint, police have now decommissioned the files. Nos Buscamos also played a fundamental role in sacking Chile’s Ambassador to the UK whose mother, Esmeralda Quezada, lived at the official residence, and who is proven to have illegally trafficked at least 46 children.

In 2019, Constanza presented Chile’s case in front of The Hague Conference on Private International Law to demonstrate how Chile violates international treaties, and since then her NGO has been designated an official observer on child trafficking. The next step is to send one of her volunteer lawyers to The Hague to accuse the Chilean judge, who has not contributed to the cause, with blocking the due process of law.

Constanza also continues to strengthen ties with adoptee organizations in more countries other than the US and Peru, where they currently exist. She was recently invited to travel to Sweden, one of the major recipients of Chilean children, to discuss her efforts. She has also partnered with a Chilean adoptee living in the United States, who is a filmmaker currently working on a documentary on this issue, with which they hope to raise awareness among politicians.

The key to understanding Constanza is Blackberry. Whoever remembers the sensation of wonder when we had the first one in our hands, will stay hooked on innovation, forever. And Constanza used to sell them, as the company's marketing manager for Chile and Peru, shortly before her adoptive parents revealed the secret to her. So now, when this skilled designer and web marketer says she wants to put search mechanisms and gene technology at her service to fulfill her life purpose, one believes her immediately.

Constanza has always had a particular sense of social awareness: Her elder sister has Down syndrome, so from an early age, she was empathetic to people with differing abilities. At school, she participated in groups and activities like the student center, summer jobs, university week and student leadership in general. During the years she studied at university, she worked part-time to pay for her studies. Far from being a disadvantage, this taught her to “put the best of me in everything I do." From 1999 to 2006, she was a teacher of Digital Literacy at the technical university INFOCAP during their “Universidad del Trabajador” program, and an evening teacher to working class students who had never even been near a computer before. When a devastating earthquake hit Chile in 2010, Constanza collaborated with the volunteer organization TECHO in the construction of emergency housing as a supervisor of crews in Southern Chile.

However, at age 39, her parents suddenly told her that she was adopted, without explaining why they had withheld the information before. It was then that Constanza, instead of plunging into depression or feeling disempowerment, began the search for her roots and identity. She always thought her case was unique. But then, in April 2014, came the CIPER report which revealed the scope of the child trafficking network, and Constanza learned that she was part of it, and that a doctor whom she regarded as a family friend had been involved in her illegal adoption. Reading the report was a strong blow, since she felt that she had been treated as an object and not as a human being. In response, she founded Nos Buscamos to help others who were going through the same.

Constanza found her biological family in 2015, but her mother refused to have any contact.
Instead, she took inspiration from her name, meaning constant and preserving, and helped raise her ex-partners’ children.

In 2019, she was commissioned by the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs to instruct, help, and guide the Chilean embassies in Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgian to work with children born in Chile and adopted to those countries. Her book “Nos Buscamos” was published in 2019, in which Constanza denounced the illegal adoption system and recounted her own experience with searching for her birth parents. Currently, a production company is working on a movie. She has been awarded numerous recognitions including the “Justice and Human Rights” medal by the Chilean Foreign Ministry in 2022, in recognition of the defense of human rights, and Mujer Impacta 2018, in recognition of citizens who are an extraordinary contribution to their community, who commit themselves through collaborative, innovative and solidarity initiatives with their communities in a selfless way.