• By Silvia Higuera
• June 24, 2026

At the age of 27, Sebastián José Casado Tasca reclaimed his identity. At that age, he officially became what is known in Argentina as a "recovered grandchild." During the dictatorship imposed on the country following the coup d'état of March 24, 1976, many babies were stolen and usually handed over to civilians. He was one of those babies.

Casado was 21 years old when he learned he was not the biological son of the couple who had raised him in Buenos Aires. He learned from his adoptive sister that the family name was linked to a court case involving the illegal adoption of a child, so he decided to ask the woman who had taken him in. Although her answers were evasive and even contradictory, Casado chose to believe that nothing strange happened with his adoption.

However, doubts lingered in his mind for years, eventually becoming so persistent that he could not sleep. In 2004, he turned to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who referred him to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. The Mothers' and Grandmothers' organizations emerged organically during the dictatorship following the abductions and disappearances of thousands of people. Both groups met weekly to demand information about their children and grandchildren—some abducted alongside their parents, others born in detention.

Interview with Sebastián José Casado Tasca, recovered grandchild, for the documentary. (Photo:Lucho Gargiulo)

The Grandmothers' association directed Casado to the National Commission for the Right to Identity (Conadi), the agency that provided him with a summary of his case and set him on the path to reclaiming his identity.

In February 2006, he became the 82nd grandchild “recovered” by the Grandmothers. Through this process, he learned that he had been born in detention in March 1978, after his mother, Adriana Leonor Tasca, was abducted in La Plata while five months pregnant. Both she and his father, Gaspar Casado, were activists and are officially listed as missing.

Although he changed his surnames, Sebastián kept his first name.

“I never thought I could be one of those guys who appeared on TV talking about this,” Casado said in the documentary “Huellas,” or “Traces” in English, produced by the local outlet Qué digital in the coastal city of Mar del Plata and released on March 22.

Casado is one of the 13 people whose testimonies appear in the documentary—a project that first took shape in the minds of the Qué digital journalism team in March 2025. Their goal was to recount how the coup and the dictatorship specifically impacted Mar del Plata through various testimonies—including those of a recovered grandson, grandmothers, former university students, survivors and activists.

“We have a media outlet that covers only our city; we are hyper-local,” Julia Drangosch, president of the Qué digital cooperative, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “[We saw that] there was no content that somehow captured the various dimensions of any dictatorship—not just the military kind, but the social, political and judicial aspects as well.”

The media outlet, founded 12 years ago as a cooperative by a small group of journalists, covers traditional journalistic topics—such as politics, sports and culture—but also delves into issues like human rights, the environment and social matters, Drangosch said.

That coverage includes the trials for crimes against humanity involving those responsible during the dictatorship—proceedings that have been taking place in the country since 2006. The journalistic team knew that to tell this story, beyond the historical archives and the trials, they needed to recount the experiences of a mother, a grandmother, and, of course, a “recovered grandchild.”

“I decided to participate because I’m from Mar del Plata—the documentary features cases entirely from Mar del Plata, a coastal seaside resort city 400 km (about 250 miles) from Buenos Aires,” Casado told LJR. “My mom was from Mar del Plata. Both my grandmothers and my grandfather were too, as well as my aunt, so I have family there. And obviously, since the story was about Mar del Plata, I said yes immediately.”

Journalism for a better world

Drangosch said the Qué digital team really enjoyed making the documentary because it was a way to address a topic as important as the dictatorship and the trials, going beyond their day-to-day work.

On March, 22, took place the premiere of the film at the Teatro Auditorium in Mar del Plata. (Photo: Marcelo Núñez)

In March 2025, amidst the annual march commemorating the coup, the team began planning the documentary to mark the coup's 50th anniversary. As it was a small team—comprising five members—the demands of daily coverage whittled down the production timeline from around ten months to just over four.

On March 22, they managed to premiere the film at the Teatro Auditorium to a full house—that is, with nearly 1,000 people in attendance.

Lucho Gargiulo, the documentary’s director and audiovisual editor for Qué digital, told LJR the film has a message: “that it is necessary to seek a more just world.”

The search for that world, Gargiulo said, is especially important now, when “denialism insists on casting doubt on our history.” And journalistic endeavors like “Huellas” are not only necessary but also help uncover the truth.

In fact, during post-production, La Derecha Fest arrived in Mar del Plata. It’s a venue for right-wing and far-right groups that are openly denialist and critical of movements like feminism. They considered including President Javier Milei’s visit to the event, but decided against it, as it would have diminished the impact of the protagonists' stories. It was precisely the parallel coverage of the event and the interviews for the documentary that led him to understand the importance of the testimonies and the emotional weight they carry.

“It was the first time in my 15-year career that I broke down during an interview—specifically during the interview with Sebastián, the recovered grandson,” Gargiulo said.

“I had just come from covering the Derecha Fest, where I witnessed the glorification of repression and attempts to tarnish the struggle of the Grandmothers and Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, and then I interviewed Sebastián, who shared his perspective and recounted his experience of having been illegally taken as a child. Right in the middle of the interview, I broke down and wept like never before—something that had never happened to me,” the director added. “That was when I truly grasped the weight of this documentary and the importance of Sebastián’s testimony, which serves as the narrative thread running through the entire film.”

This was precisely another reason why Casado decided to participate: the "two demons" theory, which justifies the State's actions on the grounds that it was a "war" against subversion—must be combated, he said.

“The group of us here in Argentina trying to rebuild and engage in the healthiest possible discussions about the coup wants to ensure it isn’t forgotten, because we fear it could happen again in one way or another,” Casado said.

Reconstructing one's identity, he said, is also a responsibility toward future generations. As a father of two, he believes that reconstructing his past enabled him to pass on his true story to his children.

“Those of us who were stolen and now have children—regarding those kids whose parents have not yet found their identity—a crime is being committed against them as well; their identity is also being stolen,” Casado said.

Optimizing free AI tools

The impact of the documentary over the past three months is clear. It is being screened at universities, schools and even in a prison. In its first week, the documentary—posted on YouTube—garnered more than 25,000 views. About 650,000 people live in Mar del Plata.

Interview of Emilce Flores de Casado, a member of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, for the documentary. (Photo: Lucho Gargiulo)

The success—which has enabled Qué digital to begin moving closer to its goal of monetizing its digital content—also relied on the use of other AI tools available on the market that compensated for its lack of human resources, Drangosch said.

In addition to transcribing interviews in Pinpoint, the team used another Google tool to help structure the information from those interviews and other documents gathered during reporting: NotebookLM.

Thanks to this structure, they established thematic blocks that streamlined the process of finding specific information during the documentary's assembly. For instance, if they needed a source discussing civilian complicity, this tool helped locate both the source and the exact moment of the interview.

“That helped make the editing work a little less tedious,” Drangosch said.

The documentary is also accompanied by a multimedia special featuring profiles of the interviewees and their journalistic stories, an interactive map of the “repressive circuit” showing the city’s clandestine detention centers, and a glossary of terms related to denialism, among other additional information.

The platform was developed using Google AI Studio. “Obviously, we were loading data into it, we did that with code, and then, to finalize the implementation, we worked with an external programmer who helped us finish putting it together,” Drangosch said.

But beyond these technological achievements, the team seeks to foster local discussions so that the memory does not fade away. Or, as Emilce Flores de Casado—a member of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo who was also interviewed for the documentary—puts it: “They won’t be able to cover up history, because it happened.”

This article was translated with AI assistance and reviewed by Teresa Mioli