The experience with the NGO Nos Buscamos using DNA to reunite biological families

By Pablo Blanco Traverso, genealogist and Nos Buscamos volunteer since 2018 on DNA-related topics.

🧬 For a moment, sit and think about your family. Visualize that large tree with your parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and distant branches connected to you. Now, erase it from your mind and realize that there is no family behind you, that this tree doesn't exist. This is the feeling people have when they come to us looking for their biological family. This is because in most cases, there is an adoptive family that has played the role of family, supporting and loving. But something is missing—that knowledge of your roots, your origins, and your place.

📄 A first step is to research documents and papers, and in many cases, we may come across information that speaks to the adoption, a birth certificate forgotten in a drawer, or someone who gives us a sure clue as to where to search.

But when this was exhausted, we came to DNA research, something that has revolutionized genealogical research since its inception, providing tools and revealing secrets. 🔍

🧪 A DNA test, based on a saliva or epithelial cell sample (a swab taken from the inside of the cheek), takes our sample, which is sent to a laboratory to be processed. From it, we obtain our ethnic origin and, most importantly, a long list of people with whom we share DNA: close and distant, acquaintances and strangers, but biological family, after all. 👥

An ethnic origin, which seems so normal to us when we know our grandparents are native to a certain place or even where we are from, becomes an anchor for those who don't know. ⚓ Once, a woman—whose origin we were able to trace back to Chiloé, in southern Chile—told us: "This is more than I've ever known about myself." Without much effort, we were giving her a place of origin, an approximate birthplace, and an ethnicity. 🌎

By analyzing the genetic contacts—matches—resulting on the selected page, we can begin to develop a profile of the individuals. This is where MyHeritage excels with its extensive database and family trees 🌐

📚 Genealogy, a great support for this methodology, often guides us to the social sphere of the biological family, to a physical sphere, since in many cases there are surnames very characteristic of geographical areas. Above all, it allows us to build a family tree where, at some point in the future, we can include the adopted person, giving them their biological origin, a surname, and a family. 👪

It seems simple, but it isn't. Genetic matches must meet certain requirements, such as knowing their own genealogy. Cases of incomplete genealogies due to missing information can be a definitive obstacle. 🚧

📂 In many countries, we can obtain people's genealogical information from the same civil or religious registries online, but where confidentiality of personal information is a requirement, we depend on the cooperation of the genetic contact. This contact must feel safe, so they share their own genealogical information openly.

The process itself involves working with well-documented family trees of genetic contacts, identifying points of connection through DNA tools and genealogical sources, and establishing common ancestors between a group of people—that is, the adoptee and some of their matches. 🌳

This common point within the trees can be called the "root couple," from which their descendants developed in the community, having children and grandchildren, and where one of these descendants gave a son or daughter up for adoption.

🔗 Genealogy plays a key role in our work at Nos Buscamos, where multiple trees are built until they unify into a main one. Within this, by building the descendants of this root couple, we can find candidates for the father or mother of the illegally adopted person.

Do we have happy endings? Of course, we've already done more than 600! 😊 As well as sad ones 😔, where contacts are insufficient or the quality of the information doesn't allow us to reach a concrete result. The hope, in these cases, is that new close contacts can always emerge, sparking a new investigation. ✨

💡 Do you know how you can help us quickly and easily? Take a MyHeritage DNA test. Maybe a cousin of yours is searching for their biological family.

And if you were born in Chile between 1970 and 2000 and were adopted by a foreign couple, please take the DNA test to clarify whether or not you were one of the more than 50,000 victims of child trafficking. 🧾

📣 We've been searching for many cases, many years, winning and losing, but nothing can compare to the moment we tell someone "this is your mother" or "this is your father." Anxiety turns into calm, doubts into names and faces, and, above all, absences into a hug.