"Identifying Nelson"

An estimated 800 children were disappeared during the civil war in El Salvador, mostly by the country's military. Often after making their way into an orphanage in the capital, some children appear to have been raised in El Salvador while others were sold into shady international adoption networks and ended up in the US and Europe.

Identifying Nelson tells the story of one two-year old who was taken from his parents after they were killed in a government operation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 1982. 

Titled "Identifying Nelson," the film follows de Witt on his 15-year journey toward understanding his past and his birth-country's history. He builds relationships with members of his biological family, meets the El Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes, and interviews other “disappeared” children.

In one of the opening sequences, a grainy newspaper photo appears on the screen, taken after Honduran authorities conducted the raid that killed de Witt's mother. In the arms of a woman wearing military fatigues, a two-year-old de Witt stares down the lens. "I am Nelson de Witt. I am Roberto Coto," de Witt narrates. "I am one of the disappeared children of El Salvador."

You can buy the book or learn more about the film and its fundraising campaign at Identifying Nelson.