Pioneer in the fight against the Argentine military dictatorship and fierce militant of kitcnerismo, has died at the age of 93
The historic president of the Argentine association Madres de Plaza de Mayo, formed during the military dictatorship (1976-1983) to find out the fate of her children and other detainees disappeared by the regime, Hebe de Bonafini, has died today at the age of 93. The news was confirmed by the vice president of the country, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who wrote on her Twitter account: “Dearest Hebe, Mother of Plaza de Mayo, world symbol of the fight for Human Rights, pride of Argentina . God called you on the day of National Sovereignty… it must not be a coincidence. Simply thank you and see you always ».
Bonafin, mother of two children who disappeared -like her daughter-in-law- during the dictatorship and who for decades had worked as an activist and defender of Human Rights within the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, had been discharged on October 13 after having been admitted for three days at the Italian Hospital in the city of La Plata for medical check-ups, according to the Argentine news agency Télam.
The beginning, in April 1977
On April 30, 1977, a few months after the military coup in Argentina, sixteen women marched arm in arm around the Pirámide de Mayo demanding to know the whereabouts of their disappeared children. Their weekly rallies in the same place became a symbol of the fight for Human Rights and against the military dictatorship. One of them was Hebe de Bonafini, who founded the Madres de Plaza de Mayo association to make visible the disappearance of people during the last dictatorship, although she herself defended its evolution until it became an organization with a clear political profile.
“We are a political organization, now with a national and popular liberation project,” Bonafini herself later highlighted, who after the dictatorship cultivated a highly controversial profile by becoming a staunch militant of Kirchnerism.
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