Hebe de Bonafini, who led a group of Argentine women known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in defying a military dictatorship and demanding the truth about their missing children, died on Sunday at the age of 93, the country’s vice president said.
Bonafini was one of the founders of the group in 1977, uniting a group of mothers who protested in front of the presidency, desperate to know the whereabouts of tens of thousands who were abducted during Argentina’s brutal 1976-1983 military regime.
For 45 years, the women continued to meet, marching around the Plaza de Mayo in their trademark white headscarves, in an often futile search for justice.
Photo: AP
Argentine Vice President Cristina Kirchner announced Bonafini’s death on Twitter, praising her as a “world symbol of the fight for human rights, pride of Argentina.”
Her daughter, Alejandra Bonafini, confirmed her death at a Buenos Aires hospital where she had been admitted for several days.
“These are very difficult moments of deep sadness, and we understand the love people have for Hebe. But, right now, we need to cry in private,” Alejandra wrote.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said Bonafini was a “tireless fighter for human rights,” and declared three days of national mourning.
“The government and the Argentine people recognize her as an international symbol of the search for memory, truth and justice for the 30,000 missing,” he said in a statement. “As founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, she shone a light in the middle of the dark night of military dictatorship, and lay a path to the recovery of democracy.”
About 30,000 people were abducted and presumed killed by the regime or right-wing death squads in the 1970s and 1980s for being suspected leftists.
That was compounded by the widespread kidnapping of babies born to suspected dissidents being held during the dictatorship. Many babies — the offspring of now-dead dissidents — were born in captivity without the knowledge of their blood relatives and were given to military families to adopt.
Bonafini, who attended rallies in recent years in her wheelchair, was a housewife when the military seized power in 1976.
However, in 1977, her sons and daughter-in-law were kidnapped and disappeared.
“I forgot who I was the day they disappeared. I never thought of myself again,” Bonafini said recently at the launch of a photographic exhibition on her life.
A few months later, she and a small group of women began protesting in front of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. They risked the same fate as their political activist children — torture, death or simply disappearing without a trace.
Instead, the generals tried to laugh them off, mocking them as “madwomen.”
The women circled the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday until the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS