The president of the association created to make visible the disappearance of people during the Argentine dictatorship Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, died Monday at the age of 93, the Argentine press reported.
Bonafini is the mother of two children who disappeared during the dictatorship, having created the organization to reunite the mothers of prisoners who disappeared during the self-styled National Reorganization Process, the dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.
His eldest son, Jorge Omar, was kidnapped and disappeared on February 8, 1977 in La Plata, and on December 6 of the same year the same thing happened with his other son, Raúl Alfredo, in Berazategui.
On May 25, 1978, his daughter-in-law, María Elena Bugnone Cepeda, Jorge’s wife, also disappeared.
Hebe de Bonafini became an activist and defender of human rights in Mães da Praça de Mayo, which, however, became an organization with a political profile and described by the president herself as “a national and popular liberation project”.
Since 2008, Madres de Plaza de Mayo has managed the so-called Nuestros Hijos Cultural Center, in the former concentration camp of the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada, in Buenos Aires.
Bonafini was hospitalized in October at the Hospital Italiano, in the city of La Plata, for medical examinations, but was released on October 13, the Argentine news agency Télam reported.
The Government of Buenos Aires declared three days of national mourning for the death of Hebe de Bonafini, whom it described as a “tireless fighter for the defense of human rights.”
Source: TSF
