The English newspaper Financial Times highlighted that the head of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association, Hebe de Bonafini – who died in Buenos Aires last Sunday at the age of 93 – was “a brave mother in search of answers.” that “I challenge the Argentine military dictatorship”.
“Bonafini, who defied Argentine dictators, died at the age of 93 in the city of La Plata, a short distance from where her children were kidnapped during the country’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. As a brave mother In search of answers, he collaborated to organize the first vigil in front of the Casa Rosada, a brave act at a time when protests were prohibited”says the note signed by Lucinda Elliott published in this Saturday’s edition of the Financial Times.
The note highlighted that at the age of 49 Bonafini “became a lioness mom” after the disappearance of two of his three children, and for this reason “he turned to militancy, forever in search of justice.”
“It was soccer that first brought international attention to the movement co-founded by Bonafini, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. In June 1978, foreign journalists arrived in Buenos Aires for the World Cup and found the mothers defying the junta by protesting in the square,” the newspaper resumes in its obituary.
It also indicates that “Bonafini’s unabashed opinions earned him great affection and great enemies.”
“The organization went on to be nominated for multiple Nobel Peace Prizes, the most recent in 2018, and promoted one of the first Truth Commissions in Argentina to show human rights abuses,” the article detailed.
The note also reported that in 1986 “with democracy restored and different political ideologies, the group split into two factions. Taty Almeida was part of the more moderate sector of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Founding Line, while Bonafini led the original and more radical Association of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.”
“No Mother is better than another. We are few left, but we feel peace because we are passing the baton to the next line of militants,” Almeida told the Financial Times.
“Bonafini, who defied Argentine dictators, died at the age of 93 in the city of La Plata, a short distance from where his children were kidnapped during the country’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.”Lucinda Elliott
The figure of Hebe de Bonafini received a massive tribute this week in Plaza de Mayo, where his ashes were placed at the foot of one of the bushes that surround the Pyramidan emblematic place of all the struggles that the president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association faced in defense of human rights since 1977, in the middle of the civic-military dictatorship, and continued until her death.
With this act, Hebe, who passed away last Sunday at the age of 93, was once again a part -as she has done every Thursday in recent decades- of the historic round of the Mothers, number 2328, This time it had to take place in the peripheral streets of the square due to the enormous presence of young people and columns of political, social, human rights organizations, militants, leaders and officials of the Frente de Todos (FdT).
