CLACSO mourns the passing of Hebe de Bonafini

On Sunday, November 20, Hebe de Bonafini, an Argentine human rights activist and co-founder on April 30, 1977 of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo association, an organization of mothers of the disappeared during the last civic-military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, died at the age of 93.

In 1977, Hebe suffered the disappearance of two of her sons – Jorge Omar and Raúl Alfredo – and, a year later, that of her daughter-in-law, María Elena Bugnone Cepeda, Jorge's wife.

“Before my son was kidnapped, I was an ordinary woman, just another housewife –he declared in 1982. I didn't know many things. I wasn't interested. The economic situation, the political climate of my country, were completely foreign to me, irrelevant. But since my son disappeared, the love I felt for him, the desperate search until I found him, the pleading, the begging, the demanding that he be returned to me; the encounters and the shared longing with other mothers who felt the same yearning as mine, have placed me in a new world, have made me understand and value many things I didn't know and that I wasn't interested in knowing before. Now I'm realizing that all those things that many people still don't worry about are extremely important, because the fate of an entire country depends on them; the happiness or misfortune of countless families.

CLACSO salutes and thanks this courageous mother for her fighting spirit and fortitude, whose legacy lives on in new generations, and sends its most heartfelt solidarity to her family and fellow fighters.

CLACSO Steering Committee
November 20th 2022