Hebe de Bonafini

Hebe María Pastor was born into a working-class family in Ensenada near La Plata. For nearly five decades, she lived as a traditional homemaker, married to Humberto Bonafini and raising three children. Her life was shattered in 1977 during the height of the military junta's Dirty War: her eldest son Jorge was abducted in February, her second son Raúl was kidnapped in December, and her daughter-in-law María Elena disappeared in 1978. None was ever seen again.

Refusing to submit to terror and silence, Bonafini joined Azucena Villaflor and other distraught mothers meeting in secret. On 30 April 1977, they gathered at the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires. Ordered by police not to assemble, the mothers began walking two-by-two in circles around the May Pyramid, donning white cloth diapers (later cloth headscarves) embroidered with their children's names, demanding: 'Bring them back alive!'

Following the kidnapping and assassination of Villaflor and other founders in late 1977, Bonafini assumed the presidency of the Mothers in 1979. Over four decades, through dictatorship and democracy, Bonafini led the Thursday marches without missing a single week. Her fierce, uncompromising rhetoric challenged military amnesties, international institutions, and neoliberal economic policies, while fostering grassroots social universities, community radio stations, and housing programs for the impoverished.