Taty Almeida, the Argentine human rights activist who led the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo for decades, dies at 95

A life of resistance ends

Taty Almeida, the president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line and one of Argentina's most recognisable human rights figures, died on Sunday at the age of 95. Her family said she passed away surrounded by loved ones in a Buenos Aires hospital after a three-week hospitalisation. The Mothers' organisation announced the death with a tribute: "Thank you for teaching us that to love is to resist, that the only fight we lose is the fight we give up, and that there is no force greater than that of love."

Her body lay in repose on Monday at the FOETRA union building, an art deco hall she often visited. Dozens queued around the block. Almeida had left instructions that no flowers be brought; instead, donations were collected for her organisation. Only a few paper white scarves and wreaths from social movements marked the entrance.

Mum, let go. Alejandro is waiting for you up there. Kiss each other and watch over us from above.

The disappearance that changed everything

Born Lidia Stella Mercedes Miy Uranga on 28 June 1930, Almeida was a teacher and the daughter of a cavalry officer. She married her colleague Jorge Almeida and had three children. Her life pivoted in June 1975 when her 20-year-old son Alejandro, a medical student and member of the leftist People's Revolutionary Army, was seized by the right-wing paramilitary group Triple A, nine months before the military coup of 24 March 1976. His remains were never recovered.

Initially, Almeida trusted the armed forces. She later recounted that she had rejoiced at the junta's first communiqué, thinking "our people" had arrived. The search for her son and her encounters with other women who had lost children to the state apparatus transformed her. By 1979 she had joined the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

It's like being orphaned again. The Mothers protected us, they showed us the path to follow until the end.

The white scarves and the square

Starting on 30 April 1977, a group of women, "las locas", the military sneered, began circling the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires every Thursday, wearing white headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing children. They demanded the truth about the 30,000 people who, according to human rights organisations, were forcibly disappeared during the 1976–1983 dictatorship. Almeida became the public face of the Founding Line faction after the movement split over whether to accept that the disappeared were dead.

Confronting a new negationism

Almeida remained politically active until her final months. She took part in a massive march this past 24 March marking 50 years since the coup. From her wheelchair, the white scarf tied around her head and her son's photo around her neck, she directed her anger at President Javier Milei, whose administration disputes the official victim count and plays down the junta's crimes.

He's just a clown, with all due respect to clowns.

A legacy carried forward

"She was an incredible woman, with incredible activism, and her struggle and that of the Mothers attained international importance," Peronist deputy María Teresa García said outside the wake. In 2008, Almeida published a volume of her son's poetry that she had discovered among his belongings. Her own body will not be buried beside Alejandro's, that grave never existed, but the ritual of the Thursday march continues.