Hebe de Bonafini

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Hebe de Bonafini was born in Argentina in 1928. She was raised in La Plata in the Buenos Aires Province and attended school through the eighth grade. She married, worked as a seamstress, and raised three children. Her oldest son, Jorge Bonafini, disappeared in 1977, followed by another son.

Bonafini was one of the founders of the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a protest organization of Argentine mothers who lost their children during the Dirty War, the persecution and suppression of dissident groups by the military regime that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. As president of the Mothers Association since 1979, Bonafini has spoken out in defense of her conception of human rights, both in Argentina and abroad, gaining international recognition; she received the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1999.

Following the return to democratically elected government in 1983, Bonafini demanded an immediate accounting of all of the desaparecidos (people subject to forced disappearance, like her sons).

The Mothers Association split in 1986, and Bonafini has generally been identified with the more radical faction, choosing to justify the violent methods undertaken by some dissident groups during the last dictatorship. In 2001, she generated controversy by defending the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States as "anti-imperialist". In her own words:

"When the attack happened I was in Cuba, visiting my daughter, and I felt happiness. It didn't hurt me at all, because, as I always say in my speeches, our dead children will be avenged the day when people, any people, are happy."

In 2005 she also generated controversy by saying Pope John Paul II was a "swine", during the period of illness that preceded his death. She also said she was satisfied he would soon "rot in hell" ([1], in Spanish).