(ANSA) - BUENOS AIRES, NOVEMBER 25 - Many thousands of people - ordinary citizens, political, social, trade union and cultural leaders, and militants of human rights defense associations - paid homage today in Buenos Aires to Hebe Bonafini, the best known of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who died on Sunday in the Italian Hospital of La Plata at the age of 93.
In the historic Plaza de Mayo, crowded with flags, banners and photos of the woman who was among the first to courageously oppose the soldiers of the Argentine dictatorship by claiming the truth about the fate of the thousands of disappeared - 30,000 according to the associations of Mothers, Grandmothers and Sons - demanding their "restitution in life".
Both of Bonafini's sons (Jorge Omar and Raul Alfredo) were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military in 1977, as was her daughter-in-law, Jorge's wife.
At 15.30 (19.30 Italian time) the elderly Mothers still alive, including Vera Jarach, born in Italian and who moved to Argentina as a child to escape the racial and private laws in 1976 during the dictatorship of her only daughter, Franca, completed the traditional 'ronda' (round march) around the pyramid located in the Plaza de Mayo.
It was the march n.2328 from 1977 and at the end the ashes of Hebe, blessed by Father Paco Oliveira were deposited by his companions (Visitación de Loyola, Josefa de Fiore, Irenede Chueque, Sara Mrad and Carmen Arias) on the square, together with a rosary given to her by Pope Francis during a reconciling meeting that the two had on May 27, 2016, (ANSA).
