Argentinian activist who spent 50 years searching for disappeared son dies

Lidia 'Taty' Almeida, who spent more than half a century searching for her son after he was forcibly disappeared by Argentina’s military junta, has died at 95, prompting a public outpouring of grief. Her son Alejandro was kidnapped by anti-communist paramilitaries in June 1975, nine months before the coup that brought the junta to power.

He has never been found, and Almeida became a figure of moral authority and an emblem of the enduring fight for justice. She appeared in public to demand accountability for the dictatorship’s atrocities and campaigned on contemporary social justice issues, even in the final year of her life.

Her family said she died surrounded by loved ones late on Sunday at a hospital in Buenos Aires. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo said she had continued her work until she fell ill in recent days. "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," the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line wrote in a tribute.

Argentina, Buenos Aires

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