On July 22, veteran human rights activist Lidia “Taty” Almeida, 95, passed away at a hospital in Buenos Aires, surrounded by loved ones. She was president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – an organization of mothers who have marched every Thursday around the plaza outside Argentina's presidential palace since 1977, demanding the return of their children who were disappeared by the military dictatorship (1976–1983).
Her son, Alejandro Almeida, was kidnapped by anti-communist paramilitary forces in June 1975, nine months before the military junta took power. For half a century, Almeida tirelessly sought the truth about her son's fate, but Alejandro was never found.
She became a symbol of the relentless struggle for justice, publicly demanding accountability for the dictatorship's crimes and participating in contemporary social justice campaigns until her final years. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo said she continued her work until falling ill days before her death.
“Thank you for teaching us that love is resistance, that the only battle we lose is the one we abandon, and that there is no force greater than love,” the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line wrote in a tribute to her.
Born Lidia Stella Mercedes Miy Uranga on June 28, 1930, in Buenos Aires, she was the daughter of a cavalry officer. After Alejandro's disappearance, her first instinct was to seek help through military connections. But upon learning the truth about the dictatorship's crimes and meeting other mothers, her life changed, transforming her into an icon of resistance against state terror.
Alejandro was a medical student at the University of Buenos Aires and a member of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group. In 2008, Almeida published a collection of her son's poetry, found in a diary left behind after his abduction.
In 2024, she became president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line (the group had split into two in the 1980s due to political differences). Key figures in Argentine public life expressed their condolences. Former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner called her “a tireless fighter who honored life.”
