BUENOS AIRES: Taty Almeida, a prominent leader of a protest movement against Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship, died on Sunday at the age of 95, her group said.

Almeida was one of the constant faces of the so-called Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who started protesting when the military took power as they demanded to know the whereabouts of sons, husbands and other people abducted in the regime’s war on dissent.

These women demonstrated day in and day out in the Plaza de Mayo, a square near the Argentine presidential palace, and were known for wearing white scarves.

Campaigners say 30,000 people were victims of forced disappearances under Argentina’s dictatorship. “Today our beloved Taty Almeida left us,” her organisation said in a statement posted on Instagram. Almeida had been in the hospital for the past three weeks.

She joined the organisation a few years after her 20-year-old son Alejandro, a leftist political activist, was abducted in 1975 by a rightwing paramilitary group called Triple A. Almeida never saw him again and never recovered his remains.

She was from a military family so for years she was reluctant to join the protesting mothers.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2026