‘Just a housewife’ who became divisive voice for Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ victims

There were moments when Hebe de Bonafini inspired the world: defying Argentina’s military junta to lead a mothers’ campaign seeking justice for thousands of people ‘‘disappeared’’ by the dictatorship – including her two sons and daughter-in-law.

There also were times of disunity and scorn. Her strident views divided the famed Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement, and her caustic tongue could leave her isolated because of comments seen as anti-semitic and justifying the September 11, 2001, attacks as payback for America’s bullying.

Her contrasting legacies – unwavering and alienating – became a fixture of

Argentine political life for more than four decades as the country grappled with the horrors of the right-wing junta’s rule from 1976 to 1983 and rebuilt a democracy still haunted by the past.

De Bonafini, who has died aged 93, moved through that arc as a voice of conscience over the regime’s ‘‘dirty war’’, yet also as caretaker of her own combative political brand that allowed almost no middle ground.

‘‘It’s true I am very radical,’’ she said. ‘‘The mothers always ask for the maximum, and what is the maximum that we ask for: to have justice, to maintain principles and to live with ethics.’’

The group was first galvanised by rage and sorrow. De Bonafini and 13 fellow mothers – all with missing children or relatives – gathered in 1977 outside the main government palace in Buenos Aires. It was a courageous challenge to the dictatorship and its violent crackdowns against anyone it perceived as a threat.

The mothers returned each Thursday. And more joined each week, walking around a clock tower and holding images of their missing loved ones. A simple white headscarf, emblazoned with the names of the disappeared, became the movement’s hallmark.

When police seized one of the protest leaders, Azucena Villaflor, in December 1977, de Bonafini assembled the group in the plaza and quickly steered the tone of the marches in a more aggressive direction. She later brought in megaphones and loudspeakers, shouting insults against the junta and crying out the names of those missing. (Villaflor was taken to a prison camp, and her remains were found by forensic teams in 2005.)

An estimated 30,000 people were ‘‘disappeared’’ and presumed killed by the military regime. The Argentine mothers inspired similar movements over the decades, including women-led peace rallies during the Balkan wars and Russian mothers opposing the war in Ukraine.

‘‘We are not fighting over whether our children are alive or dead,’’ de Bonafini said in 1986. ‘‘We have a much more wide-ranging fight. We are looking for justice, and all that might mean: that people not forget.’’

In 1977, security forces took away her elder son, Jorge, who was part of a leftist guerrilla faction. Later the same year, her other son, Rau´l, was hauled away. Six months later, Jorge’s wife, Marı´a Elena Bugnone Cepeda, was arrested. None were seen by their families again. ‘‘Before my son was kidnapped, I was just another woman, another housewife,’’ de Bonafini said in 2017.

Even after the junta’s collapse, she kept up her confrontational style with its democratically elected successors to demand answers and mete out punishment. That zeal, however, brought rifts and recriminations. The movement split in 1986 along the with-me-or-against-me lines drawn by de Bonafini.

She adopted staunch anti-us views – a principled position, she argued, given US backing for Argentina’s dictatorship and other right-wing regimes in Latin America.

After the 9/11 attacks, de Bonafini said the ‘‘blood of so many in that moment were avenged’’, pointing to Nato bombings, US embargoes and military alliances with authoritarian governments.

Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky called her out for the remarks. She shot back by noting his Jewish faith and calling him a ‘‘servant of the United States’’, bringing accusations of an anti-semitic smear. In 2005, she also denounced Pope John Paul II for his credited role in helping nudge the collapse of communism. She later sought support for her anti-poverty efforts from Pope Francis, who was born in Argentina.

Hebe Marı´a Pastor was born in Ensenada, southeast of Buenos Aires, in 1928, and left school after primary grades to help her family. In 1942, she married Humberto Alfredo Bonafini and they had three children. (Her husband died in 1982.)

After democracy was restored in 1983, she decried the limited scope of the trials of former junta officials. Then in 1986, an amnesty was passed that covered many security officers in attempts to avoid postjunta upheavals in the military and police. Her protests branched out.

The election of leftist President Ne´stor Kirchner in 2003 brought a new political alliance with de Bonafini. Kirchner lifted the amnesty and resumed prosecutions for alleged ‘‘dirty war’’ crimes.

The band U2 paid homage to the protests in its 1987 song Mothers of the Disappeared. When U2 visited Argentina in 1998, singer Bono took time to meet de Bonafini. She gave him a white headscarf.

‘‘We are looking for justice, and all that might mean: that people not forget.’’