[Marxism] Nelva Méndez de Falcone, a ‘Plaza’ Mother, Is Dead

[Dbachmozart at aol.com]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 29, 2006
 
BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 28 (AP) — Nelva Méndez de Falcone, a pioneering member of  
an Argentine group that protested the disappearance of loved ones during 
_Argentina_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/argentina/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) ’s “Dirty War,” died Monday in La 
Plata, 30  miles southeast of here. She was 76. 
The cause was an unspecified lung problem for which she had been hospitalized 
 for her last 10 days, her family said.  
She was one of the first members of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,  
white-scarved activists who for decades have pressed to learn the fate of their  
children who vanished during the 1976-83 dictatorship. 
Ms. Méndez de Falcone’s 16-year-old daughter, María Claudia Falcone, was  
arrested and tortured in 1976 by the military’s security services along with six  
other students who were accused of organizing demands for a reduction in 
public  transportation fares. María Claudia and five other students remain 
unaccounted  for and are believed to have been killed. 
In 1977 Ms. Méndez de Falcone joined the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who had  
just begun weekly silent marches on the square, in front of the presidential  
palace, to demand information about missing children. 
According to official figures, 13,000 people disappeared during the “Dirty  
War” against dissidents; human rights groups put the number at 30,000. 
Ms. Méndez de Falcone’s family said that after her cremation, some of her  
ashes were to be scattered in Plaza de  Mayo.