MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Mother of Plaza de Mayo VP Porota Meroño dies aged 95

Porota's only daughter, Alicia Meroño, was kidnapped by the Argentine dictatorship in 1978

The Association Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Wednesday announced in a statement the passing away of the organization's Vice President Mercedes Colás de Meroño, known as “Porota.”

Colás de Meroño died Wednesday at noon at the age of 95 at her home in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Villa Devoto, after carrying some months ill.

“She was one of the Mothers who had gone through torture and horror twice. Because she was in the Spanish Civil War, where her father was shot for being an anti-Franco and revolutionary,” highlighted the farewell statement.

Mercedes Colás was born in Argentina in 1925 but emigrated to Spain in 1931, with her father, mother and brother. Her father, José María Colás, was a builder and an anarchist, who was executed by firing squad during the Spanish Civil War in the town of Tudela, Navarra. “They shot him on a Thursday at three-thirty in the afternoon,” Porota would tell repeatedly. And she was shaved bald aged only 11 so that everybody knew she was the daughter of an executed “red.”

History repeated itself when her only daughter, Alicia Meroño, was kidnapped and disappeared by the Argentine dictatorship on January 5, 1978, in a house on Benito Juárez Street, in Villa Devoto, aged 31.

“Every time someone leaves we lose a piece of ourselves,” said the organization. “But we know the commitment we have to our children and that we must continue”.

“Porota left slowly. Slowly. Inadvertently. She was in bed, and suddenly she ... cut herself (loose),” said the statement.