Ángela Auad

Who is Ángela Auad?

Ángela Auad was an Argentine social activist. A member of the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party, she worked with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to locate those who "disappeared" during the Dirty War. Because of her activism, she was kidnapped, tortured and murdered.

Auad was first arrested when she was a college student in Tucumán; she was released in mid-1975. In 1976, her husband Roberto Genoves was imprisoned in Chaco Province. Because of this, Auad came into contact with the Relatives of Those Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who were seeking to find their children.

She was arrested in an action against the Mothers of the Plaze de Mayo, who had been infiltrated by Alfredo Astiz, a Navy captain and intelligence officer. She and three founders of the Mothers, as well as two French nuns, were taken to the secret detention center set up at Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, where prisoners were extensively tortured during interrogations to extract information about other activists. Those who never appeared again are believed to have been killed by military forces.