Gladys Marín

portrait

Gladys del Carmen Marín Millie (born July 16, 1941 in Curepto , Chile , † March 6, 2005 in Santiago de Chile ) was general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile .

Life

Gladys Marín's political work became known when the general secretary of the Communist Youth Association in Chile mobilized the youth for the popular government of the Unidad Popular . Her personal friends included Pablo Neruda , Salvador Allende , Luis Corvalan and Víctor Jara .

She was separated from her children in the Pinochet Putsch on September 11, 1973; her husband, Jorge Muñoz is missing and was probably murdered by the coup plotters.

Gladys Marín went underground and later found exile in the Netherlands , the GDR and the Soviet Union .

In 1978 she went back to Chile and worked underground. She later became General Secretary of the Communist Party and ran for President in Chile. In the 1980s she led mass protests against Pinochet, fought for the abolition of the constitution that stems from the Pinochet dictatorship, for the punishment of Pinochet and all criminals from the time of the dictatorship. In 1998 she filed the first lawsuit against Augusto Pinochet for human rights violations.

She died of cancer on March 6, 2005 in Santiago. Before that, she was in Cuba , where she had gone for medical treatment. A state funeral was scheduled for March 8, 2005. With great sympathy from the population (press estimates are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people), the ex-congreso escorted her coffin past the Moneda to the central cemetery. State mourning was ordered by the Chilean government for March 7th and 8th . In the Comuna Estación Central in Santiago de Chile , a central street was named after her (the old "Avenida Los Pajaritos").

Web links

Commons : Gladys Marín  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Spanish article with a photo of her