Gladys Marin, Pinochet foe and survivor of Operation Condor. Treated in Sweden and Cuba for cancer, she was a personal guest of Fidel Castro during her stay on the island. Nice photos of her and Allende and her and Fidel from La Nacion sent by a friend :hi:
The Italian Communist Party yesterday called her the "Chilean Pasionaria," after the famed Pasionaria of the Spanish Civil War.
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The Chilean government on Sunday ordered two days of national mourning after the death of Gladys Marin, a veteran Communist Party leader who was at the forefront of opposing dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Thousands, many carrying red roses, filed past Marin's body in a coffin at the former National Congress in Santiago.
"The mourning decreed by the government is an expression of our respect for what she embodied and for the thousands and thousands who in democracy follow her," said President Ricardo Lagos, who was among those who paid their respects to Marin.
"Before whatever banner that any one of us may carry today, comes the banner of Chile," the Socialist president said. "And Chile is better for that which Gladys Marin struggled."
http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/tue/mar8w32.htmEarlier article.
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Chilean Communist Party leader dead at 63
...Marin died at her home in the Santiago middle-class suburb of La Florida, said Guillermo Tellier, the Communist Party's secretary-general.
"A few hours after falling into a coma, our loved comrade and president of our party has died," Tellier said.
Marin battled brain cancer for a year-and-a-half, including surgery in Sweden and two recovery periods in Cuba, where she was a personal guest of President Fidel Castro.
Marin was an implacable foe of Pinochet's 1973-90 dictatorship. She was one of the leaders of the first massive protests against Pinochet in the 1980s, often facing the police tear gas and water cannons in the streets.
In 1998, she filed the first suit against Pinochet for human rights violations during his regime, thus starting the former dictator's legal troubles, which include two indictments and house arrests.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/03/06/marin.obit.ap/