Matilde Herrera

• Name — Matilde Herrera • Birthplace — Buenos Aires, Argentina • Died — 1990 • Occupation — Writer, journalist, poet • Spouse — * Rafael Beláustegui • Roberto Aizenberg • Children — 3 Matilde Herrera (1931–1990) was an Argentine journalist, writer, and poet. She was a prominent militant against the self-styled National Reorganization Process that took over the country between 1976 and 1983. She was one of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, for whom she personally contributed to the recovery of two children who had been illegally adopted.

Matilde Herrera married Rafael Beláustegui, with whom she had two children. They later divorced, and she remarried, this time to the artist Roberto Aizenberg. She started working as a journalist in 1962, and carried on this work until her death. During the time of state terrorism in Argentina, her three children, José, Valeria, and Martín, and their respective spouses – militants of the People's Revolutionary Army – were kidnapped by the Armed Forces. Valeria and Martín's partner Cristina were pregnant at the time. Herrera did not lose Tania (the first daughter of Valeria and Pepe who was around one year old) and Antonio (the son of José and Electra); these children were left at police stations and hospitals after the abduction of their parents. In 1977, Herrera went into exile in Paris with her husband, where she founded the Commission of Relatives of the Disappeared, together with Claudia Lareu, Diana Cruces, and other militants. In 1981 they moved to Tarquinia, Italy, and returned to Argentina in 1983, once the military dictatorship ended. Herrera died seven years later, in 1990, of cancer.

• Vos también lloraste. Ed. Libros de tierra firme, Bs. As., 1986, 62 pp. With prologue by Horacio Verbitsky • José (1987). Reissued Lulu.com, 2009, 447 pp. • Identidad, despojo y restitución. Bs. As., 1990. As co-author with Ernesto Tenembaum