| Argentina gives last farewell to a model democrat |
They weep for Alfonsín death |
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| The remains of Raúl Alfonsín were installed in one of the lounges of the Congress, they flanked by two soldiers of the Grenadiers' Regiment in honor guard. Photo: Claudio Carboni-Prensa Senado / AP |
Débora King
Buenos Aires / AP
The ex-president Raúl Alfonsín, considered to be a symbol of the restoration of the democracy and recognized worldwide for promoting during his government an unpublished trial against the leaders of the last military dictatorship for violations of the human rights, died on Tuesday, the 31st because of a lung cancer. He was 82 years old.
Alfonsín, who governed from 1983 to 1989, was enduring a lung cancer from hacía time aggravated by a bony metástasis. Although in the last days his state deteriorated for a pneumonia, he wanted to remain in his apartment in a central quarter along with the family.
Vice-president Julio Cobos, in exercise of the presidency for the trip of Cristina Fernández to the summit of the G-20, declared three days of national duel.
Tens persons congregated on Tuesday opposite to his domicile with sails and sang the national anthem to dismiss the first president chosen after the fall of the military diet restored in 1976, one of the most bloody of Latin America.
Between crying, applauses and vítores of the public who was shouting: "Alfonsín, Alfonsín:", his remains remained installed in one of the lounges of the Congress, flanked by two soldiers of the Grenadiers' Regiment in honor guard and surrounded with floral crowns.
Affiliated to the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR), Alfonsín was chosen democratically in 1983 to lead a country devastated by the dictatorship that stopped 30.000 missing persons.
Alfonsín created the National Commission on Persons' Disappearance (CONADEP) to receive the denunciations and tests in order then to send them to the justice.
Result of this arduous work was the report “Nunca Más“, which revealed that the diet put into practice an atrocious plan of dissidents' extermination.
After nine months of exhausting hearings, 833 testimonies between survivors, relatives of the victims, between others, a civil court condemned the dictators to life imprisonment.
Forced by three military rebellions between 1987 and 1988, Alfonsín asked to the Congress for the sanction of two exculpatory laws, which in a case fixed the criminal actions extinction against military and civil for crimes committed during the dictatorship and in other it exempted from fault officials of minor status.
" I think sometimes that I have risked too much because what we did does not know precedents in the world", told Alfonsín in an interview.
Married, father of six children, Alfonsín was supported like excellent figure of his party and of the Argentine politics up to his death.
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Funes-Obama
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Honduras
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Venezuela
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Panama
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Nicaragua
For corruption
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Mexico
They fall down you send
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Ecuador
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Cuba
Catholic challenges
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