One year ago: Mercedes Sosa

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I was killed a thousand times.
I disappeared a thousand times, and here I am ...
Here I am, out of the ruins the dictatorship left behind.
We’re still singing.

So sang Mercedes Sosa, an Argentinian who was the conscience of her country in the face of government repression in ‘We’re Still Singing’ and many other folk music pieces.

Sosa, who had liver, kidney and heart ailments, died a year ago at 74.

‘It’s hard to overestimate her popularity and importance as a standard-bearer of folk music and political engagement through folk music,’ Jonathan Ritter, an ethnomusicologist, said when she died.

She was officially harassed by the right-wing nationalist junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 and lived in exile for a time in Europe.

When she returned home shortly before the dictatorship crumbled, she found that her popularity had reached dramatic new heights.

To learn more about Sosa’s life, read the obituary that ran Oct. 4, 2009.

-- Valerie J. Nelson