Chicha Mariani: a pillar of La Plata memory, the founder of Abuelas who transformed 30th Street into a symbol of struggle and search for identity.
In the history of La Plata, there are names that become flags. That of María Isabel Chorobik de Mariani, known to everyone as «Chicha», is one of them. She was born in Mendoza and moved to our city in 1947, where she built a life that State terrorism tried to destroy, but that she turned into an eternal legacy.
On November 24, 1976, Chicha’s life changed forever. A brutal operation by military and police forces attacked the house of his son and daughter-in-law in the 30th street between 55 and 56. Five militants were murdered there, including his daughter-in-law Diana Teruggi. From that hell, the repressors took his barely three-month-old granddaughter alive, Clara Anahi. From that day on, Chicha did not stop looking for her for a single second.
That personal search led her to join other women in the same situation. In 1977, together with Alicia “Licha” de la Cuadra, he founded what we know today as Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. Chicha was the first president of the institution and one of the great promoters of science at the service of identity: under her management the creation of the National Genetic Data Bank was promoted, allowing DNA to be the key to recovering the appropriate grandchildren.
In the 90s, he founded the Anahí Association to deepen the search for his granddaughter and preserve local memory. His house on 30th Street, which preserved the marks of the bullets and the horror, was recovered and transformed into a Site of Memory. Today, that place is an obligatory step to understand the history of La Plata and a space where new generations learn that identity is an inalienable right.
Chicha died in 2018, at the age of 94, without having been able to hug Clara Anahí. However, their fight was not in vain. He left a more conscious city, a firmer justice and an organization that continues to recover stories. 50 years after the 1976 Coup, we remember the teacher and artist who, with the softness of her voice and the hardness of her conviction, taught us that the truth always comes to light.
See more news in the ViveLaPlata’s Instagram and in our website.
