Diminutive Norita Cortiñas stood less than 5 feet tall — about a foot shorter than Argentina’s dictator, Gen. Jorge Videla, who ruled the country from 1976-1981. But in terms of moral stature, Cortiñas towered over Videla and his blood-soaked military junta.

Nora Irma Morales de Cortiñas, or Norita as she was known, rose to prominence in Argentina under the most tragic of circumstances. In April 1977 her eldest son Gustavo disappeared, a fate that thrust him into the ranks of thousands of mostly young men and women seized by agents of the right-wing government. Many of those victims of the junta’s campaign of political intimidation and terror were never seen or heard from again. Norita, up until then a quiet housewife with no involvement in politics, joined a coterie of mothers who brav

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