arsvitaest:

Mercedes Sosa (1935-2009) was an Argentinian folk singer popular throughout Latin America and in other parts of the world as well. She was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, of Mestizo, French and Quechua ancestry. In 1950, at age fifteen, she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months. She recorded her first album, La Voz de la Zafra [The Voice of the Harvest] in 1959. Sosa and her first husband, Manuel Óscar Matus, were key players in the mid-60s Nueva Canción movement. In 1967, Sosa toured the United States and Europe with great success. In later years, she performed and recorded extensively, broadening her repertoire to include material from throughout Latin America.

After the military junta of Jorge Videla came to power in 1976, the atmosphere in Argentina grew increasingly oppressive. At a concert in La Plata in 1979, Sosa was searched and arrested on stage, along with the attending crowd. Their release came about through international intervention. Banned in her own country, she moved to Paris and then to Madrid. Sosa returned to Argentina in 1982, several months before the military regime collapsed as a result of the Malvinas [Falklands] War.

Mercedes Sosa died from multiple organ failure in 2009, and is survived by a son. Throughout her life, Sosa favored leftist causes. She sang songs of freedom and maintained an activist lifestyle even during Argentina’s years of military dictatorship.

(main source: Wikipedia)