Biography
Haydée Mercedes Sosa (1935 – 2009), was a world-renowned singer from Argentina, known as "the voice of the voiceless" as she served political song and was an advocate for the rights of the lower social classes.
In a poor family she was born herself, on July 9, 1935, in San Miguel de Tucuman. At the age of fifteen she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given the opportunity to record her first songs. In 1959 she recorded an album of folk songs from her homeland and began to become known through the musico-political movement of Nuevo Cancionero (New Song), which she pioneered with her first husband, with whom she had a son. In 1967 she toured the US and Europe and collaborated with Spanish-speaking and other international artists.
Back in her country, she was hunted by the military regime of the junta of General Videla, because of her anti-dictatorship action and in 1979 during her concert at the University of La Plata she was arrested along with students. She was released after international intervention and was forced to self-exile in Paris and Madrid, where he stayed until 1983. Sosa continued to give concerts around the world and was a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Latin America and the Caribbean.
She died on October 4, 2009, in a clinic in Buenos Aires, where she was hospitalized, having faced serious health problems during her last years.