My friend Marta Zabaleta, who has died aged 85, was a trailblazing feminist and socialist in Chile and Argentina at a time when speaking up required not only conviction but also extreme bravery, as saying and doing the right thing left many “disappeared” during state-backed reigns of terror. She was one of the lucky ones who escaped to Britain, where she settled in Epping, Essex, and thrived as a loving mother, writer, academic and campaigner.
In the 1960s Marta worked for the UN’s Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Demografía (CELADE), in Santiago, Chile, and progressed to the Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria (ICIRA), a Chilean government/UN project. As part of her research, she focused on growing rural trade unions and in so doing exposed how the American CIA was trying to control them. This caused her to be expelled from the institute by government officials.
By then, Marta was part of the Movement of Revolutionary Left (MIR). She taught at the Universidad de Concepción (1968-1973), while campaigning for social and university reform. During the Popular Unity government years (1970-73), she contributed to political education courses for industrial workers, worked in grassroots organisations distributing essential household provisions, and became a leading organiser of the Front of Revolutionary Women.
Soon after the military coup of September 1973, she was detained, interrogated, then repatriated to Argentina with her husband, Alberto Hinrichsen, whom she had married in 1969, and their baby daughter, Yanina.
When Argentina experienced its own military coup, in 1976, Alberto became one of the 30,000 who were “disappeared” in secret concentration camps. Marta unleashed a brave and ultimately successful campaign for state recognition of his detention and his liberation in the same year. The family became political exiles, fleeing to Britain.
Born in Alcorta, Argentina, Marta was the only child of Roque Zabaleta, a state electricity administrator, and Catalina Gerlo, a primary teacher. She excelled at school and studied economics, law and accountancy at the Universidad del Litoral, in Santa Fe, Argentina, graduating in 1960, before completing a master’s in economics at Escolatina, Universidad de Chile (1964).
It was during this time that her commitment to feminism took shape. She corresponded with Simone de Beauvoir while at university in Argentina, as acknowledged in the book Daughters of de Beauvoir by Penny Forster and Imogen Sutton and the BBC documentary of the same name (both 1989).
Once settled in Britain, and living in Epping, Essex, Marta completed a doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, in 1989. She worked as a senior lecturer in Latin American studies at Middlesex University up to her retirement in 2002, but continued publishing extensively on women and politics, writing poetry, and finally a book recounting her MIR years, Feminismo, Militancia Revolucionaria, Exilio: Memorias Fragmentadas de una Argentina sin Nación (2023).
She and Alberto divorced in 2000, though a bond of comradeship and friendship remained. She is survived by their two children, Yanina and Tomás, and by her sister, Indiana.
