Comrade Betta Lazagna has died

Comrade Betta Lazagna has died. Affected by a serious cancer, she faced this last battle with courage and serenity. Right up to the end, she gave us all her humanity, intelligent and joyous. Virtues characteristic of a lifelong communist militant.

We met at the first international meetings in Paris, around the project for a new RHI. With her comrade Antonio Lago Iglesias, she contributed on behalf of the PCE(r) and the many revolutionary prisoners in Spain. Since 1998 and throughout the following decades, she has been a driving force behind initiatives and organisation within the RHI.

Her strong sensitivity to the issue of prisoners can be traced back to her revolutionary experience as a young woman in Latin America, between Argentina and Paraguay. At the heart of the great wave of armed struggles of the 60s and 70s and the military and fascist counter-revolution. She paid the price for her commitment. She then embarked on an equally adventurous journey, from Cuba to Spain. Here she shared a new militancy with comrades from the PCE(r), new connections and a community of struggle, and in the internationalist dynamic that was now her own thanks to the richness of her background. Her mastery of five languages was a clear illustration of this. But it was also the instrument of a scientific mind, of a vast and humanistic cultural quest. Medicine, among other things, had been one of her interests and research activities.

Solidarity was the essence that guided her militancy in the RHI. Solidarity founded in revolutionary determination: supporting prisoners who are consistent with the cause, who do not surrender, who do not negotiate about their identity with the State. Solidarity that is part of our ongoing communist commitment. All this in a difficult time of ebb, capitulation and betrayal. But it’s precisely in situations like these that friendships between resistance fighters become even more authentic and stronger. That’s how it was between us, and in particular with a whole group of Italian activists incarcerated in the mid-2000s, to whom Betta offered exemplary solidarity. The vagaries of political developments never marred this essence of lives dedicated to revolutionary struggle, the deep friendship shared.

At the farewell ceremony, people from all walks of life bore witness to this:

Betta, a fighter with a big heart and a zest for life! And so we carry her in our footsteps towards the revolution!