Maria Esther Gatti de Islas, a human rights activist who helped found Uruguay's organization of relatives of people who disappeared during South America's "dirty wars," died Sunday at age 92, her group said.

A photograph of the eyes of her missing 18-month-old granddaughter became a symbol of the struggle of Uruguayan families to find out what happened to their loved ones who were taken away by a military dictatorship.

The girl was taken at the same time Gatti's leftist activist daughter, Maria Emilia Islas, and son-in-law Jorge Zaffaroni were abducted in 1976 in Argentina as part of a crackdown coordinated by the dictatorships then ruling the nations of southern South America....