Mercedes Sosa died on October 4, 2009, in Buenos Aires at age 74 after multiple organ failure, following years of health struggles.
Mercedes Sosa died on October 4, 2009, at the Fundación Favaloro hospital in Buenos Aires, following complications from multiple organ failure. She had been hospitalized since September 18 that year, suffering from a range of health issues that had increasingly affected her in her final years, including kidney and respiratory problems related to age and long-term diabetes.
Her death prompted an outpouring of national and international mourning. The Argentine government declared three days of official mourning, and thousands of admirers filed past her coffin, which lay in state at the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires — an honor rarely extended to artists, underscoring her status as a virtual national symbol. Tributes poured in from heads of state across Latin America, including Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Evo Morales, and Hugo Chávez, as well as countless musicians she had inspired or collaborated with.
Sosa's passing marked the end of an era for the Nueva Canción movement and Latin American protest music. She was buried in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. Her death was widely covered internationally, including a notable obituary in The Guardian, which celebrated her as 'the voice of the voiceless ones' — a title she had earned over five decades of artistic and political commitment through her extraordinary contralto voice and her steadfast identification with Latin America's poor and marginalized.