Ibarra, who was born in Saltillo, Coahuila, to an agricultural engineer father and a violinist mother. She studied in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and then met Jesús Piedra Rosales, who would become her husband. She became involved with the community, especially when her son, Jesús Piedra Ibarra, an activist who disappeared on April 18, 1975, in Monterrry, Mexico after the murder of the policeman Guillermo Valdez Villarreal. Jesús was accused of being a member of the communist organization Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre. When her cries for resolution were unheard she formed the Comité Eureka de Desaparecidos with about 100 other women in 1977. As a result of her efforts, including several hunger strikes, 148 out of 557 political prisoners on her lists were liberated during the López Portillo administration. In December 2005, Carlos Solana Macías was apprehended for the abduction of Rosario's son.
Political career
In 1982 she became the first woman in Mexico to run for the presidency with the Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist party. In 1988, she ran for the presidency a second time, again with the PRT. In 1994 she became a federal deputy of the Party of the Democratic Revolution.
Senate
In March 2006 the PRD designated Ibarra as theri candidate to the Senate via proportional representation to serve during the LX Legislature and during the LXI Legislature ; as a result of that designation she was able to secure a seat in the Senate representing the PRD, but in October 2006 she left the PRD faction in the Senate to join the Labor Party faction as part of a political negotiation between the PRD and the PT.
Rosario Ibarra was awarded the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor on October 23, 2019. Speaking through her daughter, Claudia Ibarra, she turned the medal over to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, saying, Señor presidente... no permitas que la violencia y la perversidad de los gobiernos anteriores siga acechando y actuando desde las tinieblas de la impunidad y la ignominia. No quiero que mi lucha quede inconclusa....ejo... la custodia de tan preciado reconocimiento y te pido que me la devuelvas junto con la verdad sobre el paradero de nuestros queridos y añorados hijos y familiares, y con la certeza de que la justicia anhelada por fin los ha cubierto con su velo protector.Lopez Obrador promised to do everything humanamente posible to find the missing persons.