A chronology of those who died in 2012

APRIL

April 2

— Elizabeth Catlett, 96, a sculptor, printmaker and U.S. expatriate renowned for her dignified portrayals of African-American and Mexican women and who was barred from her home country for political activism during the 1950s McCarthy era, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. No cause of death was given.

April 3

— Eduardo Luis Duhalde, 72 Argentina’s human rights secretary who was a prominent voice in denouncing abuses during the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s,in Buenos Aires of complications from an aortic aneurysm.

April 5

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, 76, grandson of the automaker’s founder who developed the Porsche 911, with its sloping roof line, long hood and powerful rear engine that became a sports car-lover’s fantasy for the half century since its 1963 introduction, in Salzburg, Austria. No cause of death was provided.

– Jim Marshall, 88, the man behind the amplifier that guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend of The Who, and Eric Clapton — used to create ear-shattering sounds in the 1960s, in London. He had suffered several strokes and then developed cancer.

— Barney McKenna, 72, the last original member of the Irish folk band The Dubliners and considered the most influential banjo player in Irish folk music, in Dublin of apparent natural causes.

April 6

— Fang Lizhi, 76, who was one of China’s best-known dissidents whose speeches inspired student protesters throughout the 1980s and who fled to the U.S. after China’s 1989 crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, in Tucson, Arizona. No cause of death was given.

— Thomas Kinkade, 54 whose brushwork paintings of idyllic landscapes, cottages and churches have been big sellers for dealers across the United States, in Los Gatos, California, of apparent natural causes.

April 7

— Mike Wallace, 93, the dogged, merciless CBS television reporter and interviewer who took on politicians, celebrities and other public figures in a 60-year career highlighted by the on-air confrontations that helped make “60 Minutes” the most successful U.S. prime-time television news program ever, in New Canann, Connecticut.

— Ignace Moussa I Daoud, 81, a Syrian-born cardinal and Eastern rite patriarch who headed a major Vatican office before retirement, in Rome. No cause of death was given.

— Dora Saint, 98, a prolific and gentle chronicler of English village life who wrote under the pen name Miss Read, in Great Shefford. No cause of death was given.

Saint died April 7 at her home in Great Shefford, 50 miles (80 kilometres) west of London, the Newbury Weekly News reported.

April 11

— Ahmed Ben Bella, 95, Algeria’s first president and a historic leader of its bloody independence struggle from France, in Algiers. He had been hospitalized twice for discomfort.

— Raymond Aubrac, 97, a major figure of the French Resistance who evaded the Nazis in a now-legendary escape led by his equally renowned wife, in Paris. He had been hospitalized after suffering from fatigue.

— Julio Aleman, 78, a Mexican television and movie actor, who starred in the first telenovela ever produced in the country, in Mexico City of lung cancer.

— Agustin Roman, 83, the first Cuban to be appointed a Roman Catholic bishop in the United States, in Miami of cardiac arrest.

April 12

— Gabriel Tepelea, 95, an anti-communist dissident who spent six years in gulags and later played a key role in Romanian political life when communism collapsed, in Bucharest. No cause of death was given.

April 16

— Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller, 98, Denmark’s richest man who created the country’s largest enterprise, the shipping and oil conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, in Copenhagen. No cause of death was given.

April 22

— George Rathmann, 84 who as founding chief executive took Amgen Inc. from a small company with an unclear mission in a strange new field and helped turn it into the world’s largest biotech drug maker, in Palo Alto, California, of complications from pneumonia.

April 21

— Charles W. “Chuck” Colson, 80, described as the “evil genius” of the Nixon administration who served seven months in prison for a Watergate-related conviction who then spent the next 35 years ministering to prison inmates, in northern Virginia, of complications from brain surgery.

April 25

— Louis de Brocquy, 95, an expressionist painter who was best known for abstract portraits of Ireland’s literary and artistic stars, in Dublin. No cause of death was announced but he had been ill for the past year.

April 28

– Paticia Medina 92, a British-born actress who became a leading lady in Hollywood films of the 1950s, in Los Angeles. She had been in declining health.

April 30

– Tomas Borge Martinez, 81, the last surviving member of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew Nicaragua’s U.S.-backed right wing dictatorship in 1979 and replaced it with a leftist system criticized for its own repressive measures, in Managua after being hospitalized for pneumonia and other ailments.