SANTIAGO, March 6 (Xinhuanet) -- The Chilean government ordered a two-day national mourning for Gladys Marin, chairwoman of the Chilean Communist Party, who led a campaign against the military regime of Augusto Pinochet.

    Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said the government decision served as "an expression of our respect for what she embodied and for the thousands and thousands who in democracy followed her."

    Marin died on Sunday after hours of coma at the age of 63.

    "We are certain that she belonged not only to members of the party alongside whom she fought but to all people who admire her and want to pay homage to her," said Guillermo Teillier, general secretary of the party, in a statement.

    Marin's body is laid at the former National Congress in Santiago for people to pay their last respects. Her funeral was scheduled for Tuesday.

    Marin had been fighting brain cancer for a year and a half. Sheand her husband had been hunted by the Pinochet regime.

    After her husband was arrested, Marin fled Chile in 1976 and returned in 1978 as a leader of underground resistance against Pinochet.

    She was elected general secretary of the Chilean Communist Party in 1994 and chairwoman of the party in 2004, which has made the party one of the largest communist parties in Latin America and a strong power in Chile's labor unions.

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