Policarpa Salavarrieta was a Neogranadine seamstress who spied for the Revolutionary Forces during the Spanish Reconquista of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela). Considered a heroine of Colombian independence, she was captured by Spanish Royalists and executed for high treason. The anniversary of her death is commemorated with the Day of the Colombian Woman.
Dominican poet Salomé Ureña was an early advocate for women’s higher education in the Dominican Republic.
For a long time, Mendieta’s highly publicized death eclipsed any attention being paid to her intensely important body of work. A recent surge of interest in her jolting performances, however, has turned a focus onto her work as being an important member of the displaced and abused women canon. Mendieta has inspired a book about her death written by Robert Katz, a feminist protest outside of the Dia Art Foundation’s retrospective of Carl Andre replete with chicken blood and guts, and many of her own postmortem retrospectives. She has also influenced numerous modern artists, such as Ana Teresa Fernández, Kate Gilmore, Simone Leigh, Gina Osterloh, Antonia Wright, Nancy Spero and Tania Bruguera.
Herrera’s legacy also lies in the example of her late-blooming career. Like other women artists such as Louise Bourgeois, her life has been dedicated to art, but she did not find an audience for her work until she was very old. Her legacy, then, is not just about her painting but about her tenacious creative perseverance in the face of an indifferent, oar biased, world.
A dedicated public health advocate, Antonia Novello made history as the first female and first Hispanic U.S. Surgeon General in 1990. Novello has led several major public health campaigns in her efforts to improve health conditions and access to medical care, especially for women, children, and minority populations.
Anacaona was a Taíno cacica, (female cacique or chief), religious expert, poet and composer of Xaraguá, in what is now Haiti.
Physician, reformer and activist Cecilia Grierson was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina.
Elisabeth Dieudonné Vincent was a Haitian-born businesswoman and international traveller, born the illegitimate child of a former slave and a Frenchman.
Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement.
Doña Manuela Sáenz de Vergara y Aizpuru was an Ecuadorian revolutionary who supported the cause by collecting information, distributing leaflets, and protesting for women’s rights, and received the Order of the Sun (“Caballeresa del Sol” or ‘Dame of the Sun’) for her work.