Latina Archives - Page 68 of 71

Elisabeth Dieudonné Vincent

Elisabeth Dieudonné Vincent was a Haitian-born businesswoman and international traveller, born the illegitimate child of a former slave and a Frenchman.

Dolores Huerta

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.

Mercedes Laura Aguiar

Mercedes Laura Aguiar was a writer, teacher and feminist from the Dominican Republic. As a journalist and poet, she wrote works that promoted gender equality and Dominican sovereignty, in opposition to the US occupation. She fought for women’s right to vote, women’s right to education, and employment protections for women and children.

Ana Roqué de Duprey

Ana Roqué de Duprey, a prolific educator, writer, and scientist, founded the first woman’s suffrage organization in Puerto Rico in 1917. Known as “Flor del Valle” (“Flower of the Valley”) for her work in botany, she strove to promote educational opportunities and political rights for women in Puerto Rico.

Sylvia Rivera

A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising, Sylvia Rivera was a tireless advocate for those silenced and disregarded by larger movements. Throughout her life, she fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color, from the larger movement for gay rights.

Felisa Rincón de Gautier

Felisa Rincón de Gautier, affectionately known to the public as Doña Fela, became the first female mayor of a capital city in the Americas when she was appointed mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1946. She went on to win reelection four times, serving in office until 1969. Doña Fela devoted herself to public welfare, working to improve housing, public health, and employment for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Gabriela Mistral

As a Chilean author and educator, Gabriela Mistral became the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. She boldly advocated for the rights of women, children, the poor, and many other disadvantaged groups in her community.

Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez

Maria de Lopez rallied the crowd gathered at Los Angeles Plaza on October 3, 1911 by giving a speech in favor of woman’s suffrage entirely in Spanish, an unprecedented event for the time. An educator, translator, and clubwoman, Lopez helped win the vote for Californian women with her oratory and the writings she translated into Spanish. In addition to her suffrage work, Lopez fought for decades to preserve Spanish- and Mexican-American cultural heritage.

Adelina Otero-Warren

Adelina Otero-Warren, the first Hispanic woman to run for U.S. Congress and the first female superintendent of public schools in Santa Fe, was a leader in New Mexico’s woman’s suffrage movement.