Хуана Мануэла Горити: Аргентинская писательница и феминистка

Argentine writer (1818–1892)

Juana Manuela Gorriti Zuviria (15 June 1818 – 6 November 1892) was an Argentine writer with extensive political and literary links to Bolivia and Peru. She held the position of First Lady of Bolivia from 1848 to 1855. With the publication of La quena (1845), Gorriti became recognized as the earliest novelist in what would become Argentina. In La quena, Gorriti challenged the notion of poverty, ignorance, tyranny, and the oppression of women, writing, "A day shall come in which man's science will discover those treasures; but by then men will be free and equal, and they shall use wealth to serve humanity! The reign of worries and despotism will have ended, and only man's genius will rule the world, it reside upon the head of a European, or upon that of an Indian." Gorriti's commitment to women's issues sparked the interest of both women and men, including Abel Delgado. His essay, "La educación social de la mujer", ("The Social Education of Woman," 1892) discussed male and female spheres and justified women's participation in law and politics.

Juana Manuela Gorriti was born on 15 June 1818, in Rosario de la Frontera, in the province of Salta in the north of Argentina. She came from a wealthy upper class family and attended a convent school when she was eight. She was born to José Ignacio de Gorriti and Feleciana Zuviria. Her father was a politician and soldier, and signed the Argentine Declaration of Independence on 9 July 1816. She was also the niece of the infamous guerrilla Francisco Gorriti. Her family was liberal and supported the Unitarians during a time when Juan Manuel de Rosas ran the country. De Rosas was a conservative Governor of Buenos Aires Province from 1829 to 1832 who used violent measures to dispossess indigenous people and pave the way for expansion. In 1831, when Gorriti was thirteen, the federal caudillo Facundo Quiroga forced Gorriti and much of her family into exile. Goritti's family settled in Tarija, Bolivia, where she met her future husband, Manuel Isidro Belzú, who was a captain in the Bolivian Army at the time. They married when she was fifteen, and they had two daughters. As his career advanced, their marriage suffered, and he abandoned her in 1842 after nine years together. Gorriti did not receive the divorce papers until fourteen years later, after his assassination. After her return to Argentina, she died on 6 November 1892, in Buenos Aires at the age of 74. Many of the attendees would later go on to write more about these subjects, including Teresa González de Fanning, who founded an enlightened women's movement.

Gorriti was an ardent feminist before the term itself was invented, and her dedication to women's rights showed in many of her journals. Through her writings, she instructed and inspired women to take on the gender roles more commonly found in Europe and North America. She wanted women to be heard, to educate themselves, and not be afraid to go against social norms.

In 1866, the Spanish Navy shelled ports on Peru's and Chile's coastlines, including the port of Lima, where Gorriti served as a battlefield nurse.

Gorriti left Bolivia for Peru, where her literary life would take off. When she initially arrived in Peru she had no financial support or resources. Gorriti founded an all girls school in Bolivia, where she dedicated her life to teaching and writing. This was followed by La oasis de la vida (The Oasis of Life), a melodramatic novel written in the 1880s. La tierra natal (The Native Land), her last major work, published in 1889, relates a physical journey through northern Argentina, back to the places where she had lived over the course of her lifetime, as well as a voyage back through her memories of the people and events she had known and experienced along the way. Two of her most famous short stories are La hija del mazorquero and El lucero de manantial; both are melodramatic tales with a strong anti Rosista political message. Gorriti also founded the newspaper The Dawn of Argentina (La Alborada del Plata) with fellow poet Numa Pompilio Llona. Her intermittent three year stay in Lima resulted in the publication of La Quena, a short but influential novella, in the prestigious newspaper El Comercio. Later, as Peruvian politics began to stabilize, she contributed to the Revista de Lima with stories like El Angel Caido and Si haces mal no esperes bien. Gorriti's stories are finely crafted and bear witness to trends in South American literature of the 19th century.

Dreams and Realities translated by Sergio Waisman, OUP USA, 2003. The Yocci Well translated by Kathryn Phillips Miles, The Clapton Press, London, 2020. Our Native Land translated by Kathryn Phillips Miles, The Clapton Press, London, 2021.