Beatriz de Luna was born in Lisbon, Portugal, to an exiled Spanish-Jewish family who was forced to convert to Christianity during the reign of King Manuel I of Portugal in 1497. At 18, she married her uncle, Francisco Mendes, a wealthy and successful trader. Ten years later, he died, leaving her half of his fortune and their daughter Ana. Soon after, she fled Portugal to escape the Portuguese Inquisition to Antwerp, in nowadays Belgium, joining her husband’s brother and business partner, Diogo. She took her late husband’s place in the family business, overseeing the expansion of the Mendes commercial empire, which included partnerships across Europe and the Middle East and loans to the monarchs of Germany, Portugal, England, and Turkey. In 1542, Diogo died, leaving her the control of the business and one of the richest women in Europe. Her enormous wealth allowed her to influence kings and church representatives and protect fellow converted Jews by establishing an escape network for Crypto-Jews to flee Spain and Portugal to Greece and the Ottoman Empire and save hundreds of Jews. Two years later, she moved to the Republic of Venice. Although Jews were not forbidden to practice their religion in Venice, they lived in ghettos, and she had to practice Judaism in secret while publicly presenting herself as Catholic. She successfully ran the family business, adding more trading products, such as textiles and grain. In 1549, Ercole II, Duke of Este, invited her to relocate her enterprise to the city of Ferrara. There, for the first time in her life, she openly practiced Judaism, adopted the Hebrew marital surname of her daughter, Nasi, and became known as Doña Gracia Nasi. She was active in the Sephardic community in Ferrara, using her fortune to promote literacy and printing, and initiated and benefactor the publication of the Ferrara Bible –the Ladino version of the Hebrew Bible. By the early 1550s, the approach toward Jews in Italy was increasingly hostile, and in 1533, Doña Gracia moved to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, where Jews were welcome. She dedicated her time and wealth to benefit the Jewish relief, aiding fugitives from the Iberian Peninsula, supporting rabbinic scholars, and building synagogues, yeshivas, schools, and hospitals throughout the empire. She also established her own printing business, becoming the first woman printer and publisher in the Ottoman Empire and the first Jewish woman to do so. In 1558, 390 years before Israel was officially established, Doña Gracia leased land in Tiberius, then under the rule of the Ottomans and nowadays a city in the north of Israel. Her purpose was to rehabilitate the area, make it available for Jewish refugees to settle in the Holy land, and turn it into a center of Jewish trade and learning. She intended to live in the city but died before her dream was realized. She was 59 years old. Read more...

Clara González Carrillo was born in Remedios, Republic of Panama. Her father was a Spanish immigrant, and her mother was of indigenous descent. When she was two years old, her father refused to supply weapons to the dominant political group of their region, and the family fled the country to Costa Rica, staying there for four years. She attended the Santa Familia School, which trained the girls in domestic life, learning sewing and home economics. Afterward, she won a scholarship to the Escuela Normal de Institutoras, earning a teaching degree. While working as a teacher, she studied law at the Escuela Nacional de Derecho (National School of Law). In 1924, at 24, she became the first woman in Panama to earn a Bachelor of Law and began her law career when the law changed in 1925, allowing women to practice law. In 1923, while still in school, she co-founded the Partido Nacional Feminista (National Women’s Party), promoting women’s rights and suffrage. The party established the Escuela de Cultura Femenina (School of Feminine Culture) to provide professional, educational, and social development for women. At the time, González became involved with socialist and anti-imperialist groups, and in addition to her civil rights and suffrage activities, she became an advocate for social and economic justice. In 1927, at 29, she won a scholarship to New York University, where she earned a doctorate in law. During her time in the US, the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) was established, and she became Panama’s representative. She worked on legal issues and women’s rights in the Pan-American Union office and led their research on the status of women’s rights in different nations. Over time, González felt that the organization withheld funding from the Latin American activists and denied them leadership posts, and in 1930, she left the IACW and returned to Panama. On her return, she taught economics, political science, and sociology at the National Institute, and later criminology, family law, and juvenile justice at the newly-founded University of Panama. She continued to advocate for women’s rights and rejoined the National Women’s Party. In 1938, she broadened her activities and became a member of the Mexican organization Frente Único Pro-Derechos de la Mujer (the Sole Front for Women’s Rights). In 1943, at 45, González married Charles A. Behringer, an American civil engineer. The following year, she founded the Unión Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Union); when women were granted the right to vote in 1945, she ran for national deputy of the Constitutional Assembly and the vice-presidency of Panama but lost in both elections. She continued her social activities, as an organizer of the Popular Centers of Culture for Adults, as an official in the International Federation of Women Lawyers, and worked with UNESCO on child welfare issues. In 1951, 53 years old González became the first woman in Panama to be appointed as a juvenile court judge. In this role, she assisted in drafting the Juvenile Code, which established the treatment of juvenile delinquents; she also founded the Chapala Juvenile Reformatory. In 1964, she retired and moved with her husband to West Covina, California. She returned to Panama when her husband died two years later. In 1972, she went through a hip surgery that caused her leg amputation and limited mobility. She died at the age of 91. Read more...

Anne Henrietta Martin was born in Empire, Nevada, and grew up in Reno. Graduating from Bishop Whitaker’s School for Girls at 19, she went to study history at the University of Nevada and then for a second B.A. and M.A in history from Stanford University. In 1897, at 22, she founded Nevada State University’s history department, heading the department for two years before resuming her studies at Columbia University, Chase’s Art School in NYC, the University of London, and the University of Leipzig. Then, she worked as an art history instructor at the University of Nevada for several years. In 1909, at 34, Martin took a leave of absence and traveled to Asia and Europe. While in England, she became associated with leaders of the suffrage movement, joined the socialist Fabian Society, and became an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), working alongside Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst. She organized meetings and street protests and published short stories and political articles under the pen name of Anne O’Hara. In the fall of 1911, she returned to Nevada, joined The Equal Franchise Society, and was elected as its president the following year. Under Martin’s leadership, the campaign for women’s rights prospered. She went on a speaking tour throughout the state, convincing male voters to enfranchise women. Her goal was achieved on November 3rd, 1914, when women’s suffrage passed by popular vote in Nevada. Following her success, she was asked to join the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) but left for the more militant organization of the National Woman’s Party, elected as its first national chairman in 1916. In addition to this position, Martin served as president of the Nevada Women’s Civic League and the delegate to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. At 43, Martin decided to exercise her new right and became the first woman to run for US Senate. She ran as an independent candidate representing Nevada in 1918 and 1920, addressing various social topics, such as labor issues and the nationalization of railroads and other public utilities. Though she lost twice, she did win 18% of the vote in 1918 and 20% in 1920. In 1921, Martin moved to Carmel, California. For the next 30 years, she advocated for social causes, women’s equality, and farmers’ markets, believing it would benefit both consumers and laborers by eliminating the cost of middlemen. She died at the age of 76. Read more...

She was born as Anne Cormac in County Cork, Ireland; the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer and his servant. The three lived in London, where her father dressed her as a boy and called her Andy in public. After her father’s infidelity got discovered, they sailed to the Province of Carolina in the New World. At 21, against her father’s wishes, she married a sailor named James Bonny, and the two settled in New Providence Island in the Bahamas, a sanctuary for English pirates. There, her husband became an informant for the governor of the Bahamas, against Bonny’s approval. She met the pirate captain John “Calico Jack” Rackham, and they became lovers. She joined his crew on his sloop, The William, disguising herself as a man and participating in all pirate duties, including pirating merchant vessels and fighting in armed combats. At an unknown point, another female pirate, named Mary Read, joined the crew, and the two became sisters in arms. When Bonny realized she was pregnant, she waited in Cuba until her son was born before returning to pirate life. In October 1720, the Governor of Jamaica ordered to attack Bonny’s ship; all the crew members were captured and sentenced to hang. Bonny and Read claimed to be pregnant, so their executions got delayed until they gave birth, under the rule that an unborn child is innocent and not deemed to die for the mother’s sins. While Read died in prison, Bonny probably escaped or was pardoned because there is no documentation of her death by execution or otherwise. The lack of an official record of her faith spurred various theories on her whereabouts; the most common one is that she returned to South Carolina, got married, had eight children, and lived as a respectable woman until she died at the age of 84. Read more...

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her parents were alcoholics, and her father was abusive. At 12, she and her two brothers moved to live with her grandmother in Boston. At 14, she taught at a school for girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she developed a curriculum for her class that focused on natural sciences and ethical living. Five years later, she returned to Boston and opened a school for girls from wealthy families and a charity school for poor and neglected children she ran from her grandmother’s barn. Her declined health has forced her to give up her teaching career, and she began to work as a governess. In 1836, after suffering a breakdown, she was encouraged to travel to Europe to improve her health. While visiting England, she met a group of social reformers who advocated for government involvement in social welfare, especially in the management of mental institutions and asylums. Back in the US, she started teaching female prisoners at East Cambridge House of Correction. There, she observed the inhumane conditions of the mentally ill, who were locked in the dark basements without heat and sanitary facilities, being flogged and chained to the walls. Dix embarked on a two-year journey throughout the state, visiting asylums and prisons and recording the disgraceful conditions she examined. In 1845, she published her conclusions in a report titled Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States. After presenting it to the Massachusetts legislature, he increased the budget of the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. Her local successes drove her to expand her efforts to the entire country. She visited facilities in the north and the south, from New York and Pennsylvania to the Carolinas and Louisiana, documenting the treatment of patients, lobbing for improving asylums’ conditions, and adding more hospitals for the mentally ill. She reached out to politicians, advocation to pass federal legislation to establish supervised national asylums; in 1848, US Congress approved a bill to secure 12 million acres of land for the cause. Unfortunately, it got vetoed by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. Following the setback, Dix returned to Europe, continuing her investigation on mental treatment throughout the continent and lobbying for reforms for its improvement. Thanks to her efforts, numerous new institutes were established in Italy, Scotland, England, and the Channel Islands. During the American Civil War, she volunteered as a nurse in the Union Army and was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses. In this position, she was in charge of setting up field hospitals, managing supplies, recruiting nurses, and overseeing their training programs. While most male doctors opposed the presence of female nurses, Dix appointed more than 3,000 female nurses to the Union Army and advanced the role of field women nurses for years to come. When the war ended, Dix resumed her campaign to improve the caring conditions of the mentally ill and the disabled, leading to the founding of more than 30 institutes across the US and Canada. In 1870, at 68, she contracted malaria and had to give up her traveling, though she continued to promote the cause by every other means available to her. 1881, at 79, she moved into a designated suite built for her in the New Jersey State Hospital, an institute that she had founded. She died six years later, at the age of 85. Read more...

María Eva Duarte de Perón was born in Los Toldos, Argentina. Her parents were not married, and her father had another family. Her legal and societal status as an illegitimate child followed her in her life. Her mother struggled financially, and the situation worsened after her father died in a car accident when she was seven years old. In 1930, the family moved to Junín, where she developed her love for the stage. She began to perform in various community theater productions and aspired to become an actress. At 15, she ran away from home to Buenos Aires to pursue her dream. Soon after her arrival, she joined a theater company and landed numerous radio parts. In 1937, at 18, she had her film debut and later acted in a series of B-movies. In 1942, she signed a five-year contract to participate in a radio program called Great Women of History to voice prominent historical women, such as Queen Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great. By the age of 23, she was the highest-paid radio actress in the nation, earning six thousand pesos a month. This year, she co-founded the Argentine Radio Syndicate, a union of broadcast performers, and was elected its president. In 1944, she was invited by the Secretary of Labor, Juan Perón, to a benefit gala to support the victims of an earthquake that occurred in San Juan. From the moment they met, they were unseparated, establishing their marriage a year later. She was 24, and he was 49. In 1946, her husband, who gained political power and support from the public, especially after being arrested by his political opponents, decided to run for president. She was a leading figure in her husband’s campaign, using her radio program to dramatize his accomplishments and traveling with him throughout the country. Her approachable attitude toward the people and empathy for the working class increased his popularity when he was elected president. Perón did not hold an official position in the government, but she was the de facto minister of health and labor, which allowed her to increase the wages of workers’ unions. She used her position as the first lady to advocate for various causes, improving the living conditions of the poor and women’s suffrage. Thanks to her effort, Argentinian women were granted equal political rights and universal suffrage in 1947. Two years later, she founded the Female Peronist Party, the first large female political party in the country. Perón also founded and headed the Eva Perón Foundation. Supported by the government, unions, and private businesses, the foundation established thousands of schools, hospitals, elderly housing, and orphanages. In 1950, 31 years old Perón was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. Despite her health condition, she continued to be active in both philanthropy and politics, and in 1951 she was chosen by her husband to run for vice president. The opposition from the military and upper-class citizens led her to decline her candidacy. Despite the various medical procedures she went through, her cancer has spread, and she died at the age of 33. Three years after her death, Perón’s husband got overthrown from the presidency, and her embalmed body was stolen and hidden in Italy under the name “María Maggi.” Sixteen years later, her body was exhumed and sent to her husband’s exile home in Spain. In 1973, he returned to Argentina, serving as president until his death a year later. His third wife, Isabel Perón, returned Evita Perón’s body to Argentina and displayed it beside her husband. Later, her remains were reburied in the Duarte family crypt. Read more...

Wilma Pearl Mankiller was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the sixth of eleven children of a Cherokee father and a mother of Dutch and Irish descent. She grew up in a small house with no electricity or plumbing, and her parents sold peanuts and strawberries they grew in their garden to make a living. In 1956, at the age of 11, the family was forced to move to San Francisco as part of a Bureau of Indian Affairs’ relocation policy. She had difficulty in school, often teased by her classmates about her surname, clothing, and speaking style. She quit school and lived with her grandmother in Riverbank, California, for a year. After returning to San Francisco, she continued her studies and became involved in the San Francisco Indian Center. At 18, after graduating high school, she began to work as a secretary in a finance company. Then, she met and married Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi, with whom she had two daughters. In 1967, at 22, she began to take classes at Skyline Junior College while becoming involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1969, during the occupation of Alcatraz Island by a group of American Indians in protest of the treatment that American Indians received from the government, Mankiller supported the occupiers by gathering supplies of food, water, and blankets. Inspired by their act, she became more active in the movement and founded and served as president of East Oakland’s Native American Youth Center, believing that restoring the pride of Native heritage of the youth would prevent them from growing up on the streets. In 1972, at 27, she began to study social welfare at San Francisco State University. Despite her husband’s desires, she bought a car and took her daughters to various Native-American events. During one of the events, she learned about the Pit River Tribe’s campaign to reclaim lands taken from them during the Gold Rush. Mankiller joined the cause and spent the next few years raising funds for its legal defense. In 1974, she divorced her husband and moved with her daughters to Oakland. There, she worked as a social worker at the Urban Indian Resource Center while researching neglect and child abuse. She concluded that most indigenous children were placed with non-native families and began to work on legislation to prevent children from being taken from their culture. Her efforts were manifested with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Three years later, Mankiller returned to her home state of Oklahoma, where she continued her activism and founded the Community Development Department for the Cherokee Nation. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in social sciences at Flaming Rainbow University in Stilwell, Oklahoma, and continued to graduate degree in community development at the University of Arkansas. In 1979, at the age of 34, she was seriously injured in a car accident, breaking her ribs and crushing a leg and face. While in recovery after numerous surgeries, she was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis – a neuromuscular disease that leads to skeletal muscle weakness. But none of these has prevented her from continuing her community work. A few months later, she began her first community development program in Bell, Oklahoma, recruiting 200 local families to lay 16 miles of pipe for a shared water system in only 14 months. Mankiller’s program was so successful that it became the blueprint for similar programs for other tribes. In 1981, she was promoted to the first director of the Community Development Department of the Cherokee Nation by the tribal chief Ross Swimmer. After two years, he asked her to be his running mate in the elections for Principal Chief. During the campaign, she faced severe sexism and even received death threats. But this did not stop her, and she became the first woman elected as deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation. Three years later, on December 5th, 1985, when she succeeded Swimmer after his resignation, she became the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and the first woman elected as chief of any major Native tribe. She was officially elected for two terms, serving in this position for ten years. As principal chief, she improved the tribe’s healthcare, education, and housing conditions. Under her leadership, educational achievement rose, and infant mortality declined. In 1995, at the age of 50, Mankiller decided not to run for a third term due to ill health. After leaving office, she taught at Dartmouth College’s Native American Studies program for a semester before embarking on a national lecture tour, speaking and promoting Native American and women’s rights. She remained an avid activist for the next decade, even after being diagnosed and treated for cancer. She died at the age of 65. Read more...

Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in poverty after her father left the family when she was only a few months old. At the age of 8, she started working as a domestic servant for white families to support her family. Later on, she lived on the streets and earned money as a street performer. At 13, she began to work as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur’s Club, where she met Willie Wells. The couple got married but divorced only a few months later. She joined a street performance group, and in 1923, at the age of 16, she moved with them to NYC, leaving her second husband, William Howard Baker, whom she married the previous year. In NYC, she performed at the Plantation Club while auditioning for serval productions, finally landing a role in the chorus line of the Broadway revue Shuffle Along. Her comic touch made her stand out as an audience favorite, and soon, she booked her next Broadway role in the course line of The Chocolate Dandies. In 1925, at 18, Baker moved to Paris to dance in La Revue Nègre at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she introduced to the French audience her danse sauvage (savage dance), wearing nothing but a skirt made of a string of bananas. Her star was on the rise, and she became one of the most popular entertainers in France, being admired by artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso, who drew paintings of her. After a successful European tour in 1929, she acted in numerous films. With the money she earned, Baker bought an estate in the South of France called Château des Milandes. In the mid-30s, she sailed back to the US, trying to establish herself as a performer in her home country, but left after being scrutinized by the critics and receiving racist reactions from the crowd. On her return to France, she married her third husband, the French industrialist Jean Lion, and gave up her American citizenship to become a French citizen. When WW2 erupted, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. As an entertainer, she traveled across occupied Europe and socialized with German politicians and high-rank officials to gather information. When Nazi Germany invaded France, she moved to her estate in the south, joined the Red Cross, and worked for Free France – the exiled French government. Later, she relocated to the French colony in Morocco, smuggling hidden messages in music sheets while entertaining the troops in North Africa and the Middle East. After the war, she received numerous honors for her work with the resistance. In 1947, Baker married her fourth husband, the French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, returning to Paris and the stage, more popular than ever for her performance and tribute to the war effort. In 1951, she was invited to perform in the US and was appalled by the racial discrimination she had encountered. Though no longer an American citizen, she began to work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and by refusing to perform in segregated venues, she helped to integrate live shows in Miami and Las Vegas. Baker could not get pregnant because of a hysterectomy due to complications of a stillbirth she had during the war. In the early 1950s, she began adopting children from different ethnicities and religions, calling her family The Rainbow Tribe. They lived on her estate in Southern France, which included a farm, rides, and numerous hotels. She charged an entrance fee for guests to use the facilities and watch her children sing, dance, and view her “experiment in brotherhood.” In 1968, at the age of 62, after a few years off the stage, she realized that her popularity had declined. In 1973, she made a comeback when performing at Carnegie Hall in NYC and was greeted with a standing ovation. In Paris, two years later, she had 50 years in business revue financed by Princess Grace and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The sold-out show was attended by A-listers such as Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger, and Diana Ross. Four days later, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was found in her bed surrounded by newspapers with raving reviews of her show. She died in the following year at the age of 68. Read more...

Irena Stanisława Sendler was born in Warsaw, Poland, and grew up in Otwock, a town with a vibrant Jewish community. As a child, she saw her father, a doctor and humanitarian, treat the poor for free. After he died, when she was seven years old, she and her mother returned to Warsaw. In 1927, she attended the University of Warsaw, studying law before changing to Polish literature. As a student, she joined the Union of Polish Democratic Youth and became involved with the Communist Party of Poland. She advocated against the ghetto-bench system, which assigned Jewish students to designated sections of the lecture halls, and she defaced the “non-Jewish” identification on her grade card. Her public protest resulted in her suspension from the university, and she could not find a position in the Warsaw school system because of her lefties views. In 1931, at 21, she married Mieczysław Sendler and found a job as a social worker in the legal department for the Mother and Child Assistance Division of the Free Polish University. In 1935, she began to work in the Warsaw Department of Social Welfare and Public Health, where she was in charge of the canteens that assisted people in need. In 1939, after the Nazis invaded Poland, she and her colleagues used the canteens to help the oppressed Jews by providing them with food, medicine, and clothing. By the end of the following year, all of Warsaw’s Jewish population, about 400,000 people, were forced to move into the small area of the ghetto. The density, poor hygienic conditions, and lack of food and medical supplies resulted in the death of hundreds of people every day from disease and starvation. As social workers, Sendler and her colleagues had a special permit to enter the ghetto and inspect its sanitary conditions. Once in, she established contact with the Zegota – the Underground Council to Aid Jews and brought in medications, food, and clothing. Soon, she began to help people who managed to escape the ghetto and smuggle out many babies and small children, especially orphans. Her actions were done at huge risk since any kind of assistance to Jews was punishable by death. In 1943, 33 years old Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children, and alongside her 12 associates, she enhanced smuggling operations. They had various ways to smuggle the children out of the ghetto, hidden in an ambulance, carried in caskets and potato sacks, or in underground tunnels. On the Aryan side, the children received new catholic identities and were kept with non-Jewish families and convents. Sendler wanted to preserve the children’s true identity so they could reunite with their families after the war, so she kept detailed lists of the children’s birth names, Christian names, and current locations. She hid the records in a jar in the yard of one of her friends. On October 20th, 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and was sent to Pawiak Prison. To get her to reveal information about her associates, she was beaten and tortured. She was sentenced to death, but underground activists bribed the prison’s guards, and they released her in February 1944. In the following month, she resumed her activities, which she continued until the Nazis left Poland. The group is estimated to have rescued about 2,500 children, 400 of whom she saved. After the war, she and her associates, together with the Zegota organization, tried to track down their families. Unfortunately, only a few parents were found since only 1% of the Warsaw Ghetto residents had survived the war. In the next few years, Sendler reorganized a field hospital, in which she worked as a nurse toward the end of the war, as the Warsaw’s Children Home. She resumed her social work activities, and in 1945 she was appointed head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw’s municipal government. In 1947, she joined the Social-Professional Department of the Polish Workers Party Central Committee. Over the next two decades, she held various administrative positions in the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. In 1962, at the age of 52, she was named deputy director of Warsaw trade medical schools, where she established numerous social work projects, including a care center for orphans and the elderly and a rehabilitation program for teenage prostitutes. In 1967, she resigned from her management positions due to health problems and worked as a teacher and librarian until her retirement at 73 years old. Over the years, she was active in many social organizations, including the League of Women, the National League to Fight Racism, the Warsaw National Council, and the Friends of Children Association. She became a well-known public figure only in 1999 when her story was found by three high school students from Uniontown, Kansas, when they were searching for a project for the National History Day competition. Led by their teacher, the students produced a play named Life in a Jar, based on her life story and saving the children’s operation. The play was staged in the US and Poland in front of 90 years old Sendler and later was adapted for television as The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. She died at the age of 98. Read more...

Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez was born in Gallarta in the Basque region of Spain. As the 8th of 11 children in a mining family, she was affected by the harsh working conditions that her father endured providing income to support the family. At 15, after her parents could no longer pay the tuition fee, she left school and started working as a seamstress and later as a cook. While working as a waitress in the city of Arboleda, she met Julián Ruiz Gabiña, a union activist and one of the founders of the Socialist Youth of Somorrostro, who introduced her to the movement, and its agenda. The couple got married in 1915, and soon after, Ibárruri joined the core group that in 1920 established the Spanish Communist Party (PCE – Partido Comunista de España) and renounced Catholicism. Over the next few years, Ibárruri immersed herself in Karl Marx’s writings and other socialists’ works. In 1918, at the age of 23, she published her first article on religious hypocrisy under the alias La Pasionaria – the Passionflower. Two years later, when the PCE was officially established, she was named a member of its Provincial Committee of the Basque. She served in various positions within the party, including a member of the Central Committee, and the Secretary of Women’s Affairs, while establishing herself as a journalist who promoted the cause. In 1931, following the formation of the Spanish Second Republic, Ibárruri moved to Madrid. There, she worked as the editor of the PCE’s newspaper Mundo Obrero, where she highlighted the issue of women’s rights. That same year, she traveled to Moscow with the party’s delegation to the Executive Committee of Communist International. As her reputation grew, so was the suspicion of the government, and she got frequently arrested. During this period, Ibárruri promoted cooperation between the PCE and other left-wing groups, co-founded the nonsectarian World Committee of Women Against War and Fascism, and led campaigns against the government’s repression of the population following the Revolution of October 1934. Two years later, at the age of 39, she entered the parliament as the PCE representative after the national elections of 1936. In this position, she lobbied for improving work and housing conditions and land reforms. At the time, she became known for her passionate and harsh criticism of fascist forces. In her radio and street speeches, she coined various phrases of the Republican resistance, including “No pasarán!” (They shall not pass!), and she became the symbol of the Republican cause. During the Spanish Civil War, which erupted in July 1936, Ibárruri emphasized the issues of women’s rights, arguing that in communist society, women must be treated equally to men, so their political and economic emancipation has to be a primary goal of the PCE. In addition to promoting the party’s agenda, she coordinated the evacuation of children from the war zone to safety. Following the victory of Francisco Franco in 1939, Ibárruri was among the tens of thousands of Republicans who fled Spain. She escaped to the Soviet Union and represented her party at Kremlin congresses as the PCE’s secretary-general. In 1960, she was asked to leave her position and was named president of the PCE, mostly an honorary title. No longer occupied with the party’s daily affairs, Ibárruri channeled her efforts toward other projects. She supervised the historical commission that documented the chronicles of the Spanish Civil War from the communist perspective (published in 1968), had a radio show broadcasted in Spain, and began to write her autobiography. On May 13th, 1977, 18 months after Franco’s death and after 36 years in exile, 82 years old Ibárruri returned to Spain. Upon her arrival, she was asked to run for the Spanish Parliament representing the newly legalized Spanish Communist Party. In the first free elections since 1936, held in June 1977, she was elected as a deputy from the Asturias constituency but resigned that same year due to health issues. She continued to participate in PCE congresses, political rallies, and Soviet holidays for the next decade. She died at the age of 94. Read more...