Gwendolyn Margaret Lizarraga, MBE was a Belizean businesswoman, women’s rights activist and politician who was the first woman elected to the British Honduras Legislative Assembly (now the Belize House of Representatives) and the first woman to serve as a government minister in British Honduras (now Belize).
Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio is a Colombian politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist, particularly political corruption.
The Lady of Cao is a nickname given to a female Moche mummy discovered in 2005 at the El Brujo archeological site about 45 km north of Trujillo in Peru’s La Libertad Region.
Dr Yvonne Sylvain was the first female doctor from Haiti and the first woman accepted into the University of Haiti Medical School, earning her medical degree in 1940. She played a vital role in providing improved medical access and tools for Haitian citizens and was a leading advocate for the physical, economical, social and political equality of Haitian women.
Brazilian military heroine and a symbol for the war against sexism.
Ximena Cuevas is a Mexican video performance artist, whose work often explores the social and gender issues that lesbians face in Mexico. She is one of Mexico’s first video artists to be recognised by major American cultural institutions. Her videos and films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and the touring film series, Mexperimental Cinema, as well as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum of San Diego, and the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México. In 2001, MoMA acquired nine of Cuevas’ videos for the museum’s permanent collection, which was the first time a Mexican video artist’s work had been included in MoMA’s collection; 24 of her videos are in now in the collection.
Cuevas has been recognized by the Mexican government as a significant contributor to videography. Many of her films offer social commentary on corruption and its impact on culture, society and politics, and explore from a feminist perspective the place of women in society, particularly lesbians.
After becoming disillusioned with traditional films being made in Mexico and internationally, Cuevas purchased a camera and began producing her own films in 1990. Her work is known for its subtle irony of evaluating contemporary society and exposing the disconnect between social customs and beliefs versus the reality of living using a combination of truth and fiction. She deconstructs myths of the “typical middle-class Mexican family”, heteronormative relationships and concepts of beauty, by parodying the ridiculousness of their traditional portrayal in popular culture. In her own words, her films reveal the “half lies” of the collective Mexican imagination. Among her noted works is the 1993 video clip entitled “Corazon Sangrante”.
Alba Roballo was a prominent Afro-Uruguayan lawyer, poet and politician, who was Uruguay’s first woman Cabinet member, first woman Culture Minister, and first woman elected to the (then collective) Municipal Council of Montevideo, Uruguay.
Alejandra Melfo is a Venezuelan physicist, known for her efforts studying and conserving glaciers, especially the Humboldt Corona, the last glacier in Venezuela.
Dandara was an Afro-Brazilian warrior during Brazil’s colonial period.
Although she was involved with art throughout her life, painter Luchita Hurtado only received recognition near the end of her life. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2019, she landed her first solo show in a public gallery at age 98. Hurtado worked in different styles that drew elements from 20th-century avantgarde and modernist art movements including Surrealism, abstraction, and Magical Realism. Among her best-known works is the 1960s ‘I Am’ series: self-portraits that Hurtado painted by looking down at her own body, often in closets as it was this only place she could work in between raising her sons and managing the home. Later works demonstrate her environmental concerns, with recurring motifs that include humans merging with trees and texts such as ‘Water Air Earth’ and ‘We Are Just a Species’.