Born: 4 August 1908, Uruguay
Died: 3 September 1996
Country most active: Uruguay
Also known as: NA
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. She served three consecutive terms from 1958 to 1971 in the Senate of Uruguay, as well as a fourth term in the early 1990s. After completing her law degree at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, she began to write. In 1942, her first book, Se levanta el sol (The Sun Rises), won first prize from the Ministry of Education and she later founded two publications, Mujer Batllista (Batllist Woman) and El Pregón (The Town Crier). In 1954 she became the first woman to sit on the Montevideo Departmental Council and was elected Senator for the Colorado Party. Roballo was the first woman in South America to serve as a cabinet minister, appointed in 1968; she resigned this post following authoritarian actions by the government. She was a founder of the Frente Amplio in 1971, but did not win re-election that year.
After the 1973 Uruguayan coup d’état, Roballo became the target of numerous raids by the authorities for speaking out against the military regime that ran the country until 1984. After the dictatorship ended, she unsuccessfully ran for a Senate seat. She continued serving on the directorate of the Frente Amplio, introducing legislation projects for social improvement through 1993, when she briefly served in the Senate again. Roballo has been remembered by many tributes throughout the country, including stamps with her likeness, streets and colonies named after her, as well as plazas and cultural centers.