Born: 29 March 1877, Peru
Died: 14 February 1958
Country most active: Peru, International
Also known as: Zoila Aurora Cáceres Moreno
Peruvian writer Aurora Cáceres wrote novels, essays and travel pieces as well as a biography of her husband, Guatemalan novelist Enrique Gómez Carrillo. Her essays in particular have received attention as examples of the modernismo movement from a woman’s perspective.
The daughter of Peruvian president Andrés Avelino Cáceres, Cáceres’s sister was killed as the family fled the Chileans during the War of the Pacific (1879-83). Her father, then a colonel in the Peruvian army, was fighting a guerrilla war against the occupying forces, but Peru lost and the Chileans occupied the capital, Lima until 1883. Although the elder Cáceres, then a General, went on to serve as a diplomat and president, he was exiled in 1895 following a bloody coup that sparked the Peruvian Civil War.
Cáceres attended school in Germany and the Sorbonne in Paris, building a social circle of modernista writers including Amado Nervo, Rubén Darío and her future husband. Her exceptional education included learning French, German and Quechua and, combined with her travels at a young age, inspired feminist views in the young woman. When Carrillo expected her to be a housewife for him, their marriage ended after a year, with Cáceres requesting and receiving an annulment in 1907.
In 1905, she founded the Centro Social de Señoras in Lima, promoting women’s education and free-thinking, promoting social consciousness and equal rights, including women’s suffrage, access to education and employment, as well as their involvement in social, cultural and political issues . Her work significantly contributed to women being able to vote in Peru’s 1950 municipal elections. Protesting the high cost of living and its impact on the working class, she organised a feminist strike for food in April 1919. She founded Peruvian Feminism five years later, and worked with feminist journalist Ángela Ramos and the anti-fascist organization Feminine Action during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.
Cáceres’ feminism is also overt in her essays and books, the best known of which was La Rosa Muerta (The Dead Rose). The 1914 book was only published in Paris due to its scandalous nature, telling the story of a Parisian widow who discovers he deceased husband has left her with a life-threatening sexually transmitted disease. While seeking treatment, she falls in love with her gynecologist, has sex with him, and dies. It showed a woman taking control of her sex life, with a man who was more sensitive and equal to her than most men portrayed in the fictions of the time. It has been described as a “bold statement in favor of women’s self-empowerment and against misogynistic social codes.”