Luz Argentina Chiriboga

Luz Argentina Chiriboga is an Afro-Ecuadorian writer who was one of the first writers to address the duality African and Hispanic cultures. In her poetry and novels, she writes about women in ways that challenge preconceived stereotypes. Her short story "El Cristo de la mirada baja" won first prize in 1986 in the International Literary Contest of the Liberator General San Martín held in Buenos Aires.

Early life Luz Argentina Chiriboga Guerrero was born on 1 April 1940 in Esmeraldas, Ecuador to the banana farmer Segundo Chiriboga Ramírez and Luz Maria Guerrero Morales. She attended the public school Hispanoamericana until the fourth grade and then transferred to the Colegio Nacional Cinco de Agosto in Esmeraldas, where she studied until 1955. Chiriboga then completed her high school education at the Colegio Nacional 24 de Mayo in Quito and went on to further her education from the Central University of Ecuador, earning a bachelor's degree in biological sciences with a specialty in ecology. In 1962, she married the writer Nelson Estupiñán Bass and they left Quito, returning to Esmeraldas, where she spent the next several years raising children and researching for her husband's work.

Selected works