María Piedad Castillo de Levi

María Piedad Castillo de Levi (July 6, 1888 – March 4, 1962) was an Ecuadorian writer, poet, and journalist. She is also recognized as an important feminist who fought for women's suffrage in Ecuador, for which she was targeted by the authorities.

Life Born María Lucía Castillo Castillo in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1888, she was the daughter of María Blanca Bethsabé Castillo Martíz and the journalist and politician José Abel Castillo, who owned the newspaper El Telégrafo.

Castillo began writing poetry at a young age, winning her first recognition, a gold medal for her poem "A Colombia," at a Quito literary competition in 1910.

Castillo traveled to Paris to study in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Sorbonne. On her return to Ecuador, she began working for the publication El Telégrafo Literario. She wrote numerous poems, which appeared both in El Telégrafo and in various magazines. In June 1933, she funded the magazine Nuevos Horizontes with a group of fellow feminists. It served as the media organ of the Legión Femenina de Educación Popular, an organization that worked to improve the rights of women workers.

In 1935, Castillo was a candidate for minister of education, and El Telégrafo supported her candidacy. But women were still broadly excluded from Ecuadorian politics at the time, so she was denied the position.

She served as the Ecuadorian delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women for many years, beginning in 1940. She also joined the Casa de la Cultura centers in Guayas and Pichincha beginning in 1946.

In 1955, Castillo was declared "Woman of the Americas" by the Unión de Mujeres Americanas. She was also honored by the Ateneo Ecuatoriano in Quito the same year. In 1960, she was recognized by the Unión de Quiteños.

Castillo died just a few months later, in Quito, on March 4, 1962, aged 73.