Miguelina Acosta Cárdenas

Miguelina Aurora Acosta Cárdenas (23 November 1887 – 26 October 1933) was a Peruvian feminist, anarcho-syndicalist activist, teacher, and lawyer, who dedicated much of her life to the fight for women's rights, the Amazonian peoples and the working class.

Life Miguelina Acosta Cárdenas was born in Yurimaguas, Loreto, on 23 November 1887. Her family owned a rubber plantation in Loreto. When she was between 12 and 16 years old, she traveled to Europe with her mother to study there. In Europe, Acosta Cárdenas was immersed in an environment that fostered her progressive ideas. When she returned to Peru, Acosta Cárdenas founded a school for young ladies (Colegio de Señoritas) in Yurimaguas, and the first initial education center in Peru.

Acosta Cárdenas' studies in Europe were not recognized in Peru, and she entered the Faculty of Art at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, where she experienced discrimination and exclusion as university education and professional practice at that time in Peru were considered exclusively men's privileges. During her university studies, Acosta Cárdenas was interested in different groups of social and political activists, especially the "Pro-Indigenous Association", an institution founded in 1909 by the student Pedro Zulen and Dora Mayer. Later she received a doctorate in law with the thesis "Necessary reforms of the Peruvian common civil code aimed at making effective the civil and legal equality of men and women".

Work In 1914, she began to contribute to the incipient Peruvian women's movement. Acosta Cárdenas was elected as part of the Board of Directors of the feminist organization Evolución Femenina, founded that same year by María Jesús Alvarado Rivera.

After graduating as a lawyer, she opened an office where she protected labor and women's rights, becoming the first female lawyer to open a professional practice.

Acosta Cárdenas oscillated between her anarchist and feminist ideology, and her adherence to an international Hindu theosophical branch. She was active in the Mixed society «Equality» No. 636. She attended meetings with the Hindu theosophist C. Jinarajadasa, who granted recognition of their international brotherhood. On 19 April 1929, she, next to Zoila Aurora Cáceres, Laura Farje de Leo and María Negrón Ugarte, appeared as one of the founding partners.

Death and legacy In 1933, at just 45 years of age, Acosta Cárdenas became the victim of dental malpractice; a bad tooth extraction caused an infection which led to her death in Lima on 26 October 1933. She was buried in the Baquíjano y Carrillo del Callao cemetery.