Juana Belén was the first female independent thinker and a precursor of the Mexican Revolution. [...] Despite her restless struggle, her name and political activity are never mentioned in mainstream history books. [...] To learn and know about her life and work, we must know how to research through feminist scholars who have rescued her legacy.
Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875 – 1942) is one of the most important figures in Mexican history, and at the same time, one of the least known. Juana Belén was brilliant, one most extraordinary woman at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to break traditional norms and “formally, openly, criticize Mexico’s social system at the beginning of the century” (Villaneda 1994: 10). Juana Belén was the first female independent thinker (Rubio 2020) and a precursor of the Mexican Revolution. Her struggle lasted a lifetime; she was willing to defend what we understand as social justice, freedom, and autonomy at all costs (Villaneda 1994). Despite her restles
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Gutiérrez de Mendoza, Juana Belén (1875–1942)
Mexican revolutionary, journalist and feminist who never abandoned her belief in the need for the sweeping agrarian reforms that had been fundamental to the political agenda of Emiliano Zapata. Born in Durango state in 1875; died in Mexico City on July 13, 1942; daughter of Santiago Gutierrez; children: two daughters.
Born in the arid region of Durango in 1875, Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza grew up in a world in which poverty was the norm but the human spirit was not crushed. Indeed, her family was proud that her grandfather, a poor workingman, had been executed by firing squad because of his beliefs. Juana's father earned meager wages as a blacksmith, horse-tamer, and farm laborer. Racially, the Gutiérrez family was typical of the Mexican masses, with Juana's father being of mestizo background, and her mother of pure Indian descent. Juana was trained to be a typographer, and since printers were often political freethinkers, by 1901 she had become a teacher and was an active member of the Precursor movement, a small but com
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Juana Belén Gutiérrez Chavez (later de Mendoza)
Juana Belén Gutiérrez Chavez (later de Mendoza), from Mexico was an advocate for worker’s in Mexico, Indigenous rights, and the founder of a group that advocated for better working conditions for women. She later became a teacher, translated numerous classic anarchist texts into Spanish, and contributed prolifically to revolutionary publications, and more mainstream ones on working class issues.
In 1907, she founded Las Hijas de Anáhuac, an anarchist-feminist group which agitated for strikes for better working conditions for women. She enthusiastically took part in the revolution which began in 1911, and was imprisoned for three years. Upon her release she set up a military unit in the army of Emiliano Zapata, who made her a colonel. She kept up her political activity advocating for rights for women, workers and Indigenous peoples until her death in 1942. (Source: Instagram- Working Class History)