On this day, 27 January 1875, Mexican revolutionary and feminist Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza was born to a mestizo father an Indigenous mother. Educating herself as a child, she began to write for the radical press, and she was jailed in 1897 for criticising mine workers’ conditions in Chihuahua state.
She later became a teacher, translated numerous classic anarchist texts by the likes of Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin 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, and 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 people until her death in 1942. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1335439623307851/?type=3