workingclasshistory:

On this day, 23 April 1971, Ecuadorian Indigenous communist Dolores Cacuango died aged 89.
She got involved in the movement of landless Indigenous workers in the 1920s and 1930s, taking part in rebellions an advocating for women’s rights. In the revolution of 1944 she led an armed assault on the police station in Cayambe, and the following year established the country’s first autonomous Indigenous school, teaching lessons in Spanish and Quechua. More similar schools opened up, until the dictatorship of General Ramone Castro Jijon shut them down in 1963, banned Kichwa in schools and raided Cacuango’s house, driving her underground.
Dolores remained active, using disguises to evade capture, and after a year of continued Indigenous activism the dictatorship was forced to implement agrarian reforms. Of their movement, Cacuango declared: “We’re like the grass of the mountain that grows back again after being cut, and as mountain grass we will cover the world.”
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9536/dolores-cacuango-dies https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=613881947451691&set=a.602588028581083&type=3