Maria Trinidad Enriquez

María Trinidad Enríquez Ladrón de Guevara (Cusco, Peru, June 5, 1846 - Lima, 1891) was the first woman to pursue university studies in Peru and South America, and the first woman jurist. in Peru. She was famous for her precocity, for her aptitude for study, and for her efforts to improve the condition of people of her gender and the proletarian class.

Training

His school education, along with his precocity and intellectual brilliance, was outstanding. At the Colegio de Educandas, under the direction of Antonina Pérez, at the age of eleven she taught geography as a teacher, which all subsequent comments support and remember.

Trinidad entered the University of San Antonio Abad in 1875, thanks to a supreme resolution that was issued for this purpose in October of that year. His examinations were highly commented. There could be no remembrance of his life without comment on the daily challenges he had to endure to revalidate his school studies. The candidate's brilliance, her daily change of outfit, her elegance, her eloquence and presence of mind, are to this day remembered as if in an exciting bubble.

In 1878 Trinidad graduated from high school. It was then that the society ladies from Lima sent him a medal and congratulations. She would thus become Peru's first jurist. The Cusco deputy Francisco Gonzales presented to the Congress of the Republic, during her administration, a request for this body to declare her fit to graduate as a lawyer, to do the two years of practice in a forensic study and to receive her degree in a Superior Court. Gonzales alleged that this request did not only have to do with Cusco but with the entire Republic. Gonzales was supported by the deputy for Huánuco José Manuel Pinzás who proposed before the chamber of deputies that it be established that women obtain, with the requirements of the law, the same university degrees as men. This proposal was supported by the Minister of Instruction, Justice and Worship Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán. This process was interrupted by the Pacific War and only after this, Congress decided to authorize, as a 'grace', that Enríquez can pursue a bachelor's degree in Law.

María Trinidad Enríquez founded the Society of Artisans of Cuzco in 1876, and edited La Voz del Cuzco (1891), a "radical" that circulated among the local artisans.

From the references that can be obtained, some very solid milestones of her life can be deduced: first university student in Peru and perhaps in America, precocious teacher of the female gender, promoter of new ideas and social concerns, finally and above all: intelligent and contrite precursor of the fight for women's rights.

Journalistic work

In 1876 she participated as an editor in the “Mosaico” section in El Recreo, the first weekly magazine of literature, arts and science in Cuzco directed by a woman: Clorinda Matto de Turner. In her publications she addressed the issue of education, since for her it was the best weapon to confront society's problems. She spoke out against the provision to close the San Antonio Abad University of Cusco and requested that the primary school be urgently attended to.