Esmeralda Arboleda Cadavid

Esmeralda Arboleda Cadavid (1 September 1921 — 16 April 1997) was a Colombian politician and the first woman to be elected to the Senate of Colombia serving from 1958 to 1961.

A leader of the women's suffrage movement in Colombia, she, along with fellow suffragist Josefina Valencia Muñoz, became the first women to be appointed to serve in a national legislative position in Colombia as part of the National Constituent Assembly in 1954 where they presented what would eventually be the Legislative Act No. 3, which modified Article 171 of the Colombian Constitution of 1886 granting universal suffrage to women. She also served as the 10th Minister of Communications of Colombia, as Ambassador of Colombia to Austria, and as Deputy Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations.

Personal life

Esmeralda was born in Palmira, Valle del Cauca on 1 September 1921 to Fernando Arboleda López and Rosa Cadavid Medina. She attended school in Bogotá, and graduated from the University of Cauca where she earned a Bachelor of Laws in 1934 becoming the first female lawyer of her alma mater. In 1946 she married Samuel Uribe Hoyos, a Colombian engineer with whom she had her only son, Sergio.

Career

She entered private practice in Cali, where she focused on labour law concerning the disparity in wages by the Pacific Railway to their employees. She later moved to Bogotá, where she entered the women's suffrage movement.

She became involved in the National Feminist Organization of Colombia, which operated under the leadership of former First Lady of Colombia, Bertha Hernández Fernández, and María Currea Manrique.^[1]

When General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla came to power in a military coup d'état, the women's suffrage movement had an ideological split between those who opposed military rule and those who supported the regime. Arboleda became an ardent opponent of military rule, and publicly voiced her concern and criticism of the President. Pressured by both sides, President Rojas, who had maintained the National Constituent Assembly that had been started by his predecessor, the deposed Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, named two women to the assembly, Arboleda was appointed in representation of the Liberal Party, and Josefina Valencia Muñoz in representation of the Conservative Party, becoming the first women to serve in a Colombian national legislative body. As part of the assembly they joined forces and introduced the Legislative Act on the Citizenship of Women to be studied and debated by the Assembly. On 25 August 1954 the plenary of the National Constituent Assembly approved the Legislative Act No. 3 which modified Article 171 of the Colombian Constitution of 1886, granting universal suffrage to all Colombian women.

Arboleda continued her vocal opposition and criticism of the Government of President Rojas; for this, she was harassed, spied on, and threatened; the Government went as far as to pressure Bavaria S.A., where her husband worked, to fire Mr Uribe to pressure his wife. The escalation reached its apex when a group of men tried to kidnap her in front of her mother's flower shop. Following this incident, she went into exile with her husband and child to Boston, [[Massachusetts]where her sister Violeta Arboleda was living with her husband Irving Glickman]. She returned to the country in 1958 at the eve of the end of the military rule, and she ran for office in the 1958 legislative elections; She was elected Senator of Colombia and was sworn-in as the first female senator of Colombia on 20 July when Congress convened following a four year hiatus.

On September 1, 1961 she was appointed Minister of Communications by President Alberto Lleras Camargo, a post she served for the remainder of President Lleras's term.^[2] She also served as Ambassador of Colombia to Austria, concurrently serving as Non-Resident Ambassador to Yugoslavia, and Minister Resident to the United Nations International Organizations in Vienna.

In 1968 she was appointed by President Carlos Lleras Restrepo Deputy Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations serving under then ambassador Julio César Turbay Ayala. It was during this assignment that she met Francisco Cuevas Cancino, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations with whom she married in 1968 during a ceremony right on the grounds of the United Nations Headquarters.^[3] She also worked as Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women,^[4] and as consultant for UNESCO for International Women's Year.

Further reading

• Arboleda, Esmeralda (1980). Influence of the Mass Communication Media on Attitudes Towards the Roles of Women and Men in Present Day Society (Special Report). New York City: United Nations Economic and Social Council. 

References