Rita Cetina Gutiérrez

Rita Cetina Gutiérrez (22 May 1846 – 11 October 1908) was a Mexican teacher, poet and feminist who promoted secular education in the nineteenth century in Mérida, Yucatán. She was one of the first feminists and influenced the generation of young women who fueled the first wave of feminism in Mexico.

Biography
Rita Cetina Gutiérrez was born on May 22, 1846, in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico to Colonel Don Pedro Cetina and Jacoba Gutiérrez. Cetina's father was murdered when she was 14 and a benefactor assisted her in attaining her education. She studied under two noted scholars from Cuba, Domingo Laureano Paz and Félix Ramos y Duarte, who were living in Mérida.

She began to write poetry in about 1860. Her poetry, which explored themes of love, a desire for justice, education, and patriotism, was published in many local journals and newspapers, sometimes under the pen name "Cristabela."

With the support of Gertrudis Tenorio Zavala and Cristina Farfán, on May 3, 1870, Cetina opened La Siempreviva (Everlasting), an institution which included Mexico's first secular school for poor girls, as well as an art college for young women. At the same time, she established a scientific and literary society and a newspaper, both also called La Siempreviva specifically written for ladies and young women. The curriculum of the girls' school included reading, grammar and geography, as at other girls' schools of the period, but surprisingly, it also included religious history, reflecting Cetina's own faith. The curriculum of the art college included literature, drawing, reciting, music (piano) and theater. In addition to publishing her own paper, Cetina was listed as an editor of the newspaper El Federalista (The Federalist). She rejected the idea that women's studies should include only domestic skills and offered a curriculum including astronomy, constitutional law, geometry, geography, history, and mathematics. In addition, the students discussed children, "the double standard", female sexuality, love, and marriage.

Seven years after Cetina founded her school, the Instituto Literario de Niñas (ILN) (Literary Institute for Girls) was created by Governor Manuel Cepeda Peraza, and Cetina was asked to become its director. She agreed because the school offered women the opportunity to have both secondary education and teacher training in a normal school. La Siempreviva remained open, operating as a private school until it merged with the ILN in 1886.

Cetina's lasting legacy and contributions to the feminist movement of Yucatán at the turn of the twentieth century can be clearly seen in some of the pupils she taught: Susana Betancourt and Gloria Mireya Rosado, Yucatecan representatives to the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore in 1922; Elvia Carrillo Puerto, elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Raquel Dzib Cicero, elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Leonarda Gómez Blanco, who served as Director of Education in both Campeche and Tlaxcala; Beatríz Peniche Barrera, elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Elena Torres, founder of the first Montessori School in Mexico; Rosa Torre González, first woman elected to any office in Mexico (elected to the Mérida City Council in 1922); and Consuelo Zavala, head of the organizing committee of the First Feminist Congress.

Cetina retired in 1902 and died in Mérida on 11 October 1908.

Selected works

 * "A México" (1867)
 * "A Nuestro Sexo" (1870)
 * "Al Partir"
 * "Babilonia"
 * "Deudas de corazón"
 * "Oda a los héroes de Tihosuco"
 * "Recuerdo, A una flor"