PRUDENCIA

AYALA
BIOGRAPHY
Prudencia Ayala (Sonzacate, April 28, 1885 – San Salvador, July 11,
1936) was a Salvadoran writer, social activist and pioneer campaigner
for women's rights in El Salvador.
She came from an indigenous family, her parents were Aurelia Ayala
and Vicente Chief. When she was ten years old, her family moved to
Santa Ana City, where she attended María Luisa de Cristofine's
elementary school. Despite never finishing her studies due to the lack
of resources of her family, she progressed through self-teaching.
She learned to sew and worked as a seamstress along with
her future activities. She assured she had the capacity of
predicting the future through messages she received from
"mysterious voices". This allowed her to gain some relevance
among her close relatives, making her gain fame and
recognition despite the unlikely truth of her predictions. This
statement also provoked criticism and mockery from some
social groups.
Her predictions were published in Santa Ana's newspapers,
where she's referred to as "la sibila santaneca". In 1914, she
predicted the fall of Germany's Kaiser and the involvement
of the United States in the war. From then on, her name
would take relevance because of her feminist approaches
and her esoteric character.
 SOCIAL ACTIVISM
From 1913 she began to publish opinion pieces in Diary of the West, when
she traveled to the west region of El Salvador. She was active in movements
of anti-imperialism, feminism, and Central American reunification. She
protested the United States' invasion in Nicaragua. She also published
poems in many newspapers in El Salvador.
In 1919 she was put in jail for the criticism in one of her columns, the mayor
of Atiquizaya and also, in Guatemala, she was put in jail for many months for
accusations of collaborating with the planning of coup of state. In 1921 she
published her book Escrible. Adventures of a trip to Guatemala, in which she
narrated her trip to Guatemala during the last months under the
dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. In addition she published the books
Immortal, Amores de Loca (1925) y Fumada Mota (1928). During the final of
the 1920s, she funded and ran the newspaper Rendencion Femenina,
where she expressed her stance on the fight of women's rights.
 PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS
In 1930, she intended to run as a candidate for the
presidency of the Republic, even though the
Salvadoran legislation did not recognize women's right
to vote. Her government platform included the support
of unions, honesty, and transparency of the public
administration, the limitation of the distribution and
consumption of liquor, the respect of the freedom of
worship and the recognition of "illegitimate kids". She
started a public debate of legal and political
arguments in favor and against her ambition. One of
the advocates of her candidacy was the philosopher,
teacher, writer, and congressman Alberto Masferrer,
who,in the Newspaper Patria, stated:
Prudencia Ayala defends a just and noble cause, which is
the women's right to vote and to hold high positions. Her
government program is not inferior in justification,
practical sense and simplicity, than other candidates that
are taken seriously.
Finally, her application was rejected by the Supreme
Court, but the debate that followed the intent of her
nomination sparked the feminist movement that
permitted the women suffrage right to be reconsidered in
1939, and that in the Constitution of 1950, under the
approval of the President Oscar Osorio, it gave legal
recognition of women's rights in El Salvador
DEATH AND LEGACY
Prudencia Ayala died on July 11, 1936, away from the
political arena, but close to the masses and social
movements. There is no proof of her participation of the
worker's uprising in 1932, but it is believed that she
collaborated with the uprisings. In March 2009, to
celebrate Women's Day, and in tribute to Prudencia
Ayala, the play Prudencia en tiempos de brujería was
staged.
In March 2017, Avenue 10 South in the San Jacinto
neighborhood of San Salvador was named Avenida
Prudencia Ayala, one of only two streets in the
Salvadoran capital named after a woman.A plaque
commemorating the name change notes:
Prudencia Ayala, Salvadoran of Indigenous blood,
precursor of the fight for women's human rights.