Ofelia Domínguez Navarro


Ofelia Domínguez Navarro was a Cuban writer, teacher, lawyer, feminist and activist. She was a proponent of the rights of women and illegitimate children. As a journalist, Domínguez Navarro supported feminist views while writing for various media in Cuba, and in 1935, became the first woman newspaper director in the country with La Palabra.
She was noted as one of the leading intellectuals of the decades of 1930 and 1940, with Mirta Aguirre and Mariblanca Sabas Aloma.

Biography

The daughter of Florentino Dominguez and Paula Navarro, she was born into a family with revolutionary ideals who were participant activists. She graduated from university in 1918 with a Bachelor of Science, followed by a degree in Civil law from the University of Havana in 1921.
She belonged to the group of women and intellectuals who founded the Club Femenino de Cuba, of which she became a delegate to the first National Women's Congress 1923. She was also founder of the Alianza Nacional Feminista.
In 1924, Domínguez Navarro founded the magazine Villaclara and served as its director. Her articles were published in several other newspapers, such La Prensa, El Mundo, El Cubano Libre and El País, in addition to writing for the feminist magazine, Bohemia y Carteles. In Mexico, she wrote in the Nacional and El Universal, among others.
Politically, Domínguez Navarro participated in the movement against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, for which she was imprisoned and exiled to Mexico. In 1936, along with Matilde Rodríguez Cabo, she first proposed reforms designed to decriminalize abortion in Mexico's Penal Code, a proposal that was at the forefront of the international debate looming on the self-determination of women.

Selected works