Matilde Hidalgo

Matilde Hidalgo de Procel Navarro ( born September 29, 1889 in Loja, † February 20, 1974 in Guayaquil ) was an Ecuadorian doctor and women's rights activist. She was the first Ecuadorian who graduated from high school, the first woman who took up the study of medicine in Ecuador and finished, and the first woman who gave their vote in presidential elections, and also the first national in an Ecuadorian Cantonal and in the parliament was elected in last but was not MPs.

Matilda Hidalgo was one of six children of their parents. After the death of her father's mother worked as a seamstress. With the help of her mother and one of her brothers succeeded Matilda in 1907 to enroll against numerous forms of resistance and social rejection in the predominantly Catholic Loja on a secondary school and to get there successfully. In October 1913, she became a high school. She applied for admission to the Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito to take a medical degree, but this was denied her. Instead, she was able, however, to get a place at the Universidad del Azuay in Cuenca. Although she was exposed to during their studies taunts of classmates and fellow citizens, she completed her studies in 1919 as Licenciada en Medicina with honors. It has now been approved by the Central University for doctoral studies, graduating in 1921 with a doctorate.

In 1922 she married the lawyer Fernando Procel and moved to Machala, where she opened a practice with him. In 1924, she reached - having regard to the fact that women were not expressly forbidden to choose - their enrollment on the electoral roll for the presidential election, had to give his consent for the first Council of Ministers. She became the first woman in Latin America, who participated in national elections.

It was in 1925 as the first woman in the advice of a Kantones, in her case, Machala, elected its vice- president she was since 1936. She was involved in the founding of the Red Cross and the establishment of the state cultural institution Casa de la Cultura in the province of El Oro, whose capital is Machala. In 1941 she undertook her candidacy for a parliamentary seat for their home province of Loja on the list of the Partido Liberal. When the results were announced, she got enough votes for the parliamentary collection, but had been notified of their party to only one substitutes items, so that they would indeed have been the first elected MP, but did not come into their own. First female MPs Ecuador was Nela Martínez, as Nachrückerin for the Communist Party of Ecuador in the National Assembly at the time came in 1945 called Parliament. 1956 Hidalgo was awarded the National Order of Merit.

2005, the Ecuadorian director César Carmigniani filmed their lives under the title " Matilde, la then del siglo ".