Aída Peláez de Villa Urrutia


Aída Peláez Martínez, also known by her pseudonym Eugenio, was a Cuban writer, journalist, suffragist, and feminist activist. She was one of the architects of Cuba's women's suffrage campaign of the 1910s, along with Digna Collazo and Amalia Mallén. To this end, she participated in various pro-feminist organizations.

Life and work

She was the daughter of Rodolfo Manuel José Jesús Peláez y Hernández and Adela María Aída de la Caridad Martínez y Díaz Morales, and began to write at an early age. After her father forbade her to continue such work, she used the pseudonym Eugenio at the request of her mother.
Aída was one of the pioneers of the feminist movement in Cuba. She participated in the Continental Women's Union, an organization which took a leading role, and served in the National Suffragist Party as its vice president and representative in the First Women's Congress. She also founded the Panamerican Round Table and Women's House of America. She was the "first woman to be counted as a member of the Governing Board of the Athenaeum of Havana, having been re-elected to it three times."
In 1923, she published "Necesidad del voto para la mujer" in the magazines El Sufragista and El sufragio femenino. Furthermore, she was editor of the periodicals La discusión, La Mujer, de Atlántida, and the literary-cultural magazine Ideal which she founded in 1919.