Tres sufragistas colombianas y sus apropiaciones de artefactos culturales con fines políticos (1930-1957)

This article takes a look at a stretch of the life trajectories of Ofelia Uribe de Acosta (1899-1978), Teresa Santamaria de Gonzalez (1897-1985), and Ismenia Silva de Mujica (1909-1998), three Colombian suffragettes who, from different political trends, were projected through journalistic and educational activities by having founded news publications for women by women, in the groups and associations that they led. Based on the feminism of the Enlightenment that questioned female exclusion to the right of equality, these suffragettes contributed to building the country’s modernity by vindicating a different education from that prescribed by tradition. In addition, they sought professional training in the fields of the sciences, arts, and technologies of that time and they led movements for pursuing the right to suffrage, which, in Colombia, was achieved rather late when compared to other Latin American countries. Their project for change included appropriation of cultural artefacts for political purposes, such as the book, the printing press, the typewriter, the microphone, and the camera, which reveal some gender differences. The analysis is carried out from a perspective that joins gender possibilities as a relational category, cultural history, and women’s history.