Nationality Honduran Years active 1935–1960 Role Journalist | Other names Paca Navas de Miralda Name Paca Navas | |
Full Name Francisca Raquel Navas Gardela Occupation Classical coloratura soprano Died July 11, 1971, Seattle, Washington, United States | ||
Francisca Raquel Navas Gardela, better known as Paca Navas (1883–1971), was a Honduran journalist, writer and feminist. She founded the first feminist journal in Honduras and was a member of the first suffragette organization. She and her husband spent most of their lives in exile due to their liberal leanings. Her most productive writing period was during her Guatemalan exile from 1945–1951.
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Biography
Francisca Raquel Navas Gardela better known as Paca Navas was born on 23 March 1883 in Juticalpa, Olancho, Honduras to Jose Maria Navas and Francisca Gardela de Navas. In 1900, she married the attorney, intellectual and journalist Adolfo Miralda. Her husband was involved in politics and strongly supported the liberal opposition in his writings, resulting in the family's persecution by the government. Navas' friend and fellow writer Ramon Amaya Amador extended the offer to her to take refuge in La Cieba and to publish the newspaper Costa Norte.
Thus, they relocated to La Cieba, where they endured her husband's long political exile. In 1935 to help make ends meet, Navas began a weekly newspaper La voz de Atlantida, which was a publication focused on Pan-American arts, literature and science. It is considered as the first feminist journal in Honduras, as Navas wrote about such topics as aging, family violence, incest, rape, street children, and the subordination of women.
On 2 February 1946 a group of suffragettes organized la Sociedad Femenina Panamericana with president Olimpia Varela y Varela and intellectuals Lucila Gamero de Medina, Argentina Diaz Lozano and Navas. On 5 March 1947 they founded the Comite Femenino Hondureno (affiliated with the Inter-American Commission of Women) with the goal of obtaining political rights for women. They published a magazine Mujer Americana, which was the third feminist journal of the country, after Navas' Atlantida and a journal named Atenea by Cristina Hernandez de Gomez begun in El Progreso in 1944. In 1947 Navas represented the Union Democratica Femenina Hondurena at the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres in Guatemala City, Guatemala. She introduced the theme of political prisoners and exiles of Latin America to the women and denounced that during the 14 years of the dictatorship of Tiburcio Carias Andino 100 Hondurans were forced to leave for political reasons.
At the time of the conference, Navas, having been exiled herself, was living in Guatemala under the protection of the President Juan Jose Arevalo. She lived in Guatemala from 1945 to 1951. Ironically, Ramon Amaya Amador, sought refuge with her in Guatemala. The Guatemalan sojourn marked her most productive writing period, in part because she could publish her work. In 1947, Navas published a book of poems, Ritmos criollos and followed that with her novel Barro in 1951. Barro had actually been written in 1940, but was barred from publication in Honduras. Barro was set in a newly established workers' town for fruit pickers. It addressed the distress that accompanied their relocation from their traditional villages for better working opportunities and looked at the exploitation of the national territory by foreigners.
She died on 11 July 1971 in Seattle, King County, Washington while visiting her daughter.
Selected works
Note
Jose Gonzalez is the author of two scholarly works on the history Honduran literature as he references in the blog. The information in his blog, per his acknowledgment corrects an incorrect date in the printed books for Navas' birth. The books are: