On November 21, 1921, he appeared before the examining court. That same day, she was awarded the title of Doctor of Medicine with the maximum qualification.
By Jenny Estrada, special to La Revista *
To measure in its exact courage all the historical events that this illustrious Ecuadorian and power starred in evaluate the significance and importance of them, we need to place them in their time and circumstance.
Born in the city of Loja (1889), In the bosom of a modest home and orphaned of a father, she grew up surrounded by the affection and care of her mother and older brothers, at the height of the time when the struggles between liberals and conservatives were vying for power. Loja was by then a secluded and stately city with a population that fluctuated between 10,000 and 12,000 inhabitants, whose elites lived proud of their past and their ancient traditions.
The role of women
As Matilde grew up, it was her mother and her older brother, Antonio, a young musician who served as church organist, who took care to teach her to read and write. Then he would continue primary education at the La Inmaculada school, run by nuns of La Caridad. For exemplary use She was chosen as a nursing assistant to help the nuns in caring for the sick at the Hospital de la Caridad, which operated at the back of the same college. And surely in that task, her sensitivity, deeply impacted, determined the awakening of her vocation towards medicine, through whose study, over time, she would perform great feats.
But the role that society had assigned to the women of Loja, like those of the rest of the country, It was marriage, the formation of a family and dedication to the home and at the end of primary school, Matilde continued helping the nuns in the hospital. Then she found a job as a tutor. Meanwhile, the years passed and his ideal did not decline.
Matilde Hidalgo breaks schemes
Conversing with his mother and brother, one night he told them that he wanted to be a high school graduate because I dreamed of being a doctor so that she could relieve and heal the suffering, especially to the poor who have no protection. It is the year 1907 and in Loja there are no secondary schools for women. The changes of the Educational Reform are just being put into practice, which now considers women suitable for high school study. Female normals have been opened in Quito and Guayaquil. They do not have relatives or financial resources to send her to study away from home.
Antonio, of liberal conviction, then works as the director of a military band in Guayaquil and remembers having heard the case of a young woman from Guayaquil called Aurelia Palmieri Minuche, whom General Eloy Alfaro, as Supreme Chief, supported in his struggle to enter the University of Guayaquil, precisely to pursue a career in Medicine (1895), issuing the first decrees in favor of secondary and higher education as a right of the Ecuadorian woman and in that security, he proposes enter the Bernardo Valdivieso school.
Once the enrollment period was open, accompanied by her mother, Matilde went to present her request to the rector of the traditional campus, who made the consultations, a month later informed the interested party that she was admitted and thus, the October 22, 1907, the illustrious school, bastion of the Lojan cultural tradition, founded in 1826, opened its classrooms to a woman for the first time.
A ruthless fight
But from that day on, nothing would be easy for her again, since the inhabitants of the very noble and conservative city, disturbed by such a crazy action, relentlessly condemn its author. As they pass they close doors and windows, prohibit their daughters from all dealings with that “crazy, demoniac” and they ask for the intervention of the ecclesiastical authorities to force her to desist from such an absurd purpose, considering it a bad example.
The Bernardo Valdivieso school from its foundation (1826) was only for boys. The Sisters of Charity, for their part, humiliate her in a public act by tearing off the Hija de MarÃa ribbon. Harassed by the middle, The mother confronts the clergy, who the threat of excommunication and the reprimands of the bishop responds that whatever happens, she supports her daughter.
They are years of loneliness and suffering in which Matilde will gradually temper her character for the struggles to come. In his moments of anguish, in order to overcome the misunderstanding of the environment, he finds spiritual refuge in poetry.
First bachelor of Ecuador
Upon reaching sixth grade, she redoubled her study days, discrimination in the classroom has been subsiding, some literary magazines have published her poems with praiseworthy comments. At the end of the school term, on October 8, 1913, Matilde Hidalgo Navarro takes grade tests qualified with outstanding and obtains the coveted title of Bachelor, engraving her name in the annals of the province and the country, for being the first woman to complete secondary education in Loja and the first also with this official title in Ecuador.
1914.- Road to the University
Overcome some personal inconveniences, accompanied by her brother they headed towards the Central University, where they must request an audience with the rector. At the appointment, Matilde expressed her desire to enter the Faculty of Medicine and showed her Bachelor’s degree. After examining the certificates from the Colegio Lojano, the rector congratulated her contemptuously, advising her to enroll in Obstetrics or Pharmacy, specialties where a few women had entered for free studies, because the University of his rectory did not admit women for the study of Medicine, a science that, in his opinion, was reserved for men.
Overcoming obstacles
Do not be discouraged! We must move forward! The brother encourages her with the possibility that at the University of Cuenca, the city where she has been offered the position of band director of the Guayas battalion, it is possible that they will admit her, as indeed happens, when Antonio, making use of friends, gets the rector of the University of Azuay to receive and listen to her, before granting him enrollment in the Faculty of Medicine.
They will be years of painful efforts, in which not only the discrimination for being a woman but the ancestral rivalry between Lojans and Azuayos increases when classmates mock her when she speaks. There is no lack of lewd looks hanging from his face, the obscene drawings in his notebooks and the Don Juan proposals that make those first years so ungrateful when pious ladies they insult her and throw stones as she passes. “Layman! Scoundrel!…”. And stronger epithets with which they repudiate his audacity.
Overcoming tragedies
The personal situation worsens when Antonio’s wife dies and Matilde has to take care of the house and six nephews. In order to study, she takes advantage of the cold early mornings, covered with a thick blanket, she goes out to a small balcony where the light of the street lamp reaches, Well, at eight o’clock in the evening the owner of the house cuts the electricity to the tenants. This is the hardest time of her life and she heroically endures it. Her ideal sustains her and gives a new rhythm to the struggle.
And on June 29, 1919, after having been examined for the time of two hours and qualified with five first-class votes, highest grade awarded in accordance with the Law of Higher Studies, Matilde Hidalgo Navarro receives the title and the investiture of Licensed in medicine. The second stage has ended with honors.
1921.- First doctor of Ecuador
He lacks the title of doctor, without which it is impossible to exercise legally and that requirement must be fulfilled at the Central University. Obviously the time is not the same. The First World War has changed many concepts and the incorporation of women is already a positive development in Europe and North America. In October 1919, Matilde Hidalgo entered the Central University without difficulty, being the first woman admitted to opt for the title of Doctor of Medicine.
The quotas for the boarding school are distributed by influence or friendship and, together with other colleagues, they ask the University Council that these positions be provided by competition, to which the authorities agree, being the first to register and succeed in said fight. Assigned to the men’s ward of the San Juan de Dios hospital, the ward director teacher rejects her, saying: “I don’t work with women”, being finally assigned to another ward of the same hospital, where, once the statutory time has been fulfilled, he begins to prepare his doctoral thesis, choosing as his topic “The symptomatic study of eclaptic accesses”.
On November 21, 1921, he appeared before the examining court to render final tests. And that same day, the Central University of Ecuador confers on him the title of Doctor in medicine, with the vote of first five, maximum mark of qualification.
In that way, Matilde Hidalgo Navarro happens to occupy a place of honor in the history of medicine, by becoming the first Ecuadorian woman to receive the academic title of Doctor. His heroic and brilliant career paved the way for future medical professionals in our country.
Not only in the professional field, but also in the conquest of the political rights of Ecuadorian women, Matilde Hidalgo Navarro made conquests of continental repercussions, when in July 1924 she became the first suffragette of Ecuador and Latin America. Her legacy as a distinguished pioneer is immeasurable.
* Historian and biographer of Matilde Hidalgo Navarro de Procel.
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
