Betsabé Espinal (born in 1896,

Bello, Colombia Bello (, ) is a town and municipality in Antioquia Department, Colombia and is a suburb of Medellín, the department capital. Bello is part of The Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley in the department of Antioquia. It is bordered on the north ...

- November 16, 1932 in

Medellín Medellín ( or ), officially the Municipality of Medellín ( es, Municipio de Medellín), is the second-largest city in Colombia, after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Aburrá Valley, a central re ...

), also erroneously known as Betsabé Espinosa or Espinoza, was a Colombian

labor rights Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influen ...

activist and leader of a 1920 workers' strike against a fabric factory in Bello, Colombia. Although not the first strike in Colombian history, it was the first strike led by women. The strike was considered to have made a significant impact on the rights of female workers thereafter. There are few details about her life before and after the strike. A school in

Barranquilla Barranquilla () is the capital district of Atlántico Department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean Coast region; as of 2018 it had a population of 1,206,319, making it Col ...

, Colombia was named after her called I.E.D. Betsabé Espinosa.

1920 strike

The 1920 Bello strike was the first strike in Colombia with the official label of ''huelga'' ("strike", as opposed to the word ''paro'' used in previous strikes). Prior to the strike, female laborers as young as eight years old worked at the factory, a typical work day was over 12 hours, and the women were forced to work barefoot. With Espinal as the leader, over 400 weavers stopped working. The strike lasted from February 12 to March 4 and ended when the owner of the fabric factory agreed to a 40% increase in salary, the expulsion of male foremen who were accused of sexual harassment of the female workers, and a nine hour workday. The parish priest of Bello and the archbishop of Medellín acted as mediators for the deal. During the time of the strike, several liberal and socialist newspapers wrote about and interviewed Espinal extensively, turning her into a symbolic figure of the working woman. The owner of the fabric factory, Emilio Restrepo Callejas, fired several workers as a result of the strike, including Betsabé.

After the strike

In 1929, following the example in Bello, the 186 workers of the Rosellón Factory of Envigado went on a strike for higher wages and the expulsion of certain abusive administrators. After the strike in Bello, Espinal moved to Medellín to seek work. She died at 36 years old from accidental electrocution.

References

{{Authority control 1896 births 1932 deaths Colombian activists Colombian feminists