Blanca Eugenia Viteri Segura (4 July 1928 – 21 September 2023) was an Ecuadorian writer,
anthologist
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors.
In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically catego ...
,
women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
activist, and teacher. She has been described as "a grand dame of Ecuadorian literature."
Early life
Eugenia Viteri was born in
Guayaquil
, motto = Por Guayaquil Independiente en, For Independent Guayaquil
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, pushpin_map = Ecuador#South America
, pushpin_re ...
, Ecuador, in 1928. Her father was Ignacio Viteri Urquiza, an accountant, and her mother was María Tomasa Segura Leó, who worked in a button factory. She showed an interest in poetry at an early age, cutting out and saving poems from the newspaper.
In grade school, she was made editor of the school newspaper, which she took as an opportunity to interview such famous politicians as
Galo Plaza Lasso.
In 1950, she enrolled in the theater school at the
Casa de la Cultura's
Guayas location. Three years later, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in modern humanities, she joined the Department of Philosophy and Letters and the
University of Guayaquil.
Career beginnings
In 1954, Viteri sent her story "El Heredero" to a competition of the Club Femenino de Cultura, and she obtained second prize. That same year, she participated in the Jurisprudence Department's Festival of Letters with two stories titled "El anillo" and "El Chiquillo," which were subsequently included in the 1955 anthology ''Diez cuentos universitarios''.
By 1955, Viteri had moved to
Quito and found a job as a radio operator. It was there that she gave birth to her only daughter, Silvia Alexandra Vera, in 1957. Three years later, she returned to Guayaquil to work for the transit commission.
In 1962, she won fourth prize in a theater competition organized by the National Union of Journalists with her play "El Mar trajo la flor," based on her prior story "El anillo." She was also designated a member of the Casa de la Cultura that year.
Exile
Viteri openly sympathized with
Marxist ideas, so when the
military dictatorship took control in 1963, she was forced to self-exile with her daughter in Chile, bringing only the money she could scrounge up through selling her furniture.
There, she married
Pedro Jorge Vera, an influential Ecuadorian
communist and a close friend of
Fidel Castro, in 1964. The couple moved to
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
on Castro's invitation in 1965.
After the military regime fell in 1966, the new president
Clemente Yerovi
Clemente Yerovi Indaburu (10 August 1904 – 19 July 1981) was a politician and the interim President (government title), president of Ecuador from 30 March 1966, to 16 November 1966.
Yerovi was born in Barcelona, Spain, where his parents C ...
invited the couple to return to their homeland.
Later career
Viteri was hired to supervise competitions and run the student newspaper at a grade school, the Colegio Nacional Veinticuatro de Mayo, in 1969. In 1975, she took over the school's literature department.
Due to antiquated and
sexist laws, when Viteri sought to buy an apartment with her own savings in 1976, she was denied a loan because her husband already owned property. Consequently, the couple divorced, she purchased the apartment, and they immediately remarried.
Viteri founded the
Manuela Sáenz
Doña Manuela Sáenz de Vergara y Aizpuru (27 December 1797 – 23 November 1856) was an Ecuadorian revolutionary heroine of South America who supported the revolutionary cause by gathering information, distributing leaflets and protesting for ...
Cultural Foundation in 1983. Through her work with the foundation, Viteri became one of the most important defenders of women's rights in Ecuador.
She has been described as "a pioneer in introducing feminist themes to Ecuadorian fiction, such as domestic violence, prostitution, and romantic-sexual intimacy between women."
In 1984 she published her second novel, ''Las alcobas negras'', which she dedicated to all Ecuadorian women who are still waiting to be treated as they should. Three years later she produced the ''Basic Anthology of Ecuadorian Stories''.
In 2008, President
Rafael Correa
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (; born 6 April 1963), known as Rafael Correa, is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement from its foundation ...
honored her with the
Rosa Campuzano National Prize. She was among the first to receive the newly created award, which recognizes the work of noteworthy Ecuadorian women.
Viteri published over a dozen books including novels, short story collections, and anthologies. Her work has been translated into English, Russian, and
Bulgarian.
Death
Eugenia Viteri died on 21 September 2023, at the age of 95.
Falleció la escritora Eugenia Viter
Bibliography
Novels:
* ''A noventa millas solamente'' (Quito, 1969)
* ''Las alcobas negras'' (Quito, 1983)
Stories:
* ''El anillo y otros cuentos'' (Quito, 1955)
* ''Doce cuentos'' (Quito, 1962)
* ''Los zapatos y los sueños'' (Guayaquil, 1977)
* ''Cuentos escogidos'' (Quito, 1983)
Anthologies:
Viteri helped produce the following anthologies:
* ''El nuevo relato ecuatoriano'' (Quito, 1951)
* ''10 cuentos universitarios'' (Guayaquil, 1953)
* ''Cuento ecuatoriano contemporáneo'' (Guayaquil)
* ''Lectura y lenguaje'' (1978)
* ''Diez escritoras ecuatorianas y sus cuentos'' (Guayaquil, 1982)
* ''AMORica Latina'' (1991)
* ''Así en la tierra como en los sueños'' (Quito, 1991)
* ''Cuento contigo'' (Guayaquil, 1993)
* ''Antología de narradoras ecuatorianas'' (Quito, 1997)
* ''40 cuentos ecuatorianos'' (Guayaquil, 1997)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Viteri, Eugenia
1928 births
2023 deaths
21st-century Ecuadorian women
Ecuadorian novelists
Ecuadorian short story writers
Ecuadorian women novelists
Ecuadorian women short story writers
20th-century Ecuadorian women writers
Socialist realism writers
Writers from Guayaquil
Women anthologists
University of Guayaquil alumni
20th-century novelists
20th-century short story writers
\