Zoila Aurora Cáceres Moreno (1877–1958) was a Peruvian and Uruguayan writer associated with the literary movement known as

modernismo ''Modernismo'' is a literary movement that took place primarily during the end of the nineteenth and early 20th century in the Spanish-speaking world, best exemplified by Rubén Darío, who is known as the father of ''modernismo''. The term ''m ...

. Based in Europe, she wrote novels, essays, travel literature and a biography of her husband, the Guatemalan novelist

Enrique Gómez Carrillo Enrique Gómez Carrillo (February 27, 1873 in Guatemala City – November 29, 1927 in Paris) was a Guatemalan literary critic, writer, journalist and diplomat, and the second husband of the Salvadoran-French writer and artist Consuelo Suncin de ...

Biography

Cáceres was born in 1877, the daughter of Peruvian president

Andrés Avelino Cáceres Andrés Avelino Cáceres Dorregaray (10 November 1836 – 10 October 1923) was a Peruvian politician and general who served as the President of Peru, from 1886 to 1890 as the 27th president, and again from 1894 to 1895 as the 30th. He is cons ...

and first lady

Antonia Moreno Leyva Antonia Moreno Leyva (1848-1916) was the first lady of Peru from 1886 to 1890 by her marriage to president Andrés Avelino Cáceres. Prior to being president, her spouse participated in the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), and she accompanied ...

. Her life was intimately intertwined with Peruvian history, the

War of the Pacific The War of the Pacific (), also known by War of the Pacific#Etymology, multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Treaty of Defensive Alliance (Bolivia–Peru), Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Atacama Desert ...

(1879–1883), the Peruvian Civil War of 1895, and an intellectual's exile in Paris. During the War of the Pacific, her sister was killed while her family was fleeing from the Chileans. Her father Andrés Avelino Cáceres, at that time a colonel in the

Peruvian Army The Peruvian Army (, abbreviated EP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with safeguarding the independence, sovereignty and integrity of national territory on land through military force. Additional missions include assistance in s ...

, was mounting a guerrilla war against the occupying army. Peru (and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

) lost that war and the Chileans occupied Lima, the country's capital. After the Chileans departed, now General Cáceres served in a variety of functions, as a diplomat in Europe, president of the Republic, and then exiled after a bloody coup in 1895. All of these events affected Cáceres, who was educated by nuns in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and at the Sorbone in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. She was known to many of the major modernista authors including

Amado Nervo Amado Nervo (August 27, 1870 – May 24, 1919) also known as Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo, was a Mexican poet, journalist and educator. He also acted as Mexican Ambassador to Argentina and Uruguay. His poetry was known for its use of metaphor a ...

Rubén Darío Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (18 January 1867 – 6 February 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as '' modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...

and

, whom she married.

Writing

Cáceres left behind political tracks and a wide gamut of writing. According to César Lévano, she founded '' Feminine Evolution'' in 1911, in 1919 she organized a feminine strike for food, while in 1924 she organized a new organization, "Peruvian Feminism". She was a die-hard suffragist associated with Angela Ramos. Later she would work with the anti-fascist organization "Feminine Action". Her essays have recently begun to receive critical attention by scholars attempting to understand modernism from a gendered perspective. Her novel ''La rosa muerta'', for the first time in almost a century, was set in Paris where it was published in 1914. In a work sharing formal characteristics with modernista prose, Cáceres challenged the ideological parameters of the movement. While her protagonist appropriated the modernista precept of a woman as an object of male veneration, she also took active control of her sexual life in a world where husbands still treated their wives as objects. The objects in this novel are not people but implements of communication and medicine reflective of the apogee of the industrial age. The action, which takes place between Berlin and Paris, is representative of the places that the modernistas held dear, but the feminization of the portrayal of male-female relations broadens the scope of the male-dominated modernista literary paradigm. The ideal men in this novel are not the husbands from whom women run, but medical doctors, men of science who are liberated from chauvinist attitudes. The central character of “La rosa muerta” accordingly falls for one of her gynecologists, allowing for scenes in the Paris clinic that must have been scandalous for the 1914 reading public.

Works

* Angelina, Eva. “La emancipación de la mujer”. ''El Búcaro Americano'' 1.6/1.7 (15 de mayo; 1 de junio de 1896): 117-118, 127–30. * Cáceres, Zoila Aurora. ''Mujeres de ayer y de hoy''. París: Garnier Hermanos, 1910. * Cáceres, Zoila Aurora. ''Oasis de arte''. Prólogo de Rubén Darío. París: Garnier Hermanos, c. 1910-1911. * Cáceres, Aurora
''La rosa muerta''
/''Las perlas de Rosa''. Prólogo de Amado Nervo. Paris: Garnier Hermanos, 1914. * Cáceres, Zoila Aurora & Andrés Avelino Cáceres. ''La campaña de la Breña, memorias del mariscal del Perú, D. Andrés A. Cáceres''. Lima, Imp. Americana, 1921. * Cáceres, Z. Aurora (Evangelina). ''La ciudad del sol''. Prólogo de Enrique Gómez Carrillo. Lima: Librería Francesa Científica/Casa Editorial F. Rosay, 1927. * Cáceres, oilaAurora (Evangelina). ''Mi vida con Enrique Gómez Carrillo''. Madrid: Renacimiento, 1929. * Cáceres, Zoila Aurora. ''La princesa Suma Tica (narraciones peruanas)''. Madrid: Editorial Mundo Latino, 1929. *Cáceres, Zoila Aurora. ''Labor de armonía interamericana en los Estados Unidos de Norte América, 1940–1945''. Washington, 1946. * Cáceres, Zoila Aurora. ''Epistolario relativo a Miguel de Unamuno. En Unamuno y el Perú''. Ed. Wilfredo Kapsoli. Lima/Salamanca: Universidad Ricardo Palma/ Universidad de Salamanca, 2002: 27–31. * Cáceres, Aurora. ''A Dead Rose''. Trans. Laura Kanost. Stockcero, 2018.

Works on Cáceres and her time

* Arriola Grande, Maurilio. ''Diccionario literario del Perú: Nomenclatura por autores''. Dos tomes. Lima: Editora Universo, 1983. * Frederick, Bonnie. “Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Virtuous Mother: Argentina, 1852–1910”. ''Journal of Women's History'' 18.1 (2006): 101-120. * Glickman, Robert Jay. ''Vestales del Templo azul: notas sobre el feminismo hispanoamericano en la época modernista''. Toronto: Canadian Academy of the Arts, 1996. * Herrera, Eduardo. “Una visita a Evangelina”. En ''La ciudad del sol'' de Aurora Cáceres. Lima: Librería Francesa Científica/Casa Editorial E. Rosay, 1927: 185–193. * Kanost, Laura. "Translator's Introduction". A Dead Rose by Aurora Cáceres. Trans. Laura Kanost. Stockcero, 2018: vii-xxv. * Levano, César
"Las mujeres y el poder"
''Caretas'' (1999). * Minardi, Giovanna. “La narrativa femenina en el Perú del siglo XX”. ''Alba de América'' 37/38 (2001): 177–196. * Rojas–Trempe, Lady. “Escritoras peruanas al alba del próximo milenio”. En ''Perú en su cultura''. Eds. Daniel Castillo Durante y Borka Sattler. Lima/Ottawa: PromPerú/University of Ottawa; 2002: 175–181. * Rojas-Trempe, Lady

. ''Debate: Literatura y género'' (2004). * Ward, Thomas. ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070306101551/http://revistas.colmex.mx/revistas/9/art_9_707_4024.pdf "Los caminos posibles de Nietzsche en el modernismo" ''Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica'' 50.2 (julio-diciembre de 2002): 480-515. * Ward, Thomas
"Introducción"''La Rosa Muerta''
Buenos Aires: Stockcero, 2007: vii-xxiv. {{DEFAULTSORT:Caceres, Aurora 1877 births 1958 deaths Peruvian essayists Modernismo Peruvian feminists Peruvian women activists Feminist writers Peruvian women novelists 19th-century novelists Peruvian women essayists 19th-century women writers 19th-century essayists Peruvian suffragists Children of presidents of Peru