Rita Cetina Gutiérrez (22 May 1846 – 11 October 1908) was a 19th-century Mexican educator, writer, and feminist who promoted women's education in Mérida, Yucatán. She helped found a literary society, a periodical, and a school with Gertrudis Tenorio Zavala and Cristina Farfán. All three were called La Siempreviva (transl. 'Liveforever'). She also taught at and served as director of the La Siempreviva school.
In 1877, Cetina left her position at the La Siempreviva school to serve as director of the Girls' Literary Institute, a public school for girls. Two years later, she returned to the La Siempreviva school. Several years after that, she returned once again to the Institute, where she faced many difficulties, including budget cuts and criticism from the state government for teaching pedagogy and natural science. She eventually retired from teaching due to poor health.
Cetina's literary output included poetry and fiction. Her poetry was published in many local journals and newspapers, sometimes under the pen name "Cristobela". Due to the nationalist themes of many of her poems, she has been called the "cantora de la patria" (transl. 'singer of the homeland'). She also wrote short stories, plays, and a single novel, Julia, which was one of the first novels ever to be published by a Mexican woman.
Cetina is also considered to be one of Mexico's first feminists due to her contributions to women's education and her writing, which called for women's emancipation and enlightenment. After her death in 1908, one of her students, Elvia Carrillo Puerto, helped to found the Rita Cetina Gutiérrez Feminist League.
Rita Rosaura Cetina Gutiérrez was born on 22 May 1846 in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, to Don Pedro Cetina and Doña Jacoba Gutiérrez. She had two brothers and one sister. Her father was a politician, holding office in multiple state administrations. He was assassinated in 1859, when Cetina was 13 or 14. Her mother assumed guardianship of her after her father's death, receiving assistance from a family friend who helped educate the girls. Later, she also received instruction from Cuban professor, philologist, and writer Félix Ramos y Duarte.
In 1870, Cetina helped to found the literary society La Siempreviva with the help of Gertrudis Tenorio Zavala and Cristina Farfán. The society's periodical, also called La Siempreviva, began publication on 7 May that year. At the time of La Siempreviva's establishment, patriarchal ideas promoted by the Catholic Church were dominant in Yucatán. Religious morality dictated that a woman's primary value was derived from marriage. To combat this, La Siempreviva published articles discussing women abroad who were beginning to enter the workplace. Women were also sought as contributors, potential owners, and financial beneficiaries of the publication. According to its introduction, it aimed to "make women completely emerge from the slavery of ignorance and enter with slow but firm steps into the sacrosanct temple of truth and science".
A year later, on 3 May 1871, La Siempreviva established a school, which, like the society and the periodical, was called La Siempreviva. The first public schools for girls in the region, which offered only elementary education, had been founded in the suburbs of Mérida three years prior in 1968. Before that, the only education girls in Yucatán might receive was from one of the "Amigas" (transl. 'Friends') schools, which taught catechism, sewing, reading, and sometimes writing. La Siempreviva offered girls of various social classes access to higher education. Cetina was president of the school and worked as a teacher alongside her sister Guadalupe and several other women. A number of disciplines were taught at the school, including art, astronomy, geography, history, hygiene, language arts, mathematics, and music.
In 1867, the government of Mexico, having just achieved victory in the Second French intervention in Mexico, began enacting reforms to its education system. Among these reforms was the passage of the Organic Law of Public Instruction, which mandated public schooling for both male and female children. In March 1868, Governor Manuel Cepeda Peraza ordered the creation of the Girls' Literary Institute, a public school that would provide primary and secondary education for girls, but it was not officially established until 16 September 1877, nine years later.
Cetina was named as director of the Institute. As a result, the La Siempreviva school temporarily closed. Alongside other teachers from La Siempreviva, Cetina took an examination before the State Education Council with the assistance of her mentor Ramos, officially becoming a licensed primary and higher education teacher. In addition to her work as director of the Institute, Cetina taught reading, spelling, and grammar. During Cetina's time at the Institute, several students were allowed to board at the school as adjuncts, and scholarships were established for impoverished girls, known as "graced pupils".
Cetina resigned from her position at the Institute on 1 March 1879. The precise reasons are unknown, though biographer Piedad Peniche Rivero offers two possible explanations. The first is that Cetina read a passage from the Bible in class, causing a crisis for the school by contradicting its purportedly secular mission. The second is that Cetina became involved in a dispute with Yucatán Governor Manuel Romero Ancona over funding for the school. In either case, professor Enriqueta Dorchester replaced Cetina after her resignation.
Return to La Siempreviva and the Institute
After Cetina's resignation from the Institute, she reopened La Siempreviva. Around 80 girls were enrolled in the reopened school, many of whom were previously enrolled at the Institute, and she made efforts to integrate La Siempreviva into the Institute. However, La Siempreviva closed permanently in 1886, when the new Yucatán Governor Guillermo Palomino appointed her to lead the Institute once again.
When Cetina resumed directorship of the Institute, its resources were limited, with "income not sufficient for its maintenance". The budget allotted to the school by the Palomino administration increased initially, but not enough to cover the school's expenses, causing Cetina to request that money be allocated for food and staff. Ultimately, the budget was cut even further, with multiple positions being eliminated, salaries being cut, and food allocations for the sick being eliminated. The next year, music, figure drawing, and French classes were cut. A measles epidemic also led to a shortage of teachers during the 1899 academic year. Cetina made various proposals to the government to address these problems, but none were accepted.
Cetina and the Institute clashed with the administration of Governor Francisco Cantón Rosado over the teaching of pedagogy and natural science. These classes were removed from and reinstated to the curriculum multiple times between 1900 and 1901. Cetina ultimately retired from the Institute in 1902 due to poor health. The struggle to teach these classes continued after her retirement.
Cetina began participating in poetry competitions in 1862. In 1863, several of her poems were published in the newspaper La Esparanza (transl. 'Hope') under the pseudonym "Cristobela". Then, in 1866, she performed a public recitation of a poem she wrote about Yucateco soldiers returning to Mérida after the Siege of Tihosuco, which took place that year during the Caste War. Subsequently, Cetina's work was published in a variety of different newspapers and periodicals, including La Esperanza, Biblioteca de Señoritas, El Federalista, La Primavera, Diario del Bello Sexo, El Eco de Ambos Mundos, Violetas del Anáhuac, and La Mujer Mexicana. She also served as an editor for the magazine El Recreo del Hogar (transl. 'Home Recreation'), where many of her poems also appeared. In 1910, several poems written by Cetina were included posthumously in the anthology Poetisas Mexicanas, which was compiled by journalist and founder of the Mexican Bibliographic Institute José María Vigil.