Esther Neira de Calvo

Esther Neira de Calvo (1890-1978) was a teacher, women's rights activist and suffragette, and Constituent Assemblywoman of Panama. She was the first woman deputy to serve the National Assembly as a national delegate. She was founder and president of the League of Patriotic Feminists and actively worked as a suffragette for Panamanian women's enfranchisement. From 1949-1965 she served as executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission of Women and from 1966-1968 she was Panama's ambassador and alternate representative to the Organization of American States.

Esther Neira Laffargue was born on 1 May 1890 in Penonomé, Coclé Province, Panama to Rafael Neira Ayala and Julia Laffargue. She began her studies in Penonomé, and the attended secondary school in Taboga finishing in Panama City. In 1903 the Government of Panama offered her a scholarship to study education in Europe and she spent the next nine years studying at the Institut Pédagogique de Wavre-Notre Dame, of Belgium, earning degree to teach administration, French and English languages, hygiene and first aid, music and physical education. She spent 1912 in the United Statesstudying at the College of Mount Saint Vincent and at Columbia University in New York. In 1913, she returned to Panamá and began her teaching career.

After a decade of teaching, Neira became the Inspector General of Education and after four years, in 1927, she left to become the director of the Normal School, Panama's only teachers' training school for women. In addition to running the organization, she taught comparative education, languages, pedagogy and psychology. In 1938, she left the Normal School and founded the Liceo de Señoritas (Lyceum for girls), a preparatory school for women, that she directed until 1945 when she was elected Assemblywoman to the Constitutional Convention.

Neira had been involved in Panama's feminist movement for many years, founding the National Society for the Advancement of Women in 1923. When in July, 1941 a series of laws were passed which effectively took away Panamanian liberties, including women's citizenship a coup d'état against Arnulfo Arias Madrid was staged. The current constitution was suspension and a need for a new constitution to be drafted arose. Neira began working with other feminists to ensure that women's issues were included in the negotiations.

The feminist movement of the time was organized into two primary camps: The National Union of Women, led by lawyer Clara González de Behringer, who obtained the backing of the Partido Liberal Renovador (Liberal Renewal Party) and League of Patriotic Feminists headed by Neira and Gumercinda Páez. González de Behringer promised that their members would vote in block for any party supporting their candidates, but the Patriotic Feminists took the approach of seeking supporters from multiple parties. After intense campaigning, when the votes were counted on May 6, only two women were elected to the 51 member Constituent Assembly—Neira de Calvo as a National Delegate, and Páez as the Delegate for Panamá Province. Not only were she and Páez the first two women to serve in the National Assembly, but Neira de Calvo was following in the footsteps of her father, who had served in the First Panamanian Constitutional Assembly.

As Assemblywoman, she proposed laws that focused on women's issues and education. After securing recognition of women's rights, Neira de Calvo helped draft laws including creation of juvenile courts, labor codes, regulations establishing a social work school, and sanitation legislation, among other issues. During this same period, she assisted servicemen and coordinated cultural activities for US troops stationed in Panama as part of the war effort.

In 1949, Neira de Calvo, her husband Raul J. Calvo, and their daughter Gloriela Calvo, moved to Washington, D.C., where she took up a position as the executive secretary to the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM). Though the organization had been formed in 1928, it was reorganized after the 9th Pan-American Conference, which authorized the creation of the Organization of American States and brought the CIM under the OAS' umbrella. Neira de Calvo served as executive secretary to the organization until 1965, when she accepted a position as the ambassador and alternate representative of Panama to the OAS Council. She retired in 1968.

Esther Neira de Calvo died in Washington, D.C. on 24 March 1978. She was buried in the Garden of Peace, in Panama City on 28 March 1978, but was exhumed in 1992. At that time, her remains joined those of her mother and husband in the National Shrine of the Heart of Mary, Panama City, Panama.