Colombian Women’s History, Women Vote for the First Time in National Plebiscite, 1957

Colombia Women’s Suffrage

Photograph

Women voting in Colombia, 1957, documents Colombian women exercising national suffrage for the first time during the December 1 plebiscite that approved constitutional reforms inaugurating the political settlement known as the National Front. Women had formally received the right to elect and be elected through Legislative Act No. 3 of 1954, but the 1957 plebiscite provided their first opportunity to exercise that right in a nationwide vote. The photograph therefore records two interconnected developments in modern Colombian history: women’s entry into the national electorate and a popular vote intended to establish a new constitutional and political arrangement after the fall of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and years of violent Liberal Conservative conflict. The plebiscite overwhelmingly approved reforms associated with the National Front, under which the Liberal and Conservative parties would share political power; although conceived partly as a means of containing partisan conflict, the settlement did not immediately terminate the violence that had marked Colombia since the 1940s.

Gelatin silver press photograph with two images. Bogotá, Colombia, December 4, 1957. Approximately 7 x 9 inches. The original caption printed above the photographs states in part: “Women voting for the first time in Colombian history turned out in large numbers in the 12/1 national plebiscite. Many mothers carried children in their arms as they arrived at polling places…” The paired images emphasize women’s physical participation in the electoral process: mothers are shown arriving to vote with children, while at right a woman raises an ink-stained finger, which the caption identifies as evidence that she has cast her ballot. These details make the photograph particularly useful as a record of suffrage as lived civic practice rather than merely legislative achievement, preserving women’s presence at polling places and the visible procedures surrounding their incorporation into the electorate. Colombia’s national electoral authority confirms December 1, 1957 as the first occasion on which Colombian women voted nationally, while Banco de la República sources place that vote within the longer campaign for women’s political rights and the constitutional transition leading into the National Front.

The photograph was issued only three days after the plebiscite, placing its production within the immediate press coverage of an election that altered both Colombian electoral participation and the organization of national political power. The vote followed the period conventionally known as La Violencia, a prolonged conflict rooted principally in Liberal Conservative political antagonism; Colombia’s Truth Commission identifies major phases extending from 1946 through the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship of 1953 to 1957 and notes continuing violence thereafter. As an original press photograph prepared for newspaper use, the print also survives as material evidence of the visual news culture through which images of Colombia’s new female electorate circulated contemporaneously. Minor handling and age wear consistent with press use; very good condition. A compelling contemporary visual record of the first nationwide exercise of women’s suffrage in Colombia and of female voters’ participation in the plebiscite that established the constitutional basis for the National Front.

Item #16532

Price: $75.00