Virginia Bolten
Virginia Bolten (1870–1960) was an German Argentine journalist and anarchist feminist activist. An anarchist agitator from an early age, she became a leading figure among the working women of Rosario, organising for the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) and leading the first women's strike in the country's history. After being recruited into the anarchist movement in Buenos Aires by the Italian anarchist Pietro Gori, she joined some of the country's first anarchist women's organisations and established one of the world's first anarchist feminist periodicals: La Voz de la Mujer. After years of agitation in Argentina, under the 1902 Law of Residence, she was deported to Uruguay. There she continued her feminist activism, establishing the periodical La Nueva Senda and the radical feminist association Emancipación. Following sustained conflict with socialist feminists, the anarchist feminist movement in Uruguay fell into obscurity. Bolten lived the rest of her life in Montevideo, occasionally speaking at demonstrations, until her death in 1960. Biography Virginia Bolten was born in 1870 in San Luis, Argentina, the daughter of a German liberal who had been exiled from Europe. After her parents divorced, while she was still a teenager, she moved out to the industrial city of Rosario and got a job as a shoemaker. She was later employed in the Argentine Sugar Refinery, but was arrested after being caught distributing anarchist propaganda to the women working there. In the Argentine anarchist movement Part of the second generation of anarchist feminists, Bolten quickly developed a reputation as a "great orator" and an "indefatigable organiser", capable of drawing in large crowds to see her speak. Together with Juana Rouco Buela and María Collazo, Bolten became one of the few leading women in the Argentine anarchist movement. As a member of the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA), she travelled throughout the country on speaking tours, encouraging women to become involved in anarchist politics. As an anarchist feminist, she was disinterested in the liberal and socialist feminists' calls for universal suffrage, advocating instead for the revolutionary abolition of the existing system rather than incremental reforms to it. In 1889, Bolten led Argentina's first women's strike, carried out by seamstresses in Rosario. The strike was successful, resulting in the workers winning a 20% salary increase. The following year, she led the city's International Workers' Day demonstrations with a black flag. Her activism drew the attention of the Italian anarchist Pietro Gori, who recruited Bolten into the anarchist movement in Buenos Aires. Inspired by the feminist writings of the Catalan anarchist Teresa Mañé, printed by Errico Malatesta's newspaper La Questione Sociale, by 1895, the first anarchist women's groups were being established in Argentina. These organisations produced a new generation of radical feminists, among whom Bolten became especially active. With Gori's help, Bolten founded one of the world's first anarchist feminist publications, La Voz de la Mujer (). With Bolten as one of its editors, the newspaper published nine issues from 8 January 1896 until 1 January 1897; with Bolten later reviving it in Rosario