- Josefina Villafañe de Martínez-Alvarez, M.D. (b. 1890), Puerto Rican physician, suffragist, feminist. Dr. Villafañe came to Baltimore from Puerto Rico to study at the Peabody Conservatory of Music but became interested in medicine instead. “I wanted,” she says, “to become a pioneer woman in medicine back in Puerto Rico ... to help improve the health of the poor people, the jibaros [peasants] in particular.” In 1911 she graduated with honors from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and returned to Puerto Rico to begin practicing pediatrics, obstetrics, and gynecology. She found that 33 % of Puerto Ricans were suffering from TB and developed a method of detecting the disease in people suspected of having it. Dr. Villafañe co-founded the Liga Social Sufragista de Puerto Rico (Social League of Puerto Rican Suffrage), which worked to obtain the vote for Puerto Rican women; women’s suffrage became a reality in Puerto Rico in 1932. At age 95 Dr. Villafañe asserted, “I have been and still am a feminist, and I support all feminist movements in Puerto Rico.”
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