Cecilia Calderón Prieto (born 5 December 1949) is an Ecuadorian economist and former politician representing

Guayas Province Guayas (, ) is a coastal Provinces of Ecuador, province in Ecuador. It is bordered to the west by Manabí Province, Manabí, Santa Elena Province, Ecuador, Santa Elena, and the Pacific Ocean (as the Gulf of Guayaquil); to the east by Los Ríos ...

belonging to the Alfarista Radical Front (FRA).

Early life

Cecilia Calderón was born in

Guayaquil Guayaquil (), officially Santiago de Guayaquil, is the largest city in Ecuador and also the nation's economic capital and main port. The city is the capital (political), capital of Guayas Province and the seat of Guayaquil Canton. The city is ...

on 5 December 1949, the daughter of Abdón Calderón Muñoz and Rosita Prieto. Even in her youth, Calderón leaned towards politics, actively volunteering for the presidential campaign of Andrés Córdova, the Liberal candidate for the 1968 Ecuadorian general election. She attended and graduated from the Catholic University of Guayaquil as an economist.

Leadership of the FRA

During the Ecuadorian general election of 1978–79, Calderón actively participated in the campaign of Abdón Calderón Muñoz, her father and head and founder of the FRA. Shortly after the first round of the election, Calderon Muñoz was murdered on the orders of the military dictatorship on 29 November 1978, leaving Calderón as leader of the party, making Calderon the first woman in Ecuador to assume leadership of a political party. Calderón fought for justice for her father, which was granted when President Jaime Roldós Aguilera declared former government minister Bolívar Jarrín Cahueñas guilty of the murder, marking the first time in Ecuador's history that a political crime had been sanctioned by a government of Ecuador. In the provincial elections for

of 1980, Calderón was elected the first female member of the Provincial Council and because of the high number of votes for her, she won the Vice President's seat in the Council. Calderón was then in 1986 elected to the National Congress of Ecuador, becoming the only woman to sit on that congress. She faced some discomfort on account of her gender, such as the lack of a female bathroom that led her to ask the President of the Congress for a key to a private bathroom. In the , Calderón was reelected to Congress, one of only two members representing the FRA. In 1991, she accrued much criticism for criticizing the high budget of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces.

Citations

References

Books * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Calderon, Cecelia 1949 births Living people 20th-century Ecuadorian economists 20th-century Ecuadorian women politicians 20th-century Ecuadorian politicians 21st-century Ecuadorian women politicians 21st-century Ecuadorian politicians Politicians from Guayaquil Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil alumni Alfarista Radical Front politicians Ecuadorian women economists