Juana Manuela Gorriti Zuviria (15 June 1818 – 6 November 1892)[1] was an Argentine writer with extensive political and literary links to Bolivia and Peru.

[2] In La quena, Gorriti challenged the notion of poverty, ignorance, tyranny, and the oppression of women, writing, "A day shall come in which man's science will discover those treasures; but by then men will be free and equal, and they shall use wealth to serve humanity!

[4] Juana Manuela Gorriti was born on 15 June 1818, in Rosario de la Frontera, in the province of Salta in the north of Argentina.

Her family supported the Unitarians during the politically challenging era of Juan Manuel de Rosas, a conservative governor of Buenos Aires Province.

[7] Goritti's family settled in Tarija, Bolivia, where she met her future husband, Manuel Isidro Belzú, who was a captain in the Bolivian Army at the time.

These gatherings inspired works such as Teresa González de Fanning's essays advocating for female education and emancipation, highlighting their significant role in shaping feminist discourse in the region.

For instance, in her writings on fashion and societal pressures, Gorriti questioned the emphasis on superficial appearances as a measure of female worth.

She wrote about these events in numerous articles and short stories, later collected and published in the Album of Lima founded by herself and her friend and fellow writer Carolina Freyre de Jaimes.

Despite facing challenges such as divorce and exile, Gorriti remained a respected and influential figure, celebrated for her literary and social contributions.

Two of her most famous short stories are La hija del mazorquero and El lucero de manantial; both are melodramatic tales with a strong anti-Rosista political message.

Both works are set in melodrama, a hallmark of Gorriti's style, and serve as allegories for Argentina's national identity during the controversial regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829–1852).

[20] Gorriti also founded the newspaper The Dawn of Argentina (La Alborada del Plata) with fellow poet Numa Pompilio Llona.

[4] Her intermittent three-year stay in Lima resulted in the publication of La Quena, a short but influential novella, in the prestigious newspaper El Comercio.

Later, as Peruvian politics began to stabilize, she contributed to the Revista de Lima with stories like El Angel Caido and Si haces mal no esperes bien.