Ángela Acuña Braun,ÁngelaAcuñ also known as Ángela Acuña de Chacón, (2 October 1888 – 10 October 1983), a Costa Rican lawyer, women's rights pioneer and ambassador, was the first woman to graduate as a lawyer in Central America. Orphaned at the age of 12, she was raised by her maternal aunt and uncle, attending elementary school and beginning high school in Costa Rica. She continued her education in France and England, gaining exposure to the ideas of women's rights. Returning to Costa Rica in 1912, she published articles in support of women's equality. She attended the boys' lyceum or high school where she passed the bachillerato, a prerequisite for entering law school. She embarked on law studies in 1913, leading to a bachelor's degree in 1916. As women were barred from entering the profession, Acuña immediately presented a reform to the civil code allowing this, which was adopted.
Agitating for women's suffrage, Acuña pressed lawmakers to enfranchise women, but for many years was unsuccessful in her demands. After a two-year stay in the United States, where she attended conferences in support of women's rights, she returned to Costa Rica in 1923 and founded the Liga Feminista Costarricense (Costa Rican Feminist League), while resuming her law studies. In 1925, she earned her licenciatura degree with honors, becoming the first woman lawyer not only in Costa Rica but in the whole of Central America. Between 1926 and 1928, she studied aviculture in Brussels and then returned to Costa Rica, where she married. Her law practice focused on the rights of retired teachers, but her primary concern was to press for progress on women's rights and for revisions to the civil code for the protection of children. Acuña founded the Association of University Women of Costa Rica and the Costa Rican chapters of the Pan American Round Table, the Unión de Mujeres Americanas and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
In her later diplomatic career, Acuña was the Costa Rican delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women from 1941 to 1954. In 1958, she was appointed as the first woman ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), where she served for two years, before becoming one of the inaugural members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), remaining on the commission through 1972. Her legal specialty was in international human rights law, including the protection of women and children. She made numerous studies of the law and its implications for women and juveniles. Most of her writings were on legal issues, but she worked for two decades on an encyclopedia of Costa Rican women and founded two feminist journals. She was honored with the Benemérita de la Patria (Meritorious Service to the Homeland) in 1982 for her service to the country.
Early life
Ángela Adela Acuña Braun was born on 2 October 1888 in Cartago to Adela Braun Bonilla and Ramón Acuña Corrales. Her mother's father, Juan Braun Rôsler, was of German descent. After her father died in 1894 and her mother's death six years later, Acuña was cared for by her aunt, Rafaela Braun Bonilla, and uncle, General Rafael Villegas Arango. She attended elementary school at Escuela Superior de Niñas Nº2 (Girls' School Nº 2), now Escuela Julia Lang, and then between 1901 and 1905 studied at the Colegio Superior de Señoritas (girls' high school). In 1906, Acuña earned a scholarship to study in Paris at the Institution de jeunes filles Morel de Fos (Morel de Fos Girls' school), which catered to foreign students between 1890 and 1920. She lived in France, and later in Belgium, with the Plenipotentiary Minister of Costa Rica, Marquis Manuel María de Peralta and his wife, Countess Josephine-Jehanne de Clérembault de Soer, a Belgian aristocrat. Between 1909 and 1910, she studied at the Priory Institute in London and learned about Europe's suffrage movement.