Rhina Toruño-Haensly was a scholar and teacher. She earned two doctorates: one in philosophy and a second in Latin American literature. She began her career as a professor of philosophy in El Salvador. Near the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War, she immigrated to the United States and began a new career in academics in the field of Spanish language and Latin American literature. She published several books, wrote many scholarly papers, and delivered numerous presentations about 20th century Latin American writers. Her best-known scholarly work is about Elena Garro, the Mexican playwright and author who was married to Octavio Paz. In 1995, Toruño-Haensly was inducted into the Academia Salvadoreña de la Lengua (Salvadoran Academy of Language), which is a branch of the Royal Academy of Spanish in Spain. She earned numerous other honors for her teaching and scholarship over her life.
Education and early scholarship in philosophy
Rhina Toruño-Haensly was born in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador in 1940 and grew up there with her five brothers and sisters. Her parents were Juan Felipe Toruño and Juana Contreras de Toruño. Her father was an author, poet, and journalist, first in Nicaragua and later in El Salvador.
Toruño-Haensly attended high school at Colegio Santa Inés from which she received her teaching certification. She taught at Colegio Sagrado Corazón, a private Catholic elementary school for three years, and then at Colegio La Asunción, a private secondary school.
Toruño-Haensly began her scholarly career in philosophy by earning a Bachelors of Art in Philosophy in 1971 from the University of El Salvador, or Universidad de El Salvador, the most prominent university in El Salvador. She pursued her graduate studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a major research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. She earned a Masters of Art in Philosophy in 1973 and a Ph.D. in French Contemporary Philosophy in 1978. Her dissertation was, “Emmanuel Mounier's Idea of Society.” Toruño-Haensly received the Emmanuel Mounier International Prize, which was awarded to support doctoral research in philosophy. In addition, her studies were supported by a scholarship for postgraduate studies awarded jointly by University of El Salvador and the Catholic University of Louvain. During her studies in Europe, she became fluent in French.
Toruño-Haensly returned to El Salvador in 1976 (while also working to complete her dissertation) to teach philosophy at the University of El Salvador. Over the period 1975 through 1978, she published five scholarly papers in philosophy. (See the subsection, "Scholarly papers in philosophy," in the Publications section below.) She taught courses in modern philosophy, existentialism, contemporary French philosophy, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Her academic accomplishments led to promotion to the rank of Professor at the University of El Salvador.
Transition to a career in Latin American literature
The Salvadoran Civil War (1979 through 1992) disrupted Toruño-Haensly's academic career in El Salvador. She was a member of the Salvadoran University Catholic Action (ACUS), a social Christian organization. While the majority of members of ACUS, including Toruño-Haensly, were not sympathizers of the leftist guerilla organizations that formed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), some members were. Hence, members of ACUS became targets of the state security forces and paramilitary death squads. When Toruño-Haensly learned that she was on a death list, she decided to leave El Salvador for the safety of herself and her two sons.
Toruño-Haensly was awarded an international fellowship from the Fédération Internationale des Femmes Diplomées des Universités (International Association of University Women) based in Geneva, Switzerland. This fellowship was awarded for post-doctoral multidisciplinary research combining Latin American literature and philosophy. The one year fellowship provided the financial support for scholarly work as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California, where Toruño-Haensly moved in fall 1981. Toruño-Haensly and her sons learned English from scratch on moving to the U.S. Thus, she added fluency in a third language to her linguistic skills.
Toruño-Haensly's scholarly interest in Latin American literature began earlier while she was studying philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain. She commuted from Louvain to Paris to take graduate classes at the University of Paris-Sorbonne in France. She earned a Master of Arts in Latin American literature in 1976.