Argelia Laya

Argelia Laya (10 July 1926 – 27 November 1997) was an Afro-Venezuelan schoolteacher, women's rights activist, guerrilla fighter, and politician. A supporter of women's labor, legal, and reproductive rights, as well as various forms of left-wing politics, she was a founding member of the Movement for Socialism (Spanish: Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS), the first woman to serve as its secretary general, and, when she became the party's president in 1990, the first woman to serve as the president of a political party in Venezuela.

Born in San José de Río Chico (now San José de Barlovento), Laya attended the Miguel Antonio Caro Normal School, where she participated in numerous extracurriculars and created a national plan for equality in education. She became a schoolteacher and, after the 1945 Venezuelan coup d'état, was assigned to carry out a literacy campaign in La Guaira State. When dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez came to power following the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état, she helped organize opposition to his regime while studying philosophy and the education sciences at the Pedagogical Institute of Caracas. She graduated in 1955 and taught mental health classes at a private high school.

During the 1950s, Laya joined the Communist Party of Venezuela (Spanish: Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV), helping to organize resistance in the COTA 905 neighborhood of Caracas during the 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état, which overthrew Pérez Jiménez. After this coup, she was elected as a federal district councilor for Caracas and as an alternate deputy for the state of Miranda. Soon after, she joined the PCV's armed guerrilla wing, fighting in the mountains of Lara until 1964.

After helping found the MAS in 1971, Laya advocated for women within the organization through the MAS-linked Socialist Women organization. Throughout the 1980s, she advocated for women's rights in Venezuela and abroad, and in 1988, she unsuccessfully ran as the MAS candidate for governor of Miranda. Upon becoming the MAS party president, she helped set up a network of Municipal Women's Centers in cities across the country. After her death, numerous buildings and organizations were named after her. Many consider her to have been an important figure in the Venezuelan women's rights movement.