Nela Martínez

Martínez died at the age of 91 in Havana, Cuba in 2004. Her ashes were returned to Quito, Ecuador where they were buried in the El Batán Cemetery, in the presence of her children, grandchildren, and friends.

Martínez founded several notable publications, including: the Yucanchi Galpa, the first Quechua-language newspaper in Ecuador, and Nuestra Palabra in the 1960s, the first feminist newspaper in Ecuador.

In 1951 she married the French revolutionary and antifascist Raymond Mériguet (1910–1988), with whom she remained until his death. They had three children: Juan Cristóbal, Mauricio and Nela Meriguet Martínez

On May 28, 1944, she took an active role in the Glorious May Revolution, which toppled the dictatorship of Carlos Arroyo del Río. She orchestrated the takeover of the Government Palace, and for two days she was in charge of the Ecuadorian government, thereby becoming the second female leader in its history (after Marieta de Veintemilla, the niece of Ignacio de Veintimilla). She was never officially named president however. In 1945 she became the first female congresswoman of the National Assembly of Ecuador during the second term of José María Velasco Ibarra.

Later Martínez had a relationship with Ricardo Paredes, who was regarded as the "Apostle of Ecuadorian Communism", and who in 1926 founded the Socialist Party-Broad Front (which changed its name to the Communist Party of Ecuador in 1931). Martínez and Paredes had a son named Leonardo Paredes Martínez.

Nela Martínez Espinosa (November 24, 1912 – July 30, 2004) was an Ecuadorian communist, political militant, activist, and writer.

Martínez married her mentor, fellow communist and celebrated novelist Joaquín Gallegos Lara (1909–1947) of the Guayaquil Group, who had had disabilities since birth. At the age of 21, she told her father: "I intend to marry Joaquín, who is disabled". When her father remarked "Why don’t you become a charity nun?" She had said "I want to fight against injustice, and if nature was unjust with him, then I will fight against nature". Sadly their marriage was brief and ended in divorce. Joaquín Lara left an unfinished novel titled Guandos when he died in 1947; Nela Martinez completed the book and it was published in 1982. Both writers are credited as the authors of Guandos.