Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza

Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (27 January 1875 – 13 July 1942) was a Mexican journalist, activist, revolutionary, and teacher. She is best known for her opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz; her writings critiquing the Mexican state; and her advocacy for the rights of women, workers, and Indigenous people. She was a significant figure during the Mexican Revolution.

Gutiérrez's career as an activist began in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, where she wrote for several newspapers criticizing the Díaz regime. Because of a report she wrote concerning the mistreatment of mine workers, she was imprisoned for a year. After her release, she joined several liberal anti-Díaz groups and, beginning in 1898, associated with various prominent liberal figures. In 1901, she moved to the city of Guanajuato and, with Elisa Acuña, began publishing the anti-Díaz and anti-clerical periodical Vésper (transl. 'Evening Star') until the local archbishop seized her press, causing her to flee to Mexico City. In 1903, she was imprisoned again and later exiled to Laredo, Texas, where she briefly joined a group of other exiled dissidents before returning to Mexico.

In the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution, Gutiérrez supported Francisco I. Madero's presidential campaign against Díaz. Following Madero's arrest, Gutiérrez participated in a failed plot to seize a military installation and arrest Díaz, leading to her imprisonment until a general amnesty was declared upon Díaz's resignation. Following her release, she was invited to Morelos in late 1911 to join the Liberation Army of the South, also known as the Zapatistas, eventually becoming a colonel in the Zapatista army in 1913. Amidst the coup d'état against Madero and the subsequent rise and fall of Victoriano Huerta, Gutiérrez was imprisoned multiple times for her involvement with the Zapatista movement. She also founded the newspapers La Reforma (transl. 'Reform'), El Desmonte (transl. 'The Leveling'), and Alba (transl. 'Dawn').

After the revolution, Gutiérrez helped to organize several women's organizations and became a maestra rural (transl. 'rural teacher') in the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas, advocating for Indigenous populations there. She died of cirrhosis and an ovarian cyst in 1942, at the age of 67. Her writings have been noted for their confrontational pleito rhetoric, and historical interpretations of her life discuss the influence of liberal and anarchist ideologies on her actions, as well as her impact on women's participation in Mexican public discourse.