Alba Roballo

Alba Roballo was an Uruguayan lawyer, poet, and politician, who served three consecutive terms from 1958 to 1971 in the Senate of Uruguay and a fourth term in the early 1990s. After graduating with a law degree from the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, she began to write. In 1942, her first book, Se levanta el sol, won first prize from the Ministry of Education. Later she founded two journals, Mujer Batllista and El Pregón. In 1954 she became the first woman to sit on the Montevideo Departmental Council and was elected Senator for the Colorado Party. A prominent Afro-Uruguayan, she was the first woman in South America to serve as a cabinet minister, appointed in 1968; she resigned this post following authoritarian actions by the government. She was a founder of the Frente Amplio in 1971 and though she ran for re-election, that year she was defeated.