Carmen Casco de Lara Castro

Carmen Casco de Lara Castro was a pioneering Paraguayan educator, politician, and advocate for human rights, women’s rights, empowerment, and equality. She was also an outspoken opponent of the repressive Paraguayan regime under Alfredo Stroessner. After a career in teaching from the 1930s to 1965, she was elected to serve on the 1967 Constitutional Assembly, where she made her goal to add basic human rights to the Constitution. Casco notably founded the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights of Paraguay in 1967, the first independent human rights organization in Latin America, for which she served as president until she passed in 1993.

Over the course of her political engagement as a senator and then as president of the Senate, Casco was instrumental in passing legislation for pay equity and maternity rights. A year before her death in 1993, she was honored by the United Nations for her contributions to human rights and humanity, and later the Paraguayan government would issue a stamp in her name in 2000.