Rita Cetina Gutiérrez died on March 11, 1908, in Mérida, Yucatán, leaving behind a legacy as one of Mexico's earliest feminist educators.
Rita Cetina Gutiérrez died on March 11, 1908, in her native city of Mérida, Yucatán, at the age of 61. By the time of her death, she had spent nearly four decades dedicated to the cause of women's education and social advancement in Mexico, having founded and directed schools, edited and contributed to feminist periodicals, and written poetry that captured both personal sentiment and social critique.
Her death marked the end of an era for the pioneering generation of Yucatecan feminists who had begun organizing in the 1870s, but her institutional and intellectual legacy persisted well beyond her lifetime. The schools she helped establish continued to educate young women, and the model of combining education with published advocacy that she pioneered through La Siempreviva influenced subsequent feminist and educational movements throughout Mexico.
In recognition of her enduring importance, Cetina has been honored posthumously in numerous ways, including having schools, streets, and a Mexican federal scholarship program—the Beca Rita Cetina Gutiérrez, launched under President Claudia Sheinbaum's administration in 2024—named after her. Her life stands as a testament to the transformative power of education and to the courage required to challenge deeply entrenched gender norms in nineteenth-century Mexican society.