Victoria Garrón de Doryan

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Garrón and the second or maternal family name is Orozco.

Victoria Garrón de Doryan
Born	Victoria María Garrón Orozco (1920-10-08)8 October 1920 San José, Costa Rica
Died	30 July 2005(2005-07-30) (aged 84) San José, Costa Rica
Other names	Victoria Garrón Orozco de Doryan
Occupation(s)	educator, politician
Years active	1940–1985

Victoria Garrón de Doryan (8 October 1920 – 30 July 2005) was a Costa Rican educator and writer most known for serving as Second Vice President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990. She was the first woman to hold the post and during her tenure was acting president of the country over a dozen times. As a writer, she produced numerous biographies of historical Costa Ricans, as well as poetry.

Early life

Victoria María Garrón Orozco was born on 8 October 1920 in San José, Costa Rica to Claudia Orozco Casorla and Estanislao Garrón Lermitte. Her grandfather, François Garrón Lafont, was a pioneer in soap manufacture in Costa Rica. Her father's family were originally from France and she was encouraged to study European humanism and developed a passion for art and culture. She completed her primary education at Escuela Julia Lang and then graduated from secondary school at the Colegio Superior de Señoritas. Studying to be a teacher, she attended normal school, before completing a degree in literature and philosophy from the University of Costa Rica in 1937. Winning a scholarship to study abroad, she went to Paris and completed post-graduate work at the Central American Advanced School of Public Administration (Spanish: Escuela Superior de Administración Pública para la América Central (ESAPAC)) in social pediatrics.

Career

Returning to Costa Rica, Garrón began working as a teacher in secondary education, teaching at the Normal School of Heredia and the Anastasio Alfaro Lyceum and the Colegio Superior de Señoritas, both in San José. She worked with Emma Gamboa Alvarado to develop pedagogy in the country. She became the principal of the Anastasio Alfaro Lyceum and later joined the faculty of the University of Costa Rica, as president of the Graduate College of Letters and Philosophy. Garrón was a member of the Costa Rican Association of University Women, serving in numerous positions on the board and eventually serving as president of the organization. In 1949, she returned to France as a UNESCO fellow and became the Permanent Secretary of the Costa Rican Cooperative Commission for the organization. Garrón married Edward Doryan, and in 1951, the couple had their only child Eduardo.

In 1986, Garrón was elected to serve as the Second Vice President of Costa Rica under Óscar Arias Sánchez. Since 1949, the Costa Rican Constitution has provided that the Executive consist of an elected president and two vice presidents, as well as nineteen appointed cabinet members. Garrón was the first woman elected to the vice presidency and during her tenure to 1990 served as acting president fourteen times.

Garrón wrote poetry and one novel, but she was most known for her biographies of historic personalities of Costa Rica. She published a biography of Joaquín García Monge in 1971, Anastasio Alfaro in 1974, José María Zeledón "Brillo" in 1978, María Teresa Obregón Zamora in 1985, and in 2003 published a biography on her grandfather François Garrón, with the title La canción de la vida (Song of Life).

Death and legacy

Garrón died on 30 July 2005 at the Blanco Cervantes Hospital in San José, Costa Rica. She was buried in the Cemetery of Santo Domingo in Heredia. She is remembered as the first woman in either Central America or North America to hold the post of second vice president of a nation.

References

Bibliography

• Camacho De la O, Ana Lorena; Valitutti Chavarría, Gina (2007). "Victoria Garrón Orozco (1920-2005)". Mujeres destacadas de Costa Rica [Featured Women from Costa Rica] (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres. pp. 37–38. ISBN 978-9968-25-102-0.
• Garrón de Doryan, Victoria (1974). Anastasio Alfaro (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes. OCLC 9098479.
• Garrón de Doryan, Victoria (1978). José María Zeledón (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes. OCLC 5361672.
• Garrón de Doryan, Victoria (1985). María Teresa Obregón (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes. ISBN 978-9-977-59052-3.
• Koutnik, Jane (2012). Costa Rica-Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture. London, England: Kuperard. ISBN 978-1-85733-666-5.
• Pérez, Any (11 June 2000). "Banquero con corazón" [Banker with heart] (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Revista Dominical. La Nación. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
• Ramírez, Alexánder (8 March 2016). "Congreso condena exclusión de Chinchilla en afiche de Juventud" [Congress condemns exclusion of Chinchilla in youth poster] (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: CR Hoy. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
• Víquez Guzmán, Benedicto (11 September 2009). "Victoria Garrón Orozco". Heredia-costarica.zonalibre (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica. Retrieved 26 September 2017. Self-published but with citation to source materials.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• "Garrón, Victoria de Doryan". scriptorium.una.ac.cr (in Spanish). Heredia, Costa Rica: National University of Costa Rica. 2017. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
• "Memoria Ministerio de Educación Pública 1937–1938: Informes de los Directores de Segunda Enseñanza y Normal" [Report of the Ministry of Public Education 1937–1938: Reports of the Directors of Secondary and Normal Education] (PDF). Costa Rican Assembly (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica: Government of Costa Rica. 1938. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
• "Victoria Garrón de Doryan: entre las letras y la política" [Victoria Garrón de Doryan: between letters and politics]. La Nación (in Spanish). San José, Costa Rica. 31 July 2005. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
• "Victoria Garron de Doryan (Costa Rica):…para que exista la llama" [Victoria Garron de Doryan (Costa Rica): ... for there to be flame]. Letras Femeninas (in Spanish). 3 (1). Austin, Texas: Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, University of Texas: 21–24. Spring 1977. ISSN 0277-4356. JSTOR 41496139.