No te pierdas la presentación del libro “¿Una banca revolucionaria? La historia de Nora Castañeda y BanMujer” en la 21. ª edición de la FILVEN 2025. 📚 ¡Te esperamos!
Fundado en 2001 por la economista y activista feminista Nora Castañeda, el Banco de Desarrollo de la Mujer es un pilar clave en Venezuela para la independencia económica femenina.
- Angeleri, Sandra, Maria Mercedes Cobo e Yris Martin “¿Una banca revolucionaria? La historia de Nora Castañeda y BanMujer” El Perro y la Rana, Caracas, 2025
A Revolutionary Banker? The History of Nora Castañeda and the Women's Bank
ISBN 978-980-14-5771-8
By Sandra Angeleri
Prologue
This book is written from the perspective of someone who knew Nora Castañeda for decades and also invested a significant amount of her life interviewing others who also knew her at different stages of her life, distilling those interviews to assess what she felt contributed most to a kaleidoscope of that friend, professor, and colleague.
The author of this book, Sandra Angeleri, was someone special to Nora Castañeda. I met them both in the second half of the 1980s within the academic circles of the UCV, where we shared ideas and dreams. I also know that for Sandra, writing this book, compiling and systematizing everything that many of us had to say about Nora over the decades, was an emotionally and intellectually demanding task. It was a task that gave us an order and a framework through which to understand a figure who, ten years after her physical disappearance and the sowing of her life in our memories and hearts, her spirit, her legacy, and her actions remain in the affections and minds of thousands of Venezuelans.
There are many elements I could highlight about the life, work, character, and teachings inside and outside the classroom of the beloved professor and economist Nora Castañeda: her remarkable humility, her vocation for service, her unwavering revolutionary conviction, the gentleness with which she expressed her firm beliefs, her passionate dedication to serving the poorest, among many other things. However, I have chosen to highlight two, just two that—especially in the times we are going through—seem appropriate and significant as life practices in our times: honesty and consistency between her words and actions. Since the days of the Coordinator of Women's Non-Governmental Organizations (CONG-M), which existed from 1984 to 1992 and included women of the most diverse political tendencies and positions, Nora, in an affirmation of her belief in the value of supporting grassroots initiatives and unity in diversity, along with another professor, rented a space out of her own pocket so we could all meet and discuss upcoming actions to be developed within the framework of CONG-M. These coordination actions benefited workers fired for being pregnant or women victims of gender-based violence, or any other similar violence.
Over the years, renouncing any hint of vanity, she used part of her university professor's salary to support women in pain, people in situations of helplessness and need, and causes that benefited the poor, peasants, or the disadvantaged. That same behavior is reflected much later in this book, when we recall that she didn't receive her salary as president of the Women's Development Bank and what she did with it, which, with her always modest behavior, only a few people knew about, and which she never boasted about. She was a person of exceptional behavior who made all of us around her believe that it was simple and that we could do the same or something similar. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, she built emulation of her behavior and actions.
I don't know whether to call it political stubbornness or unwavering consistency between what she said and her actions in the public and private spheres. Which, for any politician, is an extremely difficult standard and, in most cases, unattainable, was a lifelong endeavor in which we didn't see her fail, although many of us will find it surprising. Perhaps that's what utopias are all about: trying not to give up on achieving what some call impossible. Perhaps it was from her behavior, which was exactly as her word indicated, and from her modesty and infinite selflessness that she was given the nickname "Red Nun," coined for her by Adícea Castillo, a classmate at school and at work (Faces UCV) and a politician in the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
Practices of honesty and consistency between thought and action are very rare and unusual, even more so in one of the fields where she spent her life: politics. Regardless of whether the reader shares her political vision of humanity or not, the exemplary life lesson that this exceptional Venezuelan woman has left us in her daily actions and in various spaces of academic and political power is undeniable. Therefore, as she used to say, "we are not perfect, but we are perfectible," and that, I add, is a task for each individual, putting an end to their human misery.
Honesty is that behavior or virtue that is longed for or expected and that in many cases is enormously, even seriously, lacking. You model more with your daily example than with thousands of words. Constantly seeing someone, in small and large ways, develop permanent practices of honesty is contagious; it spreads. It's a good virus, by the way, that one then wants to replicate in others
and others ad infinitum. 
For such coherence between thought and behavior, you will find in this book some keys to understanding this way of life. Among ordinary people, it is common to resort to a little white lie to get out of a situation, or in the case of the political class, not just the local ones, who tend to lie without much shame, and what can we say in these post-truth times, where the difficulty is finding and differentiating what is authentic, what is true? It was her practice, Nora's, to listen rather than take center stage, but when she spoke, it was impossible not to pay attention thoughtfully because her truths came through her voice. Words that, precisely because of this inner commitment to coherence between practice and action, she carefully chose, earning the respect and consideration of her audiences. I don't want to close these lines without mentioning that Nora enjoyed working in a team in which everyone was a protagonist, notable people, not for being famous but for their commitment to their work and women's rights, who accompanied her throughout the "Different Bank" experience, as Rosita Caldera, the creator of the slogan, summed it up at the time. These are some of them: Juanita Delgado, Anabella Uribe, Lena Espina, Eneida Castillo, Lídice Navas, Digna Lobatón(+), Mari Herrera(+), Zuraima Martínez(+), Reyna Arratia, Andrés Eloy Barrios, and me.
In the six chapters of this book, you will find a compilation and description of the life and work of an extraordinary Venezuelan woman who, I am convinced, inspires and will inspire other generations of women to continue the fight for rights, spaces, and vindications for all women without distinction.
Yris Martín M.
Sociologist. Magna Cum Laude, UCV.
Feminist. Order of Argelia Laya, Single Class
