The Efígie da República (Portuguese for Effigy of the Republic) is used as a national personification, both, in Brazil and in Portugal, symbolizing the Republic.

The effigy is a representation of a young woman wearing a crown of bay leaves in Roman style. It is present in allegoric paintings and sculptures displayed in government buildings throughout Brazil, and engraved on Brazilian real coins and banknotes. It was first used as a pro-Republican icon in the 19th century, inspired by France's Marianne. After the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, it became an important symbol of the newly formed Republic.

The Portuguese Efígie da República is represented as a young woman wearing the phrygian cap, modeled after the Liberty of Eugène Delacroix' Liberty Leading the People. As a national distinction, the Portuguese Republic is represented wearing green and red clothes.

The Efígie da República was adopted as a Portuguese State official symbol after the 5 October 1910 revolution, when the Republic substituted the Monarchy in Portugal. Before that, it was used as a political symbol by the Portuguese republicans. Later, the sculpture of Simões de Almeida, representing the Busto da República (Bust of the Republic), became the standard for official use. A reproduction of the Bust of the Republic had to be present, in prominence, in all public buildings and was also present, as an effigy, in the escudo coins. It was considered, by the new republican regime, as a national symbol of Portugal, like the national coat of arms or the national flag.

Susana María del Carmen Villarán de la Puente is a centre-left politician in Peru, a former presidential candidate, and in municipal elections in 2010 became the first woman to be elected Mayor of Lima.

Born in Lima on 16 August 1949, she is vice-president of the Social Force Decentralisation Party (Partido Descentralista Fuerza Social, FS) and formerly worked as a journalist and a secondary school teacher.

She was a member of Lima's Metropolitan Municipality from 1983 to 1985, and co-founded with former mayor Alfonso Barrantes Lingán the Vaso de leche (glass of milk) program promoting child nutrition.

In 2000 Villarán was elected national co-ordinator of the Party for Social Democracy (Partido por la Democracia Social - Compromiso Perú, PDS). She became Minister for Women and Social Development during Valentín Paniagua's transitory government in 2001, and in 2002 she assumed the role of Police Ombudsman (Defensora de la Policía).

From 2002 to 2005, she served as a member of the Organization of American States's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), serving as rapporteur on child rights and later on women's rights, as Second Vicepresident of the Commission in 2004, and First Vicepresident in 2005. She took part in IACHR human rights and conflict missions in Colombia and Guatemala.

Fernando Belaúnde Terry (October 7, 1912 – June 4, 2002) was President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms (1963–1968 and 1980–1985). Deposed by a military coup in 1968, he was re-elected in 1980 after eleven years of military rule. He was recognized for his personal integrity and his commitment to the democratic process.

The second of four children, Belaúnde was born in Lima into an upper-class family of Spanish forebears. His father, Rafael Belaúnde Diez Canseco, a teacher, served as President of the Council of Ministers; his grandfather was a finance minister; and one of his great-grandfathers was a President of the Republic.

During the dictatorship of Augusto B. Leguía, the persecution for the political activities of his father Rafael and his uncle Víctor Andrés Belaúnde prompted the family to move to France in 1924, where Fernando attended high school and received his initial University education in engineering.

From 1930 to 1935, Belaúnde studied architecture in the United States, where he first attended the University of Miami (where his father was also teaching), and in 1935 transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he obtained his degree as an architect. He later moved to Mexico and worked as an architect for a brief time, but returned to Peru in 1936 and started his professional career as an architect designing private homes. In 1937, he started a magazine called El Arquitecto Peruano ("Peruvian Architect"), which dealt with interior design, general urbanism and housing problems the country was facing. This also gave way to the Architects Association of Peru and the Urbanism Institute of Peru.

Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. (c. 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians." His extensive writings, the most famous A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias, chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies and focus particularly on the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the Indigenous peoples.

Clara Campoamor (1888–1972) was a Spanish politician and feminist best known for her advocacy for women's rights and suffrage during the writing of the Spanish constitution of 1931. A child of a working class family, Campoamor began work as a seamstress at age 13, later working in a number of government positions before securing entry to law school at the University of Madrid. She became active in a number of women's organizations before standing for election as a member of the 1931 Constituent Assembly, to which she and two other women were elected despite that Spanish women could not vote at the time. Her advocacy led to the inclusion of language in the 1931 constitution of Spain that guaranteed equality between men and women. She later lost her parliamentary seat and briefly served as a government minister before fleeing the country during the Spanish Civil War. Campoamor died in exile in Switzerland.

Campoamor was born in Madrid to a working-class family. She had to begin working as a seamstress at age 13, but continued to study part-time on the side, eventually seeking to pass the test that would guarantee her entry into law school. In the interim, she worked her way up through a number of government positions, first with the Post Office in San Sebastian in 1909, then as a typing teacher in Madrid in 1914. As a teacher, she began to become involved in the Madrid political scene, taking a second job with a liberal newspaper.