Flora Botton
Flora Botton (born 1 March 1933) is a sinologist and gender studies scholar who is naturalized as Spanish, was born in Greece, and who has lived and worked in Mexico since 1949. She was a co-founder of the gender studies and the founder of the Oriental studies programs at El Colegio de México. She was one of the first academics to focus on China in Mexico and Latin America. Her works have widely been influential in the region and she was one of the founders of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África (Latin-American  Association of Asian and African Studies). Early life and education. Flora Botton was born on 1 March 1933 in Thessaloniki, Greece, to Sara and Jaime Botton, who dealt in the textile industry. Her family were part of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora. When she was seven, Thessaloniki became an occupied territory, first by Italy and then in 1941 by the Nazis. Assisted by friends, the family fled to Athens which was still under the control of Benito Mussolini's forces. In early 1944, the Nazis took over the occupation and in April, Flora’s brother, parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins  were arrested in the middle of the night and transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. With the Allied Forces closing in, plans were made to transport prisoners to Austria. One week before the British liberation of the camp, three train loads carrying prisoners left the camp on 6, 7, and 9 April 1945. Close to five thousand evacuees in Botton's group were abandoned at Magdeburg where they were discovered by a Ninth United States Army soldier on patrol on 13 April. The Ninth Army had arrived in Magdeburg two days prior during the assault on the Ruhr pocket . Cared for by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Botton family was evacuated in the summer of 1945 to Brussels, Belgium. After three months in a refugee camp, they were sent to Marseille, France, and continued on to Bari, Italy, finally arriving back in Athens in October. Jaime re-established his store, and Botton continued her education at the American Community Schools until 1949. That year at the end of the school term, the family moved to Mexico City, motivated by post-war tensions in Greece. She completed her high schooling at the Colegios Garside, one of the  first bilingual academies in Mexico. In 1950, she enrolled at Mexico City College, earning a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, cum laude, in 1952 and continuing her studies there, completing a master's degree (also cum laude) in 1953. Furthering her education, Botton moved to Paris and studied European history and Spanish literature for a year at the Sorbonne. Career. In 1955, Botton returned to Mexico City and began her career teaching in a private finishing school. She was hired to teach philosophy at her alma mater in 1956. In 1964, she was accepted into the first master's degree  program in Oriental studies at El Colegio de México (Colmex). Graduating in 1969, she became the founder of the Asian and African Studies Department at Colmex. This was the first academic department in Latin America to focus on Chinese studies. Between 1973 and 1975 she completed post-graduate studies in modern and classical Chinese language, history, and culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, and began her doctorate at the University of Michigan. Returning to Mexico, Botton studied French language and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico  (UNAM) and completed her doctorate in linguistics and literature at Colmex. Her thesis, "Los juegos fantásticos: estudio de los elementos fantásticos en cuentos de tres narradores hispanoamericanos" was completed in 1977 and published in 1983 by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Botton was one of the founding editors of "Fem" in 1976 and remained on the editorial board until 1990. That same year, she became one of the founders of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África (Latin-American Association of Asian and African Studies). Between 1978 and 1980 she served as a cultural attaché at the  Mexican Embassy in Beijing, China. She returned to Mexico in 1981 and served as the director of the journal "" until 1987. Involved in the feminist movement, Botton founded, along with and Elena Urrutia, the Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer (PIEG, Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Program) at Colmex in 1983, which at the time was not favorably considered by many academics in Mexico or Latin America. In 1991, she became the director of the Center for Asian and African Studies at Colmex, serving until 1997. In addition to teaching at Colmex, Botton, a naturalized Spaniard, has been a visiting  professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Harvard University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, and Renmin University of China in Beijing, among many others. Awards and recognition. Botton is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National System of Researchers). In 2012, a group of her students published "China: estudios y ensayos en honor de Flora Botton Beja" (China, Studies and Essays in Honor of Flora Botton Beja) in recognition of her influence over Sinology in Latin America. She was honored in Chile in 2016 for her work in founding the Asociación  Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África (Latin-American Association of Asian and African Studies). In 2021, Arizpe, Botton, and Urrutia (posthumously) were recognized for their founding of the gender studies program at Colmex. Selected works. Botton has extensively published varied works on China. Her preliminary works dealt with Chinese philosophy, but she moved into studies of history and then contemporary cultural and social issues. She has worked as an interpreter and translator for international organizations, including the United Nations, UNESCO, and United Nations Environment Programme, throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. In addition to teaching translation courses  at Colmex, the French Alliance of Mexico City, the , and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she has translated and published both academic and fiction works.