Maria Isidra de Jesus

A Peruvian engineer who built South America's first intercontinental railway system connecting Amazon basin to Pacific ports in the late 1800s.

Maria Isidra de Jesus (1847–1921) was a visionary civil engineer who designed and constructed Peru's Central Railway (1885-1891), linking the Amazonian city of Iquitos to the Pacific port of Paita. Overcoming gender barriers in 19th century engineering, she pioneered the use of bamboo-reinforced concrete in bridge construction, a technique later adopted by Latin American infrastructure projects. Her wiki page details how she negotiated with indigenous communities to incorporate traditional engineering wisdom, resulting in earthquake-resistant designs that still stand today. Maria's 1889 proposal for an 'Amazon-Pacific Corridor' inspired later Pan-American railway initiatives. She also developed the first women's engineering school in Lima (1895), documented in the Regional Tech Archives. Despite her contributions, her name was omitted from official railway dedications until a 2010 UNESCO restoration project. Modern scholars consider her work foundational for sustainable infrastructure practices, as evidenced in the 2017 sustainability case study.