This article profiles Juana P. Manso, who was a writer, translator, journalist, teacher and precursor of feminism in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. In 1840 she moved with her family to Montevideo (Uruguay), exiled under the regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who was governing the territory of the United Provinces of the River Plate. During Rosas' conservative government in Argentina, liberals were persecuted and many had to flee into exile. Subsequently, due to political pressure from Rosas, the Manso family moved to Rio de Janeiro, returning some time later to Montevideo. In Rio de Janeiro, Juana married and traveled with her husband around the United States and Cuba. Later, in 1853, she returned from exile to Buenos Aires, but without her husband; this was followed by another attempt to live in Brazil (in 1854) and she finally settled in Buenos Aires in 1859. In a River Plate area still strongly influenced by the Hispanic tradition, until the end of the nineteenth century women were confined to the domestic sphere, the domain of biological reproduction and raising children. It was expected that women would devote themselves to domestic and family duties. For their part, men would be providers of economic sustenance and honor. For this reason, women's equality of capacity and opportunity, their right to self-fulfillment and personal development were excluded from public discourse. The presence of Juana Manso in River Plate culture can be analyzed through her writing and the dissemination of ideas, her concerns with the emancipation of women, her search for an education that from an early age would employ teaching practices free of dogmatic or moral constraints, and that would emancipate thinking rather than mold it according to social conventions. These aspects and the teaching practices that each one fostered are analyzed in this article. (Contains 27 notes.)