Maria Celeste Jiménez Riveros is a Chilean criminal lawyer who has been working in criminal law and animal rights for more than 30 years. A specialist in criminal litigation and criminology, she worked for 15 years in the Public Defender’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office of Chile. In parallel, she has dedicated herself to the study and teaching of animal law, as an activist, politician, and teacher around the world.
In 1994 she was admitted to the Law School of the University of Talca, immediately focusing on challenging the anthropocentric paradigm. Jiménez wrote her first research paper in 1999, “Legal Status of Animals: Ethical and Dogmatic Analysis,” opening the discussion on the new paradigm for animals and nature in Chile. She was inspired by her dear friend, lawyer Godofredo Stutzin, who in 1970 wrote about the legal theory of the rights of nature.
Dr. Jiménez obtained a master’s degree in criminal law from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, and the University of Talca, in 2012. In 2013 she began a successful career in criminal litigation, jury trials, cross-examination, and criminal investigation, studying at Acceso Capacitación at California Western School of Law, and in 2015 graduated with honors from the Master of Laws program in civil and criminal litigation at California Western School of Law, San Diego, California. In 2019, Dr. Jiménez was named Ambassador of the Latin American Institute of Justice at CWSL. Since 2017 she has been the director of the AnimaNaturalis Chile Foundation, working on animal rights activism in Latin America. Dr. Jiménez has been invited to several congressional sessions to speak on animal rights policies in Chile and other countries, and in 2009 she drafted the first bill to change the legal status of animals in Chile.
In 2021, she started a political career in Chile, running as a candidate for the Constitutional Convention and then for Senate. She did not win, but she achieved a historic 80,000 votes in a campaign focused on animal law and the rights of nature, multispecies families, and the climate crisis, with the slogan: “Animalism is political.” She currently teaches animal rights and the rights of nature at various universities in Latin America.