She was born in Panama City in Republic of Panama in 1942.
Eleta studied Fine Arts at Finch College and then later studied Social Investigation in The New School of Social Research in New York.
Her study of Social Investigation lead her to tell the life stories of a variety of different people in varying social classes throughout Latin America.
In the 1970’s, she took courses at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York with Ken Heyman and George Tice, who are were both photographers.
She then went on to teach at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica.
She currently lives and works in Portobelo, Panama and has done so since the mid 1970s.She is known for is a photograph she captured in 1977 in Panama, entitled "The One with the Feather Duster".
It was showcased at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles during the Radical Women in Latin American Art exhibit in Winter of 2017.