Luisa Capetillo

Luisa Capetillo circa 1919 wearing men's clothes

Luisa Capetillo (October 28, 1879 – April 10, 1922) was one of Puerto Rico's most famous labor leaders. She was a labor movement organizer and a writer who pushed for equal rights for women's rights, free love and human emancipation.

Quotes

A Nation of Women (1911)

Original Spanish title Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer

• la mujer es apta para todo.
  • women are capable of everything and anything
  • "La Mujer en la época primitiva"

• Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan.
  • Let us study and prepare our generation for the future struggles, which lie ahead.

• Si la mujer estuviera convenientemente ilustrada, educada y emancipada de formulismos rutinarios, la politica de los pueblos seria distinta
  • If women were appropriately enlightened, educated and emancipated from routine formulism, the political life of most nations would be different

• No hay duda que la primera y mejor escuela es el hogar. La mejor y superior maestra para el niño, es, la madre instruida.
  • No doubt, the first and best school is the home. The best and most superior teacher for the child is an educated mother

• I refuse to accept the assertion of any historian who erroneously believes that women have no right to use their freedom without being considered corrupt or immoral, while men have been able to do whatever they want and indulge the most absurd and ridiculous whims, without being judged, repudiated or prevented from going where they choose, with no concern about not being paid attention to, respected or sought after. We are going to put an end to those unequal laws-where the few have a lot and the many have a little-in order to finally secure peace for the just and achieve the truth and justice that our sex deserves.

• Although we are all brothers, some die of hunger and of foodstuffs, clothing and shoes. And with so many naked and bare-while what is useful and necessary rots at the depots and warehouses

• My great worry is the problem of poverty…Instead of prisons, I would have schools, art and vocational academies, free trade, free love, the abolition of marriage and the substitution of private property for public property.

• Education is the mother of freedom; science is her eldest daughter; and her sisters, tolerance and discretion, with rights and responsibilities.

• In the middle of great abundance, and without having studied the social question, I believed that everybody had the right to be clean and clothed, to wear shoes, and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t so. I thought everyone knew how to read and write and I was astonished when I saw the opposite

• She’s a woman, not only when she’s powdered and wearing lace and ribbons, just like a man doesn’t stop being a man when he learns to cook, mend, sweep and sew.

• Women, by force of will and energy, are quite capable of doing certain jobs that they previously had been denied. This theory is constantly disputed by those who claim women's inferiority due to sexual difference, which, it is said, seems to be an immutable law of nature. But there is nothing more false than to attempt in this way to uphold the permanent superiority of men.

• As a general rule, women nowadays dedicate all their energy, all their attention to their appearance; they are not concerned with anything except wearing the latest fashion; they squander all their intelligence in trying to become more beautiful, and not even in any practical way, by some beneficial and hygienic method, like practicing gymnastics, exercising in the fresh air, or swimming every morning. But no, it must be done with ribbons and lace, by cutting their breath short from the excessive use of tight-fitting corsets. And this translates to a waste of time, health, and money.

• a true beauty, real and lasting, [is] achieved by a healthy diet, without eating meat or drinking alcoholic beverages, by practicing gymnastics and taking walks in the open air, not a fictitious beauty such as that of adornment, without which, she is no longer herself.

• Could there exist true happiness in a marriage when the man is the only one who can regularly exercise his free will and satisfy his desires, without caring whether or not his wife agrees? Accustomed to the passive obedience of women, he does not bother to find out whether or not she is satisfied with his conduct. And if she is not, he does not attempt to please her, nor to adapt his conduct to a new way of life. How can the holy priestess of the hearth preserve the sacred fire of love in the home when she has to officiate alone? Where is the principal object of her devotion? Look for him outside the home at those times when he should be at the side of his companion. Will a solid foundation for domestic happiness be established by this behavior? No. Men have the right to do or undo, without his companion. He goes to a masked ball or not, to the casino, to gamble, or chases other women.... and meanwhile, poor woman! A sad scenario for domestic bliss! She is subjected to a sad solitude for days and nights on end, orphaned of love, of sweet attentions and joys while the above-mentioned companion gambles, dances... or falls in love.

• For women it is generally admitted that her sexual life is null or subordinate to that of the companion-legal or otherwise-that she has chosen. She should live and feel for him; be passionate if he is, and maintain herself neutral if he is cold. Until now a man has considered sensual desire as something that pertains to him, not recognizing in women a moral and physical self organized like him.

• The only thing we want to put forth is that women must acquire greater freedom and rights. The current system, with all its errors, is sustained by the ignorance and slavery of women.

• Harmony within a marriage greatly influences the education of children, our future citizens. How many times have a mother’s tears, cried in moments of pain and contradiction, powerfully influenced her children!

• Women must become enlightened or educated, because being enlightened encompasses all the fields of human science: Physiology, Geology, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering, Agriculture, Geometry, History, Music, and Painting...Education is a beautiful and necessary thing.

• If a woman is not instructed and educated will she be able to educate, counsel, and guide her children suitably? No. And this is an important matter that should interest women, the home being the first and most necessary of schools. Whatever the child sees the mother do or say is what the child will observe and learn.

• Education means cultivating patience, tolerance, a sweet disposition, harmony, abnegation, and temperateness. Anyone who cultivates these virtues is truly educated.

• There are many women who think that being a mother means contradicting a child, and later they beat them, and order them about for the sake of giving orders, to see herself obeyed, ordering the child not to run, not to jump, not to yell, in sum, a whole bunch of ignorant things, the truth is, to prohibit a child from doing all this is to prohibit them from being healthy. They act like this with girls precisely because they are girls, as if a girl's organism did not have to develop, so that they can grow up beautiful and strong, and not scrawny and pale, nor become mothers full of pains and ailments. They think that being a mother authorizes them to mistreat and order the children at whim, and oblige them to do things against their will, that is an error.

• How many girls pay for the tantrums, jealousies or vexations of their mothers, who act without any justifying motive, only because they need to blow off steam and they can’t do it in front of their husbands.

Preface

• yo entiendo que lo que otros consideran utópico, és en mi concepto realizable.
  • what others consider utopian is for me something that can become reality.

• ¿Qué conceptos tenemos de los que se oponen a todas las ideas de igualdad y libertad humana? La de traidores y judas del Maestro. Todos los que juzgan una idea llevada á la práctica, utópica, son obstáculos, y los obstáculos deben empujarse á un lado. Son los que entorpecen las grandes iniciativas, las obras de bien. Y aun así, se llaman patriotas y padres de la patria. ¿Qué concepto de la patria tendrán? Un concepto egoista, que empieza en ellos y termina en ellos. Ellos lo son todo.
  • What do we think of those who oppose all ideas of equality and human freedom? We consider them traitors, Judases who have betrayed the Teacher. Those who judge unrealized ideas to be utopian are obstacles, and obstacles must be pushed aside. They are those who hinder great initiatives, works for the common good. And still, they call themselves patriots and fathers of the homeland. What idea of the homeland can they have? One that is egotistical, which begins and ends with them. They are everything.

• No hay nada más perjudicial al éxito de una empresa, que la timidez, el apocamiento, la duda. Una especie de cobardía, que creo que solamente la poséen los vagos. No creo nada imposible; ni me asombro de ningún invento ni descubrimiento, por eso no encuentro utópica ninguna idea. Lo esencial es llevarla á la práctica. Empezar! Lo demás, es debilidad, y un concepto errado del poder humano. ¡Querer es poder!
  • There is nothing more harmful to the success of an endeavor than timidity, pusilanimity, and doubt. This type of cowardice that I believe only the lazy possess. I do not believe anything to be impossible; nor am I amazed by any invention or discovery, which is why I do not find any idea utopian. What is essential is that the idea be put into practice. Begin! The rest is weakness and an erroneous concept of human power. Wanting is doing!

• El actual sistema social, con todos sus errores, se sostiene, por la ignorancia y la esclavitud de la mujer.
  • The current social system, with all its errors, is sustained by the ignorance and slavery of women.

"Woman in the home, in the family, and in government"

title in the original Spanish "La mujer en el hogar, en la familia, el gobierno"

• unas manos útiles son preferibles á unas simplemente bellas.
  • useful hands are preferable to ones that are merely beautiful.

• No me explico por qu el hombre cr e tener siempre derechos sobre la mujer.
  • I cannot explain why a man always feels he has rights over a woman.

• Todos los que apoyan, y continúan explotando, son los que sostienen el estado de miseria del pueblo y por tanto son los sostenedores de las cárceles, presidios ó mejor dicho los creadores de ladrones. de asesinos, de locos y fanáticos religiosos y políticos. Porque si no fuera por temor á la miseria, no habría fanáticos, políticos y religiosos. El temor á la miseria ó la miseria misma hace cometer torpezas, que degeneran en crímenes, injusticias y locuras, por los cuales tenemos cárceles y manicomios desigualdades é injusticias. La Revolución Social, será la que hará desaparecer tantas iniquidades. Y la revolución surgirá por la propaganda y el estudio é investigación científica. Y la propaganda la hacemos los libertarios y el estudio está al alcance de todos. Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan.
  • All those who support and continue exploiting others, are the ones who sustain the state of misery of the people and therefore are the ones who maintain jails, penitentiaries, or better yet, the ones who create thieves, murderers, the insane, religious and political fanatics. Because if it were not for the fear of misery, there would be no political or religious fanatics. The fear of misery, or misery itself makes one commit crude acts that degenerate into crimes, injustices, and madness, which is why we have jails and mental institutions, inequalities and injustices. The Social Revolution will make these iniquities disappear. And the revolution will rise up through propaganda and study and scientific research. And we anarchists are the ones who propagandize and an education is within the reach of all. Let us study and prepare our generation for the future struggles that draw closer.

"On Honesty"

original title "Sobre la honestidad"

• El hombre acostumbrado á ver en la mujer un objeto de placer olvida que está destinada á sor madre y maestra de una nueva generación
  • A man only used to seeing a woman as an object of pleasure forgets that she is destined to be the mother and teacher of a new generation.

• En un sistema social comunista en que los individuos tengan derecho sobre todo lo que produce la naturaleza y el ingenio de todos, podrá haber más libertad, y el hombre podrá crear una familia sin preocupaciones económicas ni sociales. Pero aún no hemos llegado á esa época, no tardará en ser establecido entre los humanos, ese hermoso procedimiento común.
  • In a communist social system in which individuals have the right over everything produced by nature and the ingenuity of all, there could be greater liberty, and a man could form a family without economic and social worries. But we still have not arrived at such an era, it will not take long for this beautiful common process to be established among humans.

• Individuos de ambos sexos hemos caído en el error de creer que solamente el hombre tiene derecho á usar su libertad del modo que le plazca.
  • Individuals of both sexes have fallen into the error of believing that it is only men that have the right to use their freedom as they please.

• Es indispensable que la "Igualdad" deje de ser una vana frase muy usada, que los derechos de ambos sean iguales.
  • It is time that "equality" stop being a vain phrase, and that the rights of both men and women be equal.

To My Daughter"

Original title "A mi hija"

• En vez de ir á oir misa, visitas los pobres y socórrelos, que podrás hacerlo: en vez de confesarte y comulgar, visita los presos, y llévales consuelos, algo que los instruya. No olvides que los abundan en cárceles y presidios son los pobres y los ignorantes, las víctimas de siempre de todas las explotaciones.
  • Instead of going to mass, go visit the poor and help them, because you can do so; instead of confessing and taking communion, go visit prisoners and console them, something to teach them. Don't forget that most of the people in jails and prisons are the poor and the ignorant, the victims who have always been subjected to exploitation.

• Cuando se reforme esta sociedad indiferente y egoísta por la futura, fraternal y altruista, entonces, cuando no se cometan injusticias, cuando no se castiguen inocentes, cuando los jueces no exijan "la verdad, toda la verdad, y nada más que la verdad", siendo los primeros embusteros. Cuando no haya quien robe un bollo de pon, porque carezca de él, Cuando no exista la propiedad privada, y todos nos miremos como hermanos, entonces, y sólo entonces, desaparecerán las cárceles, presidios y las inútiles y perniciosas iglesias. No habrá miseria, odio ni prostitución. Existirá el libre cambio, pues estarán abolidas las fronteras y la verdadera libertad reinará en este planeta. Procura tú ayudar con la práctica á la realización de estas hermosas ideas humanas para que no perezcan de hambre y de frío, los infelices que no tienen hogar, ni riquezas, en los tristes portales de alguna cochera ó pesebre, ó de algún palacio....iqué irrisión! ¡Qué humanidad! á dos pasos de opípara mesa y de ricos y abundantes abrigos, perecer de hambre y de frío. Cerca de la prodigalidad y el despilfarro, el hambre, el dolor... pobres niños víctimas de la miseria... Parece un sueño, ó cuento y es una realidad, que asombra... ¡Qué horror! !qué falsos son los cimientos de esta llamado sociedad, que está basada en el crímen, el error, y la hipocresía.
  • When this indifferent and egoistic society is reformed by a future one that is fraternal, altruistic, when injustices are no longer committed, nor the innocent punished, when the judges, the supreme liars, stop demanding "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"; when no one steals a loaf of bread because they are hungry; when private property ceases to exist, and we all see each other as brothers, then and only then will jails, prisons and useless, harmful churches disappear. Misery, hate, and prostitution will no longer exist. There will be free exchange among peoples, because borders will be abolished and true freedom will reign on the planet. Try and help put these ideas into practice so that people who have no home, nor wealth, who live in the doorways of carriage houses, mangers, or palaces, to not die of cold and hunger. What a mockery! What humanity! To perish from hunger and cold two steps away from a table laden with food, from rich and sumptuous coats. So close to abundance and waste we find hunger, pain... poor chil- dren victims of misery... It seems like a dream or a story, but it is a reality that astonishes... What horror! How false are the foundations of this so-called society, one that is based on crime, fallacy, and hypocrisy.

• Las instituciones religiosas, han ayudado á fomentar esos privilegios y división de clases. Si los trabajadores en general por medio de la instrucción no logran destruir los privilegios de castas, razas, gerarquías, y miles de majaderías, que nos perjudican como seres humanos. Entonces la revolución lo hará. Muchos le temen á la revolución. Pero no hay como pertenecer á ella, para que el miedo se evapore. Las cosas vistas desde lejos, producen distinto efecto. De cerca, se llegan á palpar, y desaparece lo que se llama efectos de distancia y también de apreciación.
  • The religious institutions have helped to foster these privileges and class divisions. If workers in general, by educating themselves, are not able to destroy the privileges of caste, race, hierarchy, and untold nonsense that harm us as human beings, then revolution will do it. Many fear revolution, but there is nothing like being part of revolution to get rid of that fear. Things seen from afar have a different effect on us. Up close, one can touch them and the effects of distance and of evaluation disappear.

• Debemos explicarlos las cosas materiales como son, sin añadir ni disminuir. La verdad debe ser la base fundamental para la educación de la niñez Y los padres tienen la obligación de no engañar á sus hijos, y enseñarlos á no engañar á los demás.
  • We should explain material things to them just like they are, without adding or omitting a thing. Truth must be the fundamental base of a child's upbringing. And the parents are obliged to refrain from deceiving their children and to teach them not to deceive others.

• Los padres deben dirigir y educar al niño, pero no castigarlo. Es un error creer que es una forma de educar el maltratarlos y atormentarlos.
  • Parents should guide and educate the child, but not punish them. It is a mistake to believe that mistreating and tormenting a child is a proper way to raise them.

"My Profession of Faith"

"Mi profesion de fe"

• Socialista soy, porque aspiro á que todos los adelantos, descubrimientos é invenciones establecidos, pertenezcan á todos, que se establezca su socialización sin privilegios. Algunos lo entienden con el Estado, para que este regule la marcha, yo lo entiendo sin gobierno No quiero decir que me opongo á que el gobierno regule y controle las riquezas, como lo hará, pero yo mantengo mi opinión de sentirme partidaria decidida del no gobierno. Socialismo ácrata. Bien yo aquí afirmo y declaro solemnemente, que para ser socialista es necesario haber analizado y comprendido la Psicología.
  • I am a socialist because I want all the advances, discoveries, and inventions to belong to everyone, that their socialization be achieved without privilege. Some understand this to mean that the State regulate this socialization, I see it without government. That does not mean that I will oppose a government that regulates and controls wealth, as it needs to do, but I maintain my position in being decidedly against government per se. Socialist anarchism. What I solemnly declare here is that to be a socialist it is necessary to have analyzed and understood psychology.

• El socialismo está en el luminoso cristianismo que socavó los cimientos del poder de los Césares, por la fraternidad. Y la fraternidad universal sera la implantación del socialismo que es abnegación, dulzura, modestia, templanza, <<Uno para todos y todos para uno.>> Seguros escalones que conducen á la perfección humana, para la libertad y el progreso espiritual indefinido aun por la pluralidad de mundos habitados superiores. Instruyámonos para purificarnos. eduquemos nuestra voluntad para el ejercicio del bien, y dejemos consumir bajo el influjo de la razón, el fuego de la pasiones, en holocausto á la emancipación humana, para la persecución del progreso espiritual.
  • Socialism is found within the luminous Christianity that shook the foundations of Roman power, because of its notion of fraternity. And universal brotherhood will be the implementation of socialism, which is selflessness, sweetness, modesty, temperance, "All for one and one for all." These are sure steps that lead us to human perfection, toward the freedom and the still undefined spiritual progress of a plurality of superior worlds. Let us enlighten and purify ourselves, let us educate our wills to do good, and let us consume the fire of our passions under guiding reason, in an offering to human emancipation to achieve spiritual progress.

Quotes about Luisa Capetillo

• One of the most outstanding women leaders in this movement was Luisa Capetillo...She wrote on education and the importance of women working outside the home, on the benefits of a Communist society free from oppression and religion, on love, and on the future of society. In all her writings she insisted on her affiliation with socialism, on her support for women's liberation, and particularly her defense of "free love." She never married, and had three children in open relationships. Capetillo traveled to New York, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Florida, and published the feminist magazine La Mujer. She was arrested in Cuba for wearing slacks. In Puerto Rico she is remembered in a popular song that says: "Doña Luisa Capetillo, intentionally or not, has created a tremendous uproar because of her culottes."
  • Yamila Azize-Vargas, "The Emergence of Feminism in Puerto Rico, 1870-1930"

• The socialist and especially anarchist organizations in Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century launched a number of community education programs, and its leadership made literacy and intellectual activity a priority for the working class. Belpré may have been raised in a milieu similar to the environment that produced Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), the Puerto Rican feminist anarchist who, though of humble birth, was highly literate, bilingual (Spanish/French), and became an accomplished author and activist as an adult (Iglesias de Pagán 1973; García and Quintero Rivera 1982; Ramos 1992; Sánchez González 2001).
  • Lisa Sánchez González, introduction to The Stories I Read to the Children: The Life and Writing of Pura Belpré (2013)

• A century ago Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo said, "If you don't want women to sell themselves for bread, give them bread.'
  • Aurora Levins Morales Medicine Stories (2019 edition)

• In looking at the Puerto Rican movement as a whole and the positive contributions that we made in the seventies and early eighties, first we need to point out that we built on our legacy of struggle. We stood on the shoulders of such Nationalists as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebrón, and such communists as Luisa Capetillo, Jesús Colón, Bernardo Vega, Julia de Burgos, Juana Colón, Evelina Antonetti, Antonio Corretjer, Genoveva Clemente, Gerena Valentín, and many others.
  • Esperanza Martell in The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices From the Diaspora, edited by Andrés Torres and José E. Velázquez (1998)

• We identified as revolutionary nationalists' committed to ending exploitation and colonialism. We were inspired by the herstories of women activists in Puerto Rico. We learned about Lola Rodríguez de Tió and Mariana Bracetti, early fighters for the abolition of slavery and the island's independence from Spain; Luisa Capetillo and Juana Colón, working class organizers and women's rights advocates; and Lolita Lebrón and Blanca Canales, Nationalist Party militants imprisoned for their actions to free Puerto Rico. We studied the lives of African American women such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist, and Harriet Tubman, who freed slaves through the Underground Railroad. Our sisters in the Black Panther Party were diversifying the image of the revolutionary, and we joined the protests to demand the release of Angela Davis from a California prison, and of Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird in New York. The long line of women activists, from contemporary social justice movements, became our role models and mentors.
  • Iris Morales Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords 1969-1976 (2016)

• She had taken an active role in many strikes over her life, including the highly successful sugarcane strike of 1916 which won 13% pay increases. In addition to her anarchist activism, she caused a scandal by being the first woman to wear trousers in the region: once sensationally being arrested in Cuba and tried for it. Although she successfully defended herself in court arguing there was no law which prohibited her wearing men's clothing.
  • Working Class History

Luisa Capetillo, Pioneer Puerto Rican Feminist, Norma Valle-Ferrer

Translated from Spanish to English by Gloria Waldman-Schwartz and graduate students

• Her progressive ideas and her lifestyle inspires amazement, then respect and admiration, because of the enormous personal sacrifices she made in order to live a different life and fight for her vision of a new world.

• I believe that it is essential, especially for women active in the feminist movement in our country, as well as for those who are affirming their cultural identity, to know about the struggle of Puerto Rican female workers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Luisa Capetillo is a symbol and model to emulate because she was not satisfied with merely having principles and believing in them. She actually lived those principles with an indomitable rectitude, in spite of her contradictions.

• Luisa Capetillo, Historia de una mujer proscrita belongs to the contemporary cultural phenomenon of women's biographies. Only now are we becoming familiar with María de las Mercedes Barbudo, who struggled for Puerto Rican independence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was jailed in El Morro, the infamous military garrison in old San Juan; with Ana Roqué (often referred to as Ana Roqué de Duprey), pioneer journalist and novelist; Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo, travel writer, translator and poet; Librada Rodríguez, labor and political leader; Julia de Burgos, the poet of love and nationhood; and Ruby Black, the United States feminist and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's friend and confidante, who made a successful career writing as a correspondent for La Democracia, a Puerto Rican daily newspaper.

• She revolutionized the role of women in Puerto Rican society and became a paradigm for the new woman.

• When I initiated my research, motivated by the desire to learn more about the history of Puerto Rican women, I found that everyone who knew Luisa Capetillo when she was alive, or knew about her, remembered her as the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants in public. At first I thought these recollections were based on an implied societal intention not to recognize this revolutionary for her important role, but rather to brand her an eccentric, remembered only by what could be considered superficial actions. I was saddened by the fact that even respected intellectuals didn't value her feminist, labor and anarchist work in its true perspective. What I found out was that Luisa Capetillo did not wear pants in public as a whim or to attract attention. She did not preach free love because she was immoral or libertine. She did not become the first feminist in Puerto Rico, both in theory and in action, because she was disappointed in love. The theories developed by Capetillo and her actions in daily life came from the legitimate theoretical political formation that ruled her life, Luisa Capetillo must be situated in her historical moment. The fact that she was a vegetarian and a true believer in Swedish calisthenics and in yoga, as ways to keep the body in optimum health, has to be discussed. To fully understand this woman, it is not enough to know her intellectual and public accomplishments; how she lived also has to be known.

• Along with theories about "spontaneous revolution" and the organization of campesinos and industrial workers into unions and libertarian federations, the anarchists also transmitted a set of ideas about everyday life that included free love and free education, which would result in men and women "free" from conventional ties. The books by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta (who lived in Latin America for many years), significantly shaped the education of Puerto Rican workers and deeply inspired them. The educational theories of the Catalonian Francisco Ferrer and the French writers Sebastian Fauré and Madeleine Vernet (whom Luisa Capetillo called Magdalena Vernet), became the ideal of Puerto Rican workers.

• The defense of a woman's right to education was the motivating and uniting issue which would eventually culminate in a more liberal complete and progressive education for Puerto Rican women. Tempered by their struggle, women emerged who would lead the feminist movement in the early twentieth century. These women were the liberals Ana Roqué, María Luisa de Angelis, Isabel Andreu de Aguilar, and the workers Luisa Capetillo, Franca de Armiño and Concha Torres. A better and more complete education for women of all social strata remained the unifying cause within the feminist movement throughout the years.

• During her lifetime, Luisa Capetillo was often compared to George Sand.

• Where Luisa Capetillo truly acquired her vast culture was through the independent reading that she did during her lifetime, beginning in childhood. She read the works of the French writers, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, the Russian Romantics, Leo Tolstoy and Turgenev, and the French astronomer, spiritualist and freethinker Camille Flammarion, whose research on astronomy and psychical studies she avidly read. Her own work reflects the ease with which she handled the theories and texts of influential authors such as the French doctor Paul Vigne, of Hugo and Tolstoy, the writings of anarchist educator Madeleine Vernet, and the philosophical-political essays of Peter Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill.

• The play that Luisa Capetillo wrote in 1909, Influencias de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas), published in San Juan in 1916, was inspired by Tolstoy's philosophy and included a main character who resembled him.

• José María Vargas Vila, Colombian journalist and novelist, whose radical political ideas resonated with the workers, was also a favorite of Capetillo and her audience.

• Journalist Santiago Carreras described the historic moment and Capetillo's passion as he recalled, "Luisa Capetillo at the head of the march, along with other leaders, haranguing the workers...her great mission was to read aloud to them, which she did, atop benches of the plaza." Her role in the Arecibo strike determined the direction of her life. There Luisa Capetillo became a union leader, from that moment on dedicating herself, with equal success, to organizing workers and to spreading anarcho-syndical ideas through her writings in pamphlets and newspaper articles, in talks, rallies, lectures and private gatherings.

• In spite of the fact that Capetillo's work is eminently internationalist in content, it is bound to an essential Puerto Ricanness. Whether it be in personal allusions or references to particular social problems, her love for Puerto Rico's needy children and her devotion to its workers are ever present.

• In 1908 Capetillo participated in the Fifth Workers' Congress of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores, where she defended female suffrage with zeal, not only for women who knew how to read and write, but for all women, without exception. In this Congress, she showed herself to be a true suffragist, with more advanced ideas than those of the other women, who later, in their own professional and civic groups, would support the vote only for women who could read and write. Her fellow workers in the labor movement on the Island considered her the "First true suffragist in the country."

• She was not interested in writing for the few, but rather for the greatest number of Puerto Rican workers. ..Her beliefs in universal fraternity and the eradication of national barriers and borders inspired her to visit other countries, allowing her to share her ideals far beyond the limits of Puerto Rico.

• Her ideas about love and sexuality have been proven over time to be profound and visionary.

• Julio Aybar, editor of the newspaper Unión Obrera, said that her theories did not intimidate him. "We are not threatened by anything that Capetillo says in her book because they have always been our own opinions. Luisa breaks with today's hypocrisy and faces the issues with courage, fearless about what she writes, since it seems to us that she practices what she preaches."

• With the publication of Mi opinión, Luisa Capetillo became the first Puerto Rican woman to organize her feminist ideas and publish them as a theoretical document.

• Capetillo could easily be a protagonist in the re-emergent feminist struggle of the 1970s, although she lived at least a hundred years earlier.

• While Luisa Capetillo theorized about women and anarchism in Puerto Rico, her contemporaries did the same in many other countries, among them Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain and the United States. Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875-1942) in México, Maria Collazo (n.d.) in Uruguay, Juana Rouco Buela (1889-1969) in Argentina, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1914) in the United States, and Teresa Clamunt (1862-1981) in Spain, preached the emancipation of women and free love and fought for workers' rights while living lives consonant with their ideals.

• "La mujer," one of the articles that she published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

• About Capetillo, Jaime Vidal wrote, "For me, the author of this book is one of the most independent and free women of the Hispanic-American race, and when discussing free love she is imbued with the fiery and poetic expression of Latin writers and the ease of Anglo-Saxon thinkers. She enriches her theories and criticism with an abundance of arguments that convince even the most skeptical in the matter of free love."

• Like the majority of the anarchists of her time, Capetillo was deeply impressed by the victory of the revolutionary forces in Russia in 1917.

• She participated in rallies in support of the candidacy of Santiago Iglesias Pantín, whom she admired and considered her comrade.

• The funeral orations were delivered by her companions Alfonso Torres, Florencio Cabello, Esteban Ortiz and José López.

• Luisa Capetillo lived intensely and actively from the moment she became part of the labor struggle to the moment of her hospitalization and death. She fought for proletarian causes, education for the masses, and the emancipation of women. Her life was not easy or pleasant. She had no comforts or luxuries. She inspired hostility in many people who rejected her revolutionary ideas. However, it is also true that until her last moments, she was accompanied and comforted by the workers, her compañeras and compañeros, to whom she offered her life. In her confessional book, Influencias, she bemoans the envy and rancor that those who fight for truth and justice suffer. Yet this Puerto Rican anarchist clearly never regretted her life's direction, aptly describing herself as "a stoic of life..."

• Although in Puerto Rico there was discussion of the liberal ideas of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, and later, of Eugenio María de Hostos, it was Luisa Capetillo who established a new precedent by living according to her revolutionary ideals. By daring to live her own way, she was severely punished by the society she was forced to exist in. Among her peers, her lifestyle was resented by even the most progressive workers. Nevertheless, Capetillo was inspired by and steeped in her parents' readings and their adherence to the Romantic Movement. Embracing the anarchist principles that excited many Romantic European minds, she was able to live a different life with great bravery.

• Her ideal was to achieve a communist society where all human beings would be equal, with every worker equally valued and none being more privileged than others. She envisioned a community devoid of exploiters profiting from the labor of the workers, the major producers in society.

External links

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Luisa Capetillo