Julia, a civil rights activist

Today I will be talking about Julia de Burgos. It is not unknown, by all of us, who Julia de Burgos was; but to those who don’t who she was: let me talk to you a little bit about her. Julia, which was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico in 1914, but died on Julie 6, 1953 (the reason of her death was because of a Pneumonia in transit to the hospital, moments later she was found at the streets of Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan), was a poet and also as an advocate of the Puerto Rican independence, she served as a secretary of the Puerto Rican National Party. She was truly a feminist, and because of that, a civil right activist of the women afro-Caribbean writers. But Julia was not an ordinary woman, she is considered as a powerful influence to contemporary writers, just because of her talent to express her feminist thoughts and because of her art in doing it. It is not a surprise to know how intelligent this woman was. Not only because of her poems, but because of her knowledge.  

Julia was also a teacher, and by her first poems we can found Rio Grande de Loiza, which talks about her true love to this beautiful river close to her hometown. Also, in the poems written by Julia, we can find I Was My Own Path, My Death Poem, Dawn of My Silence, and Alta Mar y Gaviota. Among the poems she had written, I Was My Own Path is the one which has had more impact on the society, because it inspire women and men with a feminist ideology, to create or empower their civil right activist sense. But the one that really catch my attention is the one called, A Julia De Burgos, a poem (also written by her) dedicated to herself. In this poem Julia contrast the “real Julia” with the “fake Julia”. This poem is like a speech dedicated from the feminist, free, powerful Julia, to that known by the society (hypocrite, submissive, selfish). I really love this poem because it is like a mirror of herself, and a can assure it also serves as a mirror to a lot of women.   

But Julia has a really interesting history. Regardless of her constant depression because of her separation with Jimenez Grullón, (and because of that she became alcoholic), Julia belong to a National Party, which its objective was a sense of independence of Puerto Rico. Also, regardless of her unemployment moments later she returned to the United State, once she left Cuba because she found an unpleasant situation with that man, Grullón (the man that she really loved); before of that, she was a teacher, a poet and an activist. It is amazing! Julia de Burgos was an activist; a civil right activist. It says much a lot about her.