Note: Please forgive the later entry, today had some unforeseen setbacks.

For today’s entry, I won’t be writing about Puerto Rico’s current political and social climate or conditions in the past. Today I’d like to talk about the poet Julia de Burgos; probably Puerto Rico’s most famous poet. 

For today’s entry, I’ll be taking from Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems by Julia de Burgos, compiled and translated by Jack Agüeros. A bilingual anthology of her work with an introduction written by Agüeros from which I’ll be basing this entry off of. 

I was first introduced to Julia de Burgos in school while still living in Puerto Rico and like her myth-like standing in Puerto Rican consciousness, my recollection of my initial encounter with her work feels foggy and uncertain. It was sometime between middle school and high school and of course the poem I read was her landmark “Río Grande de Loíza”. All I can clearly remember was my initial reaction to this powerful poem. It felt like a dream-like distant memory of a time and place I’d never been in. Much like my recollection of the first time reading Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, it felt like a moment of simple understanding of a feeling one word could never encompass. It was after reading this poem that my interest in writing poetry began. The initial feeling and its result are the only concrete aspects of my story I can attach to my first encounter with Burgos. Years after my first reading, the refrain “¡Río Grande de Loíza!” still echoes in my mind. 

The oldest of 13 children, Julia de Burgos was born February 17, 1914, Carolina, Puerto Rico. She’s a famous radical Puerto Rican voice fighting for the independence of the country. She was a part of Puerto Rico’s Nationalist Party, working alongside the young leader, a Harvard lawyer, Pedro Albizu Campos. Due to her academic accomplishments, she was moved from her rural school, through scholarships, to a school in the city with boarding. She attended the University of Rio Piedras’ high school where her academic feats allowed for her to skip grades. She enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico in 1931 to become a teacher and by 1933, at just 19 years old, graduated with high honors as an elementary school teacher. While living in Havana, Cuba, she attended the University of Havana where she studied Greek, Latin, and French. Later in life, while living in Washington, DC, she studied Portuguese. She was a prominent political figure in politics, (as previously mentioned, fighting for independence) and by the age of 22 she was elected Secretary General of the non-partisan Women’s United Front for a Constitutional Convention. Her political prominence took her to even be granted a meeting with US Senator William H. King, an encounter in which he cut the meeting short then stormed off, infuriated by her political observations. She died on a Puerto Rican Harlem street with no identification on July 6, 1953. She had no identification and was buried in the standard pine box provided by the city law. When her friends realized she was missing they began searching for her and managed to trace her to a plot in Potter’s Field. She was then transported to Puerto Rico and currently lies in the cemetery of Carolina, her home municipality, where a monument has been lifted in her honor. 

More events recounted in regards to her life flow like myth. By this I mean, outside of things directly related to what I’ve relayed so far, it’s currently difficult to confirm other life events and life aspects attributed to her, most of it seems to boil down to rumors or embellished stories of real life events. All this combines to make what’s accessible to us today seem like a myth. Frankly, thinking back to how Julia de Burgos has existed in my life, she feels like a legend and she feels like a legend when spoken of in Puerto Rico. The betrayed lover, the warrior, the liberated woman, the master storyteller, all of these are the stories and personas I’ve heard attributed to her throughout my life. Regardless of how true or not they are, I think these only speak to the amazing, multifaceted, reflective, strong, wise, and unique person she was in life, enough to spark this air of wonder and mystery concerning her life. In my personal opinion, I think all these personas are true to some extent and speak to the many layers of her as a human being. All in all, I think it’s then kind of appropriate that my memory of my initial introduction to her work be a bit hazy and connected to a feeling hard to express. Agüeros, in his introduction, goes into detail about what some of these stories are, the potential origins of these stories, their relation to confirmed details of her life, and his own take on them. 

Other things known today are some of her literary influences and writers she enjoyed reading, these include: Miguel de Cervantes, Stefan Zweig, Kant, Nietzsche, Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, García Lorca, Walt Whitman, and Alfonsina Storni. 

Why am I writing about her? Why dedicate an entry to her in a blog concerning the topics it addresses?

1. I’m not going to lie. I really wanted to write about her at some point.
2. She was a radical and prominent voice in regards to rights in Puerto Rico and a prominent voice in favor of independence. 
3. This blog seeks to bridge the gap between the mainland and Puerto Rico regarding the realities of lives and culture. Introduction to art, activists, scholars, and intellectuals are key in changing perspectives. At times I feel that due to the repression of radical voices, and the dominance of Western writers in academia and by extension in school curriculums, people have a hard time picturing how writers outside the Western world are also in conversation with the literary world. Not just that, but also have rich traditions as well within their own communities. They did not produce or exist in a vacuum reserved only for those who are directly related to their cultures and communities to engage in and consume. They were also aware of Western tradition and produced work in response to and of equal value. I don’t believe this is an entirely conscious dynamic, simply the result of centuries of silencing and as a result, lack of exposure. But exposure is a first step, and here’s one attempt at it. 

Here’s a link to read “Río Grande de Loíza” by Julia de Burgos

https://allpoetry.com/Ro-Grande-de-Loza