Julia Burgos

Julia Constancia Burgos García (Carolina, Puerto Rico, February 17, 1914 - July 6, 1953), known as Julia de Burgos, is considered by many critics as the most excellent Puerto Rican poetess. She was also a supporter of the independence of the island.

Biography

Daughter of Consuelo García and Juan de Burgos, she grew up in Santa Cruz, a humble town in the town of Carolina. This would not deprive her of developing her love for nature and her country. Being the eldest of all, she was the first of thirteen siblings to attend university.

She obtained her teaching degree at the University of Puerto Rico at the age of 19, but her love of literature led her to write poetry. Possible influences on her work would be Luis Llorens Torres, Luis Pales Matos, Clara Lair, Rafael Alberti and Pablo Neruda.She was also a teacher at the Rosa Luz Zayas Cruz elementary school in the Feijoo sector of the Cedro Arriba neighborhood in Naranjito.

In 1936 she joined the "Daughters of Liberty," the female branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. This political group, led by Pedro Albizu Campos, promoted the ideal of independence.

Burgos published three collections of poems. For the first two books by him, he traveled the island, making himself known and organizing his own recitals. The third book by him was published posthumously in 1954.

She married first Rubén Rodríguez Beauchamp and later —in 1944, in New York— Armando Marín, but her great love was the Dominican historian, doctor and politician Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón, grandson of the late Dominican President Juan Isidro Jimenes. This love would inspire many of his poems. Her spirits went down and she fell into the problem of alcoholism. On July 6, 1953, she collapsed on a New York sidewalk and died of pneumonia in a Harlem hospital at the age of 39. Because no one claimed her body and she did not carry any identification, the city buried her under the name 'Jane Doe'. Some of her friends, able to track her down and find her grave, claimed the body and her remains were shipped to Puerto Rico; she was solemnly buried in Carolina and a monument was raised at the burial site.

Among the outstanding works of Julia de Burgos are: Río Grande de Loíza, Poema para mi muerte, Yo misma fui mi ruta, Dawn of my silence and Alta mar y gull.

She lived in Cuba for two years, which are recorded in the poet's correspondence with her sister. In Havana she studied Greek, Latin and French.

Feminist

Julia de Burgos, in addition to showing the feeling of love in her poems, also encouraged women's liberation and expressed the problems of Puerto Rican women in her verses. With a rebellious and feminist voice, she wrote works that went against the norms of society and the conventions of her time. Works highly studied by Julia de Burgos have been highlighted by the feminist uprising that contain, for example, her poem & # 34; I myself was my route & # 34; It's about women's liberation. In this poem Burgos is determined to be the one who manages her life and expresses herself in disagreement with the mandates of society. This poem urged women of the '30 generation, who were in a power struggle for their rights, to be aware of three important factors: their potential as a woman, managing their own lives, and not feeling inferior.

Tributes

On February 19, 1987, the Spanish Department of the Humacao Campus of the University of Puerto Rico honored her by granting her a posthumous Doctorate Honoris Causa in Letters and Humanities. Her proclamation was presented to her niece, María Consuelo Sáez Burgos.

The city of San Juan has named schools and avenues in his name; There is also the Julia de Burgos Protective House, which protects women survivors of domestic violence, and the Julia de Burgos Museum of Arts and Sciences.

On October 27, 2006, New York City passed a law designating a stretch of 106th Street, between Fifth and First Avenues, as “Julia de Burgos Boulevard.” On the same street, near Lexington Avenue, Manny Vega's mural depicts Burgos's face in mosaics that transform it into a kind of Byzantine icon. Very close, on Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, is the corner where the Puerto Rican writer collapsed in July 1953. She was transferred to Harlem Hospital and died anonymously.

In New York there is the Julia de Burgos Latino Center in Manhattan and the Julia de Burgos Art Center in Harlem, near the place of her death. New York poet Giannina Braschi paid homage to Julia de Burgos in the celebrated bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing! and Tomás Batista sculpted a bust of her, which graces her park in her name in Carolina.