Mariana Bracetti Cuevas was a patriot and leader of the Puerto Rico independence movement in the 1860s. She is attributed with having knitted the flag that was intended to be used as the national emblem of Puerto Rico in its attempt to overthrow the Spanish government on the island, and to establish the island as a sovereign republic. The attempted overthrow was El Grito de Lares, and Bracetti's creation became known as "The Flag of Lares." The flag's design was later adopted as the official flag of the municipality of Lares, Puerto Rico.
Antonia Pantoja, was a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and the founder of ASPIRA, the Puerto Rican Forum, Boricua College and Producir. In 1996, she was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the American Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Second Lieutenant Carmen Maria Lozano Dumler, RN,, was one of the first Puerto Rican women to become a United States Army officer. During World War II, she served as a nurse and interpreter, and provided support for patients who spoke Spanish. Lozano Dumler has since been featured in promotional and recruitment materials that celebrate diversity in the US military.
Two of the least-known roles played by Puerto Rican women and women of Puerto Rican descent have been that of soldier and that of revolutionary. This is a brief account of some the Puerto Rican women who have participated in military actions as members of either a political revolutionary movement or of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Joy Rosenheim Simonson was a feminist who worked on women's rights and progressive activist.
Luz María "Luzma" Umpierre-Herrera is a Puerto Rican advocate for human rights, a New-Humanist educator, poet, and scholar. Her works pans a range of critical social issues, including activism and social equality, the immigrant experience, bilingualism in the United States, and LGBT matters. Luzma has made significant contributions to literature, authoring six poetry collections and two books on literary criticism, in addition to having many essays featured in academic journals.
María Luisa Arcelay, was an educator, businesswoman and politician. In November 1932, she became the first woman in Puerto Rico to be elected to a government legislative body, when she was elected to represent the district of Mayagüez in the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico.
The recorded history of Puerto Rican women can trace its roots back to the era of the Taíno, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, who inhabited the island that they called "Boriken" before the arrival of Spaniards. During the Spanish colonization the cultures and customs of the Taíno, Spanish, African and women from non-Hispanic European countries blended into what became the culture and customs of Puerto Rico.
Carlota Matienzo Román was a Puerto Rican teacher and feminist. She is credited with working for reform of the public school system in Puerto Rico, and as one of the founders in 1917 of the Puerto Rican Feminine League and in 1921 of the Suffragist Social League.
Willa Mae Sudduth (1925-2015) was one of the founders of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. She was involved in many social justice causes, issues, and concerns most of her adult life. She was an African-American woman and the mother of six children.
Ana Irma Rivera Lassén is an Afro-Puerto Rican attorney who is a current Member of the Puerto Rican Senate, elected on November 3, 2020, and who previously served as the head of the Bar Association of Puerto Rico from 2012–2014. She was the first black woman, and third female, to head the organization. She is a feminist and human rights activist, who is also openly lesbian. She has received many awards and honors for her work in the area of women's rights and human rights, including the Capetillo-Roqué Medal from the Puerto Rican Senate, the Martin Luther King/Arturo Alfonso Schomburg Prize, and the Nilita Vientós Gastón Medal. She is a practicing attorney and serves on the faculty of several universities in Puerto Rico; she currently serves on the Advisory Committee on Access to Justice of the Puerto Rican Judicial Branch.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase media democracy and strengthen independent media.
María Martínez Acosta, a.k.a., María Martínez Acosta de Pérez Almiroty was a Puerto Rican teacher, clubwoman and the first woman to be elected senator in Puerto Rico. She is one of the twelve women honored with a plaque in "La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña" in San Juan.
Delia Villegas Vorhauer was an American Latina social worker, who successfully ran programs to assist the Hispanic communities in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. She was awarded a presidential medal for her efforts in development. She founded Mujeres Unidas de Michigan as an advocacy group for Spanish-speaking women and as a result of their activism the group sent six delegates to the 1977 National Women's Conference, which was a part of the UN International Women's Year programs. Vorhauer served as vice chair of the delegation to the conference. She authored the Mason Miller Report, an evaluation of minorities and higher education, which became the model for analyzing participation of minorities in colleges and universities throughout Michigan, leading to a state bi-lingual education law. When she lost her sight, due to diabetes, Vorhauer became an advocate for the blind. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, the first Latina to be honored in the hall.
Josefina Barceló Bird de Romero was a Puerto Rican civic leader and politician, leader of the Liberal Party of Puerto Rico after the death of her father Antonio Rafael Barceló in 1938. She is one of the twelve women honored with a plaque in "La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña", in San Juan.
Irene M. Zoppi Rodríguez, is a retired U.S. Army Reserve brigadier general and academic. She was the first Puerto Rican woman ever to attain that rank in the Army Reserve. Her final assignment was deputy commanding general for United States Army South as the director of the Army Reserve Engagement Cell for Individual Mobilization Augmentees. Zoppi is an adjunct professor at Strayer University. She has worked as an instructor for the National Intelligence University where she directed the university's academic center within the National Security Agency.
Milagros Benet de Mewton was a Puerto Rican educator, women's rights advocate and suffragist. Born into an intellectual, liberal family, Benet trained as a teacher. Inhabitants of the island gained U.S. citizenship in 1917, two decades after the United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain in the Spanish–American War. Benet was active in the struggle for women's enfranchisement and joined the first suffragist organization Liga Femínea Puertorriqueña that year. When U.S. women gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, Benet led the push to extend its coverage to Puerto Rico. In 1924, she filed a lawsuit challenging the right of the electoral board to refuse to register women as they were U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that states and territories have the right to determine who can vote and denied her claim.
Margarita Inés Benítez Martínez is a Puerto Rican educator and education policy expert. After completing a bachelor of arts degree at Vassar College, she earned a master's at Middlebury College and a PhD at Columbia University. She taught Spanish and literature classes at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey in the 1970s. Moving into administration in the 1980s, she was rector and then president of UPR Cayey while simultaneously serving as the acting chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao. In 1986, she founded the first women's studies program in Puerto Rico.
