VivirLatino

There are times when I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe it is coincidence that Palestine just put in a bid at the United Nations to be recognized on the same day that in 1868 a group of Puerto Ricans made a declaration of independence. El Grito de Lares was a revolutionary call against Spanish colonial rule in Puerto Rico and is recognized as a stepping stone for the modern struggle for Puerto Rican freedom as it remains a colony, now under the United States.

El Grito de Lares, with it’s strong abolitionist roots, is most often credited to Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis. Not to take anything away from the valiant men of the movement, but history, even revolutionary history tends to focus on the role of the heroic men while shoving aside the women who played critical roles in the same struggles. Puerto Rico’s National anthem, La Borinqueña, the original version with lyrics of machetes and canons, not the colonized version of flowers, sun and sea – was penned by poet Lola Rodriguez de Tio and written in the year of Lares and inspired by the activities of Betances. De Tio’s revolutionary beliefs forced her become an exile in Cuba, where she was also involved in the liberation struggle against the Spanish. She died and is buried Cuba. Many Puerto Rican events that I have been to open or close with de Tio’s words and it’s one of the first songs I ever sang to both my daughters as a lullaby.

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