Ana Betancourt de Mora

Ana Betancourt de Mora was born in Camagüey, on December 14, 1832. At twenty-two years old she married the young man from Príncipe Ignacio Mora y de la Pera, who was, according to her own words, her teacher and her best friend.

On December 4, 1868 she entered the rebel countryside, exchanging the serenity of her home for the sufferings of war. On April 14, 1869 her voice was heard in Guáimaro, seat of the Constituent Assembly to say: "Citizens: woman, in the dark and quiet corner of the home, waited patiently and resignedly for this beautiful hour in which a new revolution breaks her yoke and unfolds her wings".

And, she added: "Citizens: here everything was enslaved; the cradle, the color and the sex. You want to destroy the slavery of the cradle fighting until death. You have destroyed the slavery of color by emancipating the servant. The moment has come to free woman!".

In 1871 she is surprised with her husband, and, through a stratagem of hers, Ignacio manages to escape, but she falls into the hands of the enemy. Compelled to write to him asking for his surrender, she answered: "I prefer to be the widow of a man of honor than to be the wife of a man without dignity and dishonored".

She manages to escape after suffering countless outrages and deprivations that did not make her bow her head; she is deported to Mexico, and then she goes to New York. She returns to Cuba with the Peace of Zanjón.

She lived in Kingston, in El Salvador, and in Spain. Except in the last country, in the others she earned her living as a teacher or as a worker, always concerned with the freedom of Cuba. In Spain she dedicated herself to transcribing the campaign diary of her husband, while she maintained an active correspondence with Gonzalo de Quesada and other Cuban patriots. She converted her sister's house into a center of revolutionary activity.

Engaged in preparations for her return to Cuba, Ana Betancourt de Mora dies on February 7, 1901.