Carolina Rodríguez Suárez

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Carolina Rodríguez Suárez, La Patriota, whom our Apostle baptized as The Soul of Cuba.

There were numerous letters and telegrams of gratitude and love from the National Hero for that little old woman who went out every morning to work under the harsh North American winter, only to donate her entire salary, or nearly all of it, to Cuba's independence.

Carolina Rodríguez was born on a street behind Parque del Carmen in Santa Clara, and her parents were Félix Valois and Ana Francisca.

She conspired during the Ten Years' War and suffered exile on Isle of Pines. After the Little War, she was deported to the United States, and from there she continued her struggle for the independence of the Homeland, becoming a pillar of Cuban emigration in Tampa, where she earned the nickname La Patriota.

Ill and with almost total loss of vision, she returned to her native city in early January 1899 to die in the greatest poverty on June 2 of that same year. In her honor, the City Council decided on June 10, 1899 to name after her the street where she was born and died.

Years later, by agreement of the City Council itself, adopted on October 4, 1939, and of the Center of Veterans and Patriots of Santa Clara, her mortal remains were exhumed and exposed in a chapel of rest on the night of January 26, 1940.

A death notice called on the people of Santa Clara to accompany the remains of the exalted patriot from the Center of Veterans, then located on Cuba street no. 115, corner of Carretera Central, to the local cemetery. On the morning of the 27th—the eve of the 87th birthday of the Apostle José Martí—the mortal remains of the Patriota were placed in the Veterans' Pantheon, where they rest today.

It was the city's gratitude to that woman of strength and heart to whom Martí, rightly, wrote: "My dear Carolina. This ungrateful [...], this servant of your country, who speaks of you every day, and loves you as a son and with love in his heart, will be in Tampa tomorrow. He embraces you. Your José Martí."

More than 110 years after her death, the people of Santa Clara are still indebted to La Patriota and little, or nothing, is done to settle that debt.

Today very few people remember her and the new generations have not even heard of her existence. Thus the effort made to rescue her figure by the Club Martiano Carolina Rodríguez, composed of retired teachers and professors, who struggle to exalt her forgotten memory, is worthwhile.