Juana Tomasa Quiala Rojas

Tomasita, outstanding blind improviser and important exponent of repentismo in the country.

She emerged from the amateur artists movement where she has maintained an ascending artistic trajectory. She writes stories, songs and greater art poetry.

She achieved the category of professional artist although she always remained linked to community work, with her main venues being guateques, serenades and country festivities in communities such as La Antonia, Pipián, Picadura and el Mudo, among others. She is one of the main figures in the Cucalambeanas Events.

Tomasita was born in Arroyón de Flores, Banes, in the province of Holguín, and currently lives in the town of Madruga.

From a very young age she moved to the capital to study at the Abel Santamaría special school for the blind, where she completed primary and secondary education. Her beginning in improvisation was also unexpected, when she unexpectedly intervened in a song competition in defense of another poet and did so in such a way that she won the applause of the audience.

As a professional, she began her work in 1986 at the Provincial Music Center "Antonio María Romeu" in Havana, to which she belongs.

Decorations
During her artistic life, she has received numerous decorations, including the Antero Regalado distinctions and August 23rd, from ANAP (National Association of Small Farmers) and FMC (Federation of Cuban Women), respectively;
Replica of Máximo Gómez's Machete, from the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces); and
Crystal Baton and the Seal for Rehabilitation, awarded by the National Association of the Blind.

She also obtained the National Prize for Community Culture 2004 and was named National Vanguard of ANCI.

Pseudonyms
Several are the pseudonyms that have identified her in her artistic life, since in addition to Queen of Repentismo, she smilingly remembers that of Lark of La Lisa, where she lived and began to improvise, Arrow of Thought, as those from Las Tunas baptized her, and Fiancée of the Canaries, as the inhabitants of those islands called her.

For more than two decades she has successfully faced improvisers from Cuba and other countries, and is recognized by personalities of the stature of Jesús Orta Ruíz, el Indio Naborí, and Alexis Díaz Pimienta.

Her presentations on radio and television, and her frequent performances at the Cucalambeanas national event, Open Forums and other events, in addition to her attendance at numerous song competitions, have earned her the great popularity she enjoys today.

But this outstanding cultist of the décima not only triumphs in Cuba, as demonstrated by her tours through Spain, Portugal, Mexico and Argentina, places where she won the favor of the public.
In her visits to those nations, she competed against other improvisers, always with good results, for which she obtained numerous recognitions for Cuba.

Among her many anecdotes, she remembers her stay in Argentina to participate in a festival, where she refused to sing until the Cuban national flag was raised alongside all the others.
Equally unforgettable for her are the first place achieved at the San Luis Potosí Festival in Mexico, and her tour through the Canary Islands in the mid-90s, where she cultivated numerous friendships.

It was also in the Islands where she published her first book of décimas, titled ¿Quién soy? la novia de Canarias, which was transcribed to braille for libraries and special schools in Cuba.