Leonor Pérez Cabrera

Leonor Pérez. Mother of Cuban independence hero José Martí. She decisively contributed to the ethical and moral education that made her son the most universal of Cubans.

She was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands. Daughter of Antonio Pérez Monzón and Rita Cabrera Carrillo. Born into a family that was economically comfortable, though not rich, as they owned some properties in houses and other means of livelihood.

Leonor grew up in Santa Cruz de Tenerife as a beautiful, intelligent, and cheerful young woman with extremely austere customs. Subject to the norms of a society that strongly discriminated against women, she learned her first letters in the home of some female friends, hidden from her parents, as they believed that education could threaten the strict moral standards of the time.

She arrived in Cuba with her family just after turning 15 years old. At one of the few parties she attended, she met the handsome young Valencian Mariano Martí y Navarro, then an artillery sergeant. They got along, became sweethearts, and married in February of 1852. They went to live on the upper floors of a house at Casa Natal de José Martí, on Paula Street No. 41 (today Leonor Pérez No. 314). From this marriage with Mariano Martí, eight children were born, named in order of birth: José Julián, Leonor, Mariana Matilde (Ana), María del Carmen (La Valenciana), María del Pilar (Pilar), Rita Amelia (Amelia), Antonia Bruna, and Dolores Eustaquia (Lolita).

In 1857, Leonor Pérez traveled to Spain in the company of her husband and children. The family resided in Valencia until 1859, the year they returned to Havana preceded by their father.

In 1874 they settled in Mexico, where José joined them after having been deported to Spain in 1871; his parents and sisters returned to Havana on March 7, 1877.

Doña Leonor was widowed on February 2, 1887, and on November 17 of that year she left for New York, where she lived with her son until the end of January 1888.

In 1899, when she was already seventy-one years old, she was forced to request a position as third-class officer in the Department of Agriculture, Industry, Commerce and Public Works, which was granted to her by the American occupation government, with a monthly salary of $83.33.

She spent her last years of life with her daughter Amelia in Havana, living in poverty. She died on June 19, 1907.

As a tribute to the mother of the apostle, monuments to Leonor Pérez were erected in different places in Cuba and Spain. One of them is located on Paseo Borges Salas, inside García Sanabria Park in Tenerife. It is a simple monument, a bronze bust placed on a pedestal. The sculpture was created by Thelvia Marín on the occasion of the centennial of the death of this illustrious Canarian woman who was a bridge between Cuban and Spanish cultures.